“Wasn’t I determined to “save” the alcoholic, and that to the same degree as he was addicted to alcohol? No wonder the situation became an impasse, with the irresistible force, me, trying to move the immovable object, alcoholism. I must remind myself daily that I can save only myself.” (ODAT, 12 March)
I grew up in a household that manifested many alanonic behaviours. The ‘saving’, the control, the mothering, the martyrdom, the management, and the manipulation, and perhaps the worst ‘m’ of them all, the monitoring, plus the suffocating expressions of love, devotion, interest, concern, and ‘caring’, as justifications for the chiding, the censure, and the minute direction, all of these preceded the individuals’ descent into alcoholism. The alanonism was not a response to active alcoholism. Is it possible that active alcoholism is the response to active alanonism?
I knew an alcoholic family from Kent where all five children ended up in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. All of the children had to get as far away as possible, literally the other side of the globe, and some of the children had by then become alcoholics. The parents were not the alcoholics—they were both non-drinking alanons.
When I experience someone else’s active alanonism, I shut down and have to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible. The feeling of claustrophobia, of being seen but misread, of being organised into someone else’s system of enforced joy, the ‘Zugwang’ (being forced in chess to make one of two moves, both of which are disastrous): in experiencing this ‘from the other side’, I see the effect of my own manoeuvres on others.
What better way to escape the alanon than drinking?
“trying to move the immovable object, alcoholism”: one wants the alcoholism out of the way, because the alcoholism is getting in the way of one’s efforts to control the person—once they’re sober, one thinks, one can really get to work on them. The alcoholic knows this. They know the alanon has plans for them. The alcoholism is the only thing protecting the alcoholic from the alanon. The drinking is the daily reprieve, just like, when they achieve sobriety, they acquire from God a daily reprieve.
It is absolutely true that, as an alanon, I can save only myself, and I cannot save any alcoholic from their alcoholism, but the other sobering truth is that the alcoholic needs twofold saving: firstly from their active alcoholism and secondly from others’ active alanonism. When the alcoholic is removed from the threat of others’ alanonism, looming over them, it is finally safe to get sober, and they generally do.