"Happy" New Year - with an alcohol abuser ???

This phrase that rolls off our tongue at this time of year - "Happy New Year!" - may seem very HOLLOW to those living with an active drinker, or alcoholic.

HOW could it be "Happy" ?  Everything is destroyed by your drinker!

Things DO NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

The teachings of the Al-Anon Family Groups have made a difference for thousands around the world, showing how to have some sort of decent life EVEN WHILE  LIVING  WITH  AN  ALCOHOLIC.

What teachings? The learning from experience by hundreds of people, distilled into understandable do-it-yourself terms which have helped me and thousands more.  These teachings came from EXPERIENCE, not books or some academic's head.

For instance:

• The alcoholic is destroying his or her life - that is THEIR CHOICE and you can do NOTHING about it.  They have to find a way to stop themselves drinking.
• BUT - YOUR LIFE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE DESTROYED TOO!

Think about this:

• You Can Choose Not to Be Destroyed too
  
• The secret is  -------  DETACHMENT from the DRINKING (NOT the drinker)

This means CHOOSING not to fret, get angry, take revenge, freeze over, or do whatever you do when your drinker hits the bottle again.

YOU can CHOOSE to do something different:

• Let the drinker do what they have to do - drink.
• Because YOU CANNOT get them to stop yourself
• Instead, look for ways to do something for YOURSELF that will make your life better for the day
• Maybe you have to try to do something else for an hour at a time at first, until you get used to the idea
• It means TAKING YOUR ATTENTION OFF THE DRINKER
• AND ONTO YOURSELF.
• Try to do things that you like to do - call a friend or relative, visit someone, get back to that hobby, read, have a bath, have a massage, get a hair job, anything that is for YOU.

SOUNDS SELFISH?

Remember : we are now talking about your SURVIVAL as a rational human being - this is an attempt at retaining YOUR SANITY!

Living with an alcoholic forces us to appreciate the simple things and pleasures of life, that we often take for granted.

BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE AROUND YOU.

FOCUS ON THESE THINGS - NOT YOUR DRINKER!

WHAT's AL-ANON?

Look into those HELP pages and you will find out - that's where I got help and survived living with an active drinker.

SURVIVING CHRISTMAS ...

This is for those of you who are living with an active alcohol abuser.

Christmas should be a time of good cheer, warm family gatherings, a sense of new life, giving, love and peace. For us living with alcohol abuse, it can be the complete opposite.

Family don't come or if they do there's a lot of bad feelings and maybe arguments, plans for lovely Christmas dinners can be ruined, nasty stuff can happen, violence even.

So what can WE do, those of us who choose to live with an active drinker? Well, here are some thoughts that I hope may help you enjoy what you can this Christmas.

• Don't expect too much - unfulfilled expectations = resentment. So just plan for simple things and don't expect everything to go smoothly. Just take it as it comes. Anything better than you expected is a BONUS!
• Keep it simple - the less arrangements made the fewer apologies you'll have to make if your loved one drinks themself out of it all.
• Plan things that YOU can control - don't rely on your loved one being up and involved. They may be, and that would be a blessing. But organise things to suit yourself.
• Do simple things yourself that you will enjoy or consider important: go to church alone, visit nearby family alone, have a dinner even if you eat it by yourself, go to the movies, whatever.
• Don't fret for what is not - be thankful for what you have. There ARE those worse off than you, I am sure.
• Live in the moment - don't moan over losses nor worry about what else can go wrong - just live minute by minute and enjoy what you can. 
• Focus on the true meaning of Christmas - not the commercial hype of present giving. If you're not sure what the true meaning is - find out!
• Remember your loved one is sick - being controlled by the drug alcohol, and is not being nasty just to spoil your Christmas - try to understand how sick he or she is.

I hope this message helps someone out there - and to all who read this note I send my sincere Best Wishes for a peaceful Christmas and a better New Year!  Thank you for reading my blogs.

HOW DO I STOP GETTING ANGRY?

When my partner drank, despite my efforts to stop her, I used to get angry. It's a common emotion to feel when you are faced with uncontrolled drinking that is wrecking your lives.

I had to attend Al-Anon meetings to learn that my anger was understandable, but useless and negative. (see the HELP PAGES opposite to find out about what Al-Anon is and how it can help).

I learned that I was powerless over alcohol and could do NOTHING to stop my wife drinking.  NOTHING.

When I felt angry and frustrated I took my anger out on something else, NOT MY WIFE.

I used to walk and swear and curse out loud. I have punched pillows to work off anger. You can run, swim, jump, exercise, do something PHYSICAL to work the anger off. Chopping wood would be excellent!

Not choke it down - too much of that 'internalising' your anger will cause YOU harm. No, WORK IT OFF somehow.

Read previous blogs about ALCOHOLISM as a DISEASE, and COMPASSION, FORGIVENESS.

Realise that your drinking is suffering from a mental disease that has gripped their mind. THEY are the only ones that can find a way out of their Hell - by stopping the drinking. To do that they will probably need the help of AA - Alcoholics Anonymous.  Support them if they want to go to an AA meeting.

My best advice for YOU is to try to get to an Al-Anon meeting yourself - this is where I found help and it eventually saved our marriage from breaking up.

Try it.

GOOD TIMES - IN BETWEEN DRINKS.....

It's hard living with someone who drinks MOST of the time.  We get ANGRY and RESENTFUL.

So what happens when our loved one stops drinking for a while?

We sometimes REACT and GET REVENGE!  We often tell them, now that they are sober and will hear us, how badly they have treated us and all the trouble they have caused and what the neighbours said and all those bills haven't been paid and the list goes on .... WE GET ALL OUR FRUSTRATION OFF OUR CHEST!

And, maybe give the drinker a REASON TO START DRINKING AGAIN !!!

GOT THAT?  By haranguing our sober drinker we may actually make them want to blot the world out by escaping into the comfortable world of being drunk - there's no pain there.

So instead of beating on your temporarily sober drinker - try this:

• PUSH YOUR ANGER AWAY FOR A WHILE - read previous POSTS about ANGER
• BE NICE TO THEM -even if it goes against your grain
• DO THINGS THAT YOU BOTH USED TO ENJOY
• TRY TO MAKE SOBER TIMES GOOD TIMES
  
• TRY TO MAKE SOBER TIMES GOOD TIMES.

GIVE THEM A REASON TO BE SOBER !!!!

Try to do this every time they stop drinking, even if only for a little while.

Remember, very often for your drinker  IT HURTS TO BE SOBER - THE WORLD IS A HURTFUL PLACE - IT'S NICER TO BE DRUNK.

To undo that, you can try the above.

I did and it helped my wife along the road to finding sobriety. Not the main thing, just something positive.

AA helped her make the break.

Al-Anon helped me stay in the marriage with HOPE that one day she would stop drinking.

And one day, she did.  But of course, some people just cannot stop drinking. But that is another story .......

LET THE CONSEQUENCES HAPPEN

One of the things we all do when we struggle to live with an alcohol abuser is to hide all the awful things that happen when our loved one is drunk.

This is only natural: we are so ashamed that we try to cover things up from the view of others. Vomit on the floors; urine where it should not be; our loved on lying on the floor or out in the yard; our loved one going out badly dressed or even naked; crashing the car; falling over in public; yelling abuse at friends: I have seen or heard about all of these things.

We may phone up with an excuse when our loved one is too drunk to go to work; we may have to break dinner engagements due to our loved one's drunkenness; there seems to be endless situations that we may have to cope with.

But as we learn more about the disease of alcoholism, we learn that sometime or other, we have to let our drinker suffer the consequences of their drinking.  This may mean they lose their job, their friends, their children.

But as long as we cover up the nasty stuff, the drinker has no reason to think about stopping. After all, if they can drink and the world does not stop, then what's the problem?

Or to  put it another way: by covering up the mess our drinker makes, how are they going to see the mess that they are making of everyone's lives around them? Including their own!

Drinkers often need a reason to think about stopping the alcohol abuse.  We need to help them see a reason.

We have to learn this 'letting the consequences happen' , and this is one of the things I had to learn.  My journey is outlined in the 'Help Pages' - I hope you find some help too.

MOVING ON EMOTIONALLY

For the past few posts we have been talking about the emotions we go through when we live with an active alcohol abuser.

This series of feelings many of us go through are:

DISBELIEF > DENIAL > ANGER > BITTERNESS > RESENTMENT > SADNESS >  COMPASSION > FORGIVENESS > LOVE.

If you have not read my previous posts covering this process, please read them now.

So, what use is it knowing where along the continuum of the process we are?

What use is it to realise we are stuck on say Resentment.

Well here is a way you CAN USE this information.

When you find yourself with feelings at one of the stages above - 

YOU  CAN  READ  UP  ABOUT  THAT  STAGE or EMOTION

So, if you find yourself feeling say ANGRY or RESENTFUL - read about it:

• Look at my previous posts - see if I have written about it
• Look on the Net for articles on the subject
• Buy a book on the subject, or go to your Library
  

The point is - FIND  OUT  ABOUT  WHAT  YOU  ARE  FEELING  AND  LOOK  FOR  WAYS  TO COPE WITH  IT.

YOU  DO  NOT  HAVE  TO  BE  STUCK  WITH  SOME  UNHEALTHY  EMOTION - By study you can move past it.

YOU  DO  NOT  HAVE  TO  BE  ANGRY  or  RESENTFUL  for the rest of your days!

Remember:  it is only harming YOU when you hold unhealthy emotions like Anger, Resentment or even feeling like a Victim.

You CAN do something about it!

We have been looking at the series of emotions we seem to go through when we live with an alcohol abuser,
and they are:

DISBELIEF > DENIAL > ANGER > BITTERNESS > RESENTMENT > SADNESS >  COMPASSION > FORGIVENESS > LOVE.

And today we will look at "Coming out of the dark tunnel" - FORGIVENESS

If we have been working through these feelings and now can feel some COMPASSION for the plight of our drinker, soon we can think of FORGIVING THEM for all they have done.

If we realise that their brain is now being controlled by the drug ALCOHOL we can realise too that they have lost control of their life.  ALCOHOL is now running their life.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in life faced by your drinker will be : To STOP DRINKING.  This is very difficult for most drinkers and really, they will mostly need the help of AA to do it.

Maybe now we can start to see the situation differently - they cannot help what they are doing, they being controlled by Alcohol.  Perhaps we can feel PITY for them at this time.

What many of us have learned is to overcome ANGER and RESENTMENT we have to try to:

FORGIVE  THEM

Yes, try to FORGIVE the drinker for drinking, for all the harm they have done, for all the bad things that have happened.

WHY?

Because:  HOLDING ONTO OUR ANGER AND RESENTMENT ONLY HURTS US!

WE are the ones that will suffer if we hold onto grudges, resentment or anger - these negative emotions will do physiological harm to our bodies if we do it long enough.

There is no peace of mind if you hold anger, resentment, a grudge, blame.

TO HAVE ANY SORT OF MEANINGFUL LIFE WE HAVE TO LET GO OF ANGER.

THE ONLY WAY WE CAN COPE IS TO FIND SOME PEACE IN OUR LIVES DESPITE WHAT THE DRINKER IS DOING.

I have shown you one way yo find some peace in your life.

Please think about the HEALING POWER OF FORGIVENESS.....