My first time here
This will be my first experience with something like al-anon. I have been involved with 12 step programs for 7 years now learning how to live and recover from my own addictions. With 7 years of sober living I feel its time I find support somewhere else...the past few years have been pretty rough and have gotten to a pretty hopeless point now. Though I have sought help for my addictions and have been living sober. I am a child of an alcoholic parent with whom I cannot deal with anymore without jeopardizing my own sanity. His continued alcoholism affected my life negatively throughout my entire life. I don't really know how to explain it but the position I'm in now keeps me conflicted all of the time. I have been on the side where he's at, I have lived and suffered through addiction, I honestly do know and understand what it's like for him. But as a person who has lived sober now for 7 years (7 years this month actually) I see the other side of things...I have probably enabled him...I know there is nothing I can do to make him change. He has become a complete stranger in this past year, a stranger who has my father's face is all he is anymore. The pain he has brought me has become so intense and mixed with so many other emotions that I don't know where else to turn or where to seek support.