Cooper, the acceptance portion come from that most all of our qualifiers are adults and are free to make their own decisions.

It is okay to hate the disease. That is normal. I think maybe this is what is bothering you. Acceptance means acceptance of the person and that they have the disease. It doesn't mean you accept the disease.

Also, this is one of the few diseases that will tell the person that they do not have it. Hence, it calls for different reactions from family members who want to "support' or "fight" the disease. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of this particular disease, "supporting" the person often turns into supporting this disease, and "fighting" their addiction often turns into fighting with the person. This is due to the fact that alcoholism/addiction pulls for enabling (support in the wrong way) and if not that codependent reactions which are harmful to us and don't make a difference (fighting).

So...I don't believe "accepting the disease" is what alanon is trying to get across. It IS trying to get across that you can't fix them. Your first post was one in which you wrote how frustrating it is to have alcoholism rearing it's ugly head in multiple relationships in your family. It was poignant and an all too common phenomenon that you share with multiple members here...BUT - you need not experience it as alcoholism attacking you still. It's THEIR illness and it belongs to them. You only have a set of choice about how you will react and what you will do.

For example, your 21 year old son now has a DUI...You might think you are helping by paying for a fancy lawyer so he won't have to go to jail or have as many consequences that he might get sad over and then drink more. That would probably be enabling. You could fund rehab, but if he doesn't want to get sober, that would probably be enabling too. And fighting it? Well how to you intend to do that? Constant lectures? Your son's self worth will get whittled away and he could drink more over that. Yelling at him? Okay, that could get you in trouble and lead him to just avoid you and/or drink more. Forcing him into rehab? How? He's an adult and if he doesn't want to go...he wont. You can throw the BEST treatment at this disease, but if the person doesn't want it, it DOES NOTHING and will drain money from your pockets. As a recovering alcoholic, I will tell you what the cure for alcoholism is as best as I have known it: My own willingness born out of desperation and natural consequences and AA. Those things are free and my family had nothing to do with it. When I finally did have a moment of clarity and really wanted to get sober...it helped to have a loving family...but that's about it. Hearing "I love you and I know you can make better choices" and "Keep up with the AA!" was about the best my family could have done.

So...you can "fight" THEIR disease all you want in vain without their cooperation and spend money, lose your serenity and get nowhere. OR - you can make your peace with your higher power and let things unfold how they will.

Don't enable the disease, but also don't fool yourself in thinking you can "fight" something that the afflicted party is not in agreement is a problem. It's not your fight anyhow. It's theirs. You have your own life to live and your own challenges. You could spend the rest of your life being angry and regretting the impact alcohol has had on you and your family....OR, you can live each day to the fullest and be happy despite the disease (which really is more like winning on your part and being bitter and angry is losing to the disease).

Lastly, Alanon works best when you have an open mind. The ideas you are expressing are normal, especially for being early on in alanon, BUT it's your own anger that had you completely missing the value of acceptance in this process. Next time you hear something you "think" you don't agree with, "think" about how it might apply to you and not how you disagree. Your current "thoughts" about all of this are not making you happy, they are dominating your and making you angry. Hence, don't cling to oppositional thinking that continues to make you angry. Going to alanon and then trying to justify anger and the idea of being more powerful than the disease is not much different than going to AA meetings and drinking afterwards. Be open to changing your thinking.

Acceptance is freeing for you....but YOU have to be the one to experience what it means for this disease. I made some suggestions (i.e., it's not your fight - you accept the loved one but not their illness and you just stop enabling it and admit powerlessness over it and pray for HP to take care of you and them - these are all ideas related to acceptance) but they have to gel with your own thinking...Keep coming back!

It's important to distinguish between thinking that alcoholism is "acceptable" and accepting it.

What we accept is that we cannot influence it.  It's not that we shouldn't influence it.  We'd all love to be able to influence it.  We'd love nothing better than to influence it.  Millions of people all over the world, for hundreds of years, have tried to find a way to influence it.  

The sad truth is that if there were a way, someone would have found it by now.

That said, I think we all go through a period where we try our very best to influence it.  We reason with the drinker, we cajole, we beg, we threaten, we provide clippings, we supply books, we gather other loved ones to plead with the drinker, we arrange for rehab, we look up the times of AA meetings, we do hours and weeks of research.  We lecture, we wheedle, we yell.  For many of us, we keep tabs, we count drinks, we pour out bottles, we spy, we take notes, we check phones, we follow in our cars, we look at receipts, we threaten to expose their secrets, we argue till we're blue in the face.

If any of this worked, there wouldn't be any more alcoholics left in the world.

But I suspect trying many of these things out is something the majority of us do.  Because it's painful to recognize that we really don't have any control over the drinking.

There is one thing we can do.  When we get healthier, the dynamic changes.  Sometimes this dynamic is enough to make everything change.  But we can't fake the getting healthy, and we really have to do it for ourselves, not as a way of manipulating the drinker.  

I hope you'll keep coming back and take good care of yourself.

I like your spirit Cooper

I can only tell you my own experience.

I am an extremely able and determined person and I've managed to pull off some wonderful things in my life with enthusiasm, calm, tenacity and charm. For this reason I, like you, have been determined to lick this thing called alcoholism and to do everything in my power to help AH. It was only when I gave up and left it up to AH whether he wanted to drink or not that any change started to happen. The other element of this that contributed to making change happen was that I was clearly enjoying my own life regardless of what he was doing. In fact I was having a better time that he was because he was tired all of the time! That, to me is what acceptance means. It is giving someone else (AH in this instance) the dignity to make his own mind up about how they want to live their life and treat their own body. The way that I look at it is to think about how I would react if someone started to tell me how to live my life. I know that I would probably dig my heels in more than a bit. And if they started to shout at me about it I could well end up pouring myself another drink rather than listening to good advice.

Can you apply that wonderful energy and determination that comes through in your post to living your life to the full and inviting your partner to join you when he is ready?

I felt that way Cooper! Fought for my son, denied myself, watched and forbade and issued consequences and bribes and in the end, he did what he was going to do and I suffered hugely. Took me a long time to grasp that accepting was not really giving in but realizing that I could not change one thing and all my preventative measures were only hurting me. Once I did accept that, then I could detach emotionally and establish boundaries that I really meant and would follow through on. And it took a huge measure of guilt off my shoulders because I finally GOT it that I did not cause this and I could not change him. I still love him and always will but I will not tolerate his behavior anymore and I am through enabling. I still cry, I still hurt, I still see what could be if he wanted it- problem is he has to want it more than alcohol.

Hi Cooper,

I was the same way you were when I came into the rooms. I was certain I was the power to be that would do whatever it took to make my AH be sober and stay sober. My AH went to rehab, relapsed two days out of treatment, went back, relapsed again when trying to go to a 3/4 house. He then got issued an ultimatimum by his PO, do a half way house boot camp or got to jail. He chose the 1/2 way house. Now, I was super mad, angry, resentful that all that I had tried had failed miserably and this woman who is now controlling his every move put a boot up his butt and forced him there.

It was a God send it went down this way. I couldn't fight the disease, only God can help your qualifier. All my attempts included, lying for him, doing everything for him that he should have been doing for himself, being abused emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually for a long time because I thought appeasing him, believing he was going to quit the next day, fighting and arguing non stop. All of my "help" made the whole mess worse. I was insane!

Acceptance for me means understanding my husband has a disease, one that is cunning, baffling and powerful. He has many tools he can use to maintain sobriety. He has choices to make in his life and they are for him to make, not me. Acceptance means, I don't need to treat him like a baby that needs to be put in a playpen for timeout. I love my AH and we are trying to rebuild our marriage. Acceptance for me came when I learned how to set healthy boundaries and hold to them. Acceptance for me came in learning how to say what I mean, mean what I say and not say it meanly.

I will not tolerate any "addict" behaviors, lying, stealing, manipulating and he is very much aware that I will not live with an active addict. With all this being said with understanding acceptance, I am able to let go and let God.

My prayers are with you. Come here often, there is much experience, strength and hope to be had.

I can tell you are going to reap lots of benefits from alanon. You learning curve is fast.

Keep coming back. Glad you're going to Al-Anon. My husband was an A. Several of my sibs are As. My son is an A. The hardest to deal with has been my son and the disease is the same as is the solution. Sending you lots of encouragement and support.

 Hi Cooper,

The fully accepted idea is that alcoholism is an illness. below is my personal opinion- would not raise this at a meeting because of time restraints- and besides that it may cause a little stress.

I am away down the line of recovery now- but i believe that alcoholism is not the illness. I think that alcoholism and addiction is a strong symptom of the illness.

I believe that the underlying illness centers around unrelieved stress and anxiety... it manifests itself in a number of ways, and I won't name these.

As I say this- the same Alanon principals apply... we can blame the illness, and not the person. If the person stops drinking the illness does not actually go away- I think we all know this.

Th e only solution is to do Alanon- to learn to detach from the problem, and not from the person. To learn to love ourselves regardless, and choose to love others who are suffering.

Thanks for the chance to share...

...I would welcome more open discussion on this topic...

DavidG.

 

 

 

The best example I have Cooper is my own.  I didn't get into the outright addiction overnight and would not get out of it that way also.   Remember your own stories part of which you mention here.  Lots of your story is a duplication for other alcoholics and addicts.  It is the similarities we learn from.  Some here offer their own take on disease or not and I have only my own experiences to stand on.  I was born into the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction decades.  My mother tried to stop her mother from "turning her grand children on" and failed.  I was 9 and predisposed when I got a bit older I drank because I could.  Alcohol was not restricted in my family and when I could drink I did without restraint.  The symptom was the predisposition and then the habit from acting with the predisposition.  In my family the word alcoholic never came up...drunk did and then to say it or call a family member a drunk was disrespectful especially for a younger relative...there would be punishment.  My own children started drinking with me right out of the crib.  If they liked it fine and if they didn't that was okay also.  My eldest son has relapsed at the age of 48 and is the equivalent mental emotional age of 16...in fact he abandoned his family and has taken up with a girl friend from his high school years.  The underlying symptom?  generational predisposition.  Another son doesn't drink or use because he never got use to it when young and doesn't like the tastes.  Another son stopped because it overwhelmed him so much and he doesn't like being out of control...even when clean and sober.   If anything our mind and mood altering chemicals robs us of our greatest desire...to drink and still have control.  That was my greatest drive and I never was able to make it work.

What do I do with and for my son?  I remain sober and available with boundaries.  He and I have spoken before.  In fact he and his children all know from me that if they ever have a problem with alcohol and drugs I know thousands of recovering people I could put them with to help them find solution.   I am the last one to do it because the relationship is too close and interferes.  I don't have to prove to them I love them and often times in the past when I have tried to help another drunk or addict love wasn't even involved...will was and not love.  I cannot tell my story as well to my son as I can to some one unrelated.  Something gets in the way...power and control stuff?  Ego and Pride?  I'm sure.

As Dr. Paul on page 449 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches..."And I have found that acceptance is the solution to all of my problems"...  Acceptance allows me to relax and make room for the Higher Power my Higher Power brings to the issue.  I am not my sons higher power I am his father and very often a person who he will readily and naturally resist especially when he is in crises and chaos.  That's okay for me cause there are others who Higher Power can and will use much better than I.  My son knows my story...he has lived much of it with me...He was a practicing alcoholic/addict at 19 when he lived with me and when I divorced him because of the threat to my own recovery then.  The threat is real cause the disease has no cure.  Acceptance allows me to understand that for me today I know and know that I know this often fatal disease and my part in it.  Acceptance is a wide and deep tool.  It doesn't mean I have to like what is going on.  Liking it is not required...accepting the fact that it is going on and that I am powerless over it going on now helps me to relax.  My Mom had to use acceptance along with the police and the courts and my teachers and friends and that is the best way they helped until I had enough and screamed uncle!!.   I knew booze was kicking my butt...I just figured there would come a day when it wouldn't any further and drinking the way I did would finally be okay even though I was a sickly color of yellow green.  Your son knows...he can feel and think and read signs. He knows enough to pay his way into a 3 day dry out rather than take a freebie with undesirables.  Probably would have done the same thing myself while staying at arms length from family trying to preach to me or act holier than thou because they no longer drank or used.  I drank with them, I supplied them, I kept them drunk and took care of them when they were too intoxicated to be human...I am a "double"...qualified for dual membership.  It has taken me way past two meetings to come this far and I still admit "we know just a little".

Great to have you here taking the attitude of being teachable.  Al-Anon and MIP and the recovery fellowship with HP and all HP's other tools will help. 

Keeping you and your son in prayer.  That works also.   Keep coming back ((((hugs))))   

-- Edited by Jerry F on Thursday 21st of August 2014 02:14:06 AM

I have accepted that AH is an alcoholic - and in total denial

I have accepted I can not change him, only me

I have accepted that is most of the things we hear about As (mean, liar, manipulative.....) are true

I have accepted those things I can not change

I have accepted to do the things I can to change

I have accpted that I will not live like this

I am not mad; I am just done. I didn't want to leave mad; and I didn't want to stay mad. But, I had to get past the mad before I could honesly access whether I should/could stay or leave. I am leaving on a decision made w/ a sound mind (as sound as any mind that has lived w/ an A) and didn't just react and yell on my way out the door. I gave it a fair assessment, one day at a time. And one day a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to leave & next Thursday is the day the movers will pack up my things. 

Acceptance is a big part of my recovery.