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Hello All, After all this time, I still can't figure out detachment. I haven't spoken to my A son in almost a week, since he called to tell me he had a 4 day binge after 5 months sober. No job. Lost his place to live. I didn't offer any help. Now I want to call him but I am scared. Scared of how miserable I will feel if he is nasty to me, or if I hear that his situation is so terrible, or if he is drunk. So I don't dial and I am totally unfocused. Is this detachment with love? Or am I just a coward, afraid of my own feeliings? Is it just about me? He is in FL. No money. No job. I don't know if he has a place to live. He doesn't have a drivers licence and certainly no health insurance. So if he decided to get help, where would he go? I am so afraid that he has no options, drunk or sober. This is what drinking has done to my handsome smart athletic educated son. Today was probably 5000 calories again. I know I am stuffing down my feelings. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Laura Laura
Laura,I might read Step 1 real slow (twice).I know that is what I have done on many ocassions. Detaching is hard for anyone. It was very hard for me . I had a million thoughts, all bad of course! I knew I could not change,control, or cure my Alcoholic. I had tried that for years. Finally when the time was right for me , I tried detachment . Now the Alcoholic in my life makes her own choices, as well she deserves to . Did I make her life any better trying to run it for her. The answer is no. When she decides to get help, or she hits bottom, or goes to jail , whatever she decides good or bad , those are her life choices to make own her own with no coaching from me. My only job is to take care of me in Al-Anon, and I have learned that is not selfish. I have turned my alcoholic over to my Higher Power , and He is doing a lot better job with my alcoholic than I was. RCO1
You're normal for the disease of alcoholism. If you're feeling strange and confused and clueless...that's normal so relax and keep your alcoholic son turned over to your HP and do some focusing on our program. Rodney shared some good experience about choices. Your alcoholic is sick, penniless, away from your home, out of work, friendless, and quite possibly drunk again. That is normal (not very nice but normal) for consequences for alcoholics and the choice to continue drinking. You're not causing it. You have absolutely no idea or way of controlling it and you and every other highly educated health professional cannot cure it. Normal and you don't like it. He doesn't either and hasn't found a way to drink without terrible things happening to him...Most recovering alcoholics I know have that story also.
You can't help because you don't know how to. Turning him over to a recovering alcoholic is the best help along with turning him over to HP. This is how it's been done by others successfully. He has to be willing and honest about it cause he can't use yours...it won't work.
He's got no insurance where can he go? AA doesn't ask for medical insurance cards and it doesn't cost a penny and it's the most successful treatment known to us. So that's one suggestion you can make if you do hear from him.
If you get to talk to him listening nonjudgementally and with compassion is what I learned how to do here. It worked for me maybe it will work for you. Knowing that you don't have to tell him what to do a head of time and that beyond a suggestion all we can say honestly is that "I love you and am concerned" without saying it to force motivation or anything else for that matter. It's the truth...you do love him and you are concerned and the rest of the situation is up to him.
Detatchment with love for me is acknowledging that the other person exists and has great value without condition for whatever else is going on in their lives that I make the choice to be or not be my business or my focus. Detachment with love for me is being caring and not controlling. Detachment with love includes loving myself at the same time and taking care of that in spite of negative consequences others attain by making bad decisions or having bad luck.
You might indeed be fearful but that doesn't make you a coward. Normal people feel fear...be normal stay normal. What is important is how you act or react while feeling fear. Courageous people go to patience before reacting and in that they don't just react...they look the situation over and decide what they can and can't do with it and in it and will naturally turn toward solutions hand and hand with their Higher Power; "Thy will not mine be done".
So now in detatchment where you value and respect and love the other person for exactly who they are and yourself in the same manner, looking at reducing the calorie intake while understress is a form of self love. Maybe?
Keep coming back. There is so much to learn about yourself and so many miracles coming your way.
Laura - I love what Rodney and Jerry have posted and can add little else. Just wanted to say that I know ALL TOO WELL that feeling of helplessness that you're feeling right now. It eats at your gut. You're not at all alone in that feeling.
Your son is not alone in this world either. He has his own loving HP which is with him at this very moment and loves him more than you could imagine.
One thing I have learned about alcoholics is that they are resourceful when they need to be. Most become very adept at getting their basic needs met. He has plenty of options - AA being the first and best. There are many free services for those who are needy. And if need be, he will find them.
My A fits the description of your son very well (just an older version). He's been homeless, penniless, jobless, and friendless more times than I can count. He is an intelligent, educated, kind man - with this disease that he can't shake. He can go days, months, even a few years without alcohol - then within a very short period of time, he returns to alcohol and loses EVERYTHING all over again. It's frustrating and disappointing. His parents washed their hands of him years ago. He understands that. It hurts him in places that he doesn't tell me about - but I know deep down that he understands that his parents could no longer deal with his disease. It was killing them. They love him and keep him touch with him (when they know where he is), but they know that detachment was crucial for their sanity.
For all of the many times that I've worried that my A would become homeless - he hasn't - at least yet. He gets real busy and finds a roof over his head at the 11th hour. AA friends have taken him in, he's gotten a room in detox or treatment or halfway houses. There are always options.
I'm very concerned about you, though. I also understand the compulsion to overeat when stresses are high. It's comfort - but it's also an escape. It can also kill you. I hope you will do what's necessary to come to terms with the food. If the only thing you can "do" for your son right now is take care of his mother.........then please do that. As much as he is suffering with his disease........know that he loves you......and doesn't want you to hurt.
I say you did just fine and there's nothing written that you have to call him and fix it for him. He'll get it figured out. They have programs (although they are declining) for treating people who are addicted. Since he's homeless maybe it would be easier for him to go to a state that has really good treatment programs for the indigent. Washington was good.... Probably really liberal states are better than conservative... Just my experience. Maybe no ties and no responsibilities is a good thing and will help him to move toward recovery. I hope that someday you get your smart, handsome son back! It won't happen unless he figures it out on his own though.
Detaching is something I have to practice everyday. I was reading Melody Beattie this morning and she suggests that self love means me too.
I am definitely one to stuff my feelings and I can relate to that.
I obsessed worried, felt awful, grieved, ranted and raved about the A's behavior for years. Eventually I became non functional.
I dont know that all that emotion did one thing for him. He actively day in day out denied he needed help, refused help actively and seemed to do something every single day to cause chaos and then demand help.
The issue for me these days is "me too". I am not in a good space. I am poor, I am not well. Where do I have to sacrfice myself anymore?
My over responsibility for the A did not much for him. He kept using whatever I did, if I did nothing he used, if I helped he used. He would always tell me I was a signficant deterrent in his life. At the same time when I'm gone he is not doing that well. Of course that is down to me too.
So for me I had to look at that the A wasn't accessing resources, wasn't behaving in a way that showed he wanted help and in fact was never at a bottom where he had had enough. No matter what he kept using.
I had to put myself in the equation, hence the need to learn detachment.
I don't think detaching like any other skill comes perfectly overnight.
Detachment means if I do talk, I make the effort to not take the responses to my half of the conversation personally. If AH says something designed to be hurtful to me, I just recognize it as his disease snapping at me, and not the real man I love.
If the verbal onslaught continues and it starts to make me uncomfortable, then I can break off the conversation and leave the room, house, hang up the phone, whatever. But the twist in this is that when I do break it off, I do my best not to carry any anger or resentment or hurt with me when I leave or hang up.
Detachment doesn't mean permanent separation, never ever talking again, avoiding. It just means not attaching emotion to what is said or done around me. After all, it's not ME with the problem.
Detachment for me means not attaching my emotions to everything the A does. Realizing that the person is sick and that the meanness they throw at me is a symptom of thier illness helps. When I first started learning how to detach, I reminded myself constantly "It's not about me. It's not about me." I must have repeated that phrase a hundred times a day.
Al-Anon has a good pamphlet on detachment. If you can find a f2f meeting they would probably have it. Or you can order it from any Al-Anon literature center.
In recovery,
__________________
~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
I realize after reading these posts that i am still caught up in blaming myself for my son's A and then being so afraid as it gets worse and afraid that I won't be able to cope with whatever comes. It's all about me and my fears and general misery. So I have to work harder at CCC and understanding detachment. Thank you all, as always, for your kind help. Laura
