The same pattern holds true when the alcoholics in our lives make promises they can’t keep. For example, they promise not to miss another little league game, business meeting or dinner date. They swear that next time they won’t drink, or stay out all night, or get violent. Or they promise to exercise will power. They switch to beer, thinking that beer will have less power over them than hard liquor. Or they throw out all the liquor in the house, only to be so driven by the disease that they are compelled to find some form of alcohol and settle for mouthwash or cough syrup. And again, we react. Forgetting about hundreds of broken promises in the past, we believe that the alcoholics can indeed control their drinking. We decide that everything is going to be different now – better! Denying what our past experience has taught us, we count on these promises with all our hearts. We set ourselves up for almost inevitable disappointment. And then, when the alcoholics fail to control alcoholism a disease which is quite beyond their control, we are devastated, resentful and enraged. We see ourselves as helpless victims and fail to recognize that we have volunteered for that role by choosing to believe wholeheartedly in what we knew from experience would probably not happen.
Those of us who haven’t been associated with an alcoholic in many years can continue to react to alcoholic patterns of behavior as well. The low self-esteem that evolved as a result of past failures and episodes of abuse or neglect persists. For the love and attention we never received in the past, we look to people who are unavailable to us. We avoid conflict, but now we do so with employers, other relatives, or authority figures rather than with the alcoholic. Or we seek out conflict, believing that the best defense is a good offense. If we sense that a confrontation is coming, we create a diversion and pick a fight over some other issue. Many of us become so accustomed to living in chaos and crisis that we feel completely lost in its absence. Consequently, when everything is going well, we sabotage ourselves, creating a crisis. This may make us miserable, but at least we know how to function in such a situation. We may also perpetuate a variety of compulsive behaviors without having any idea what prompts us to do so. The survival techniques we developed while living with the active disease have become a way of life. It may never have occurred to us that there is another way to live.
This pattern also persists in sobriety. Many of us have seen our sober loved ones go through “dry drunks”, periods during which the alcoholic’s behavior in sobriety seems identical to the active drinking days. Naturally, most of us fall right back into our old behavior as well. Even if our loved one is a model of sobriety, fear that the alcoholic might drink, the desire to manage his or her sobriety, unresolved resentments from the drinking days, and personality or lifestyle changes that take place during recovery can also trigger unhealthy reactions from those of us who care about a recovering alcoholic. The disease and its effects persist into sobriety.
Unless we friends and relatives choose recovery for ourselves, the dynamics of the disease will continue to dominate our relationships.