My Al-Anon bottom was relatively high, but it takes what it takes.
My primary qualifier is my sister, who is older than me by 16 months. We had a fairly prickly relationship as children, but that changed when we started partying together at ages 15-16. I turned her on to weed (to my everlasting guilt), we stared drinking together, then trying any type of drug that came our way. At first we had a ball, it was fun and exciting and we bonded deeply over our shared adventures and black sheep status within our family.
It didn’t take long before her emotional volatility made her extremely un-fun to party with: she would throw a drink in someone’s face over a perceived slight, challenge large men to fight in scary bars, and just generally cause drama and get in trouble with increasing regularity. I started to distance myself from her.
When she started having children, she began to put together many periods of white-knuckle abstinence of varying lengths. My own drinking was getting worse, and her temperance didn’t make me want to hang out with her any more than her problem drinking did. She still seemed crazy, and her life was still full of drama. She was having trouble in her marriage and wanted a shoulder to cry on, and I did not want to talk to her, if I could avoid it.
Then I got sober in AA, and she stopped wanting to talk to me. After I was in for about a year, she joined me in AA. We started hanging out, going to meetings together, and began to get close again. She lasted just short of a year and relapsed. And that is when my “untreated Al-Anonism” (isn’t there a better term than this? I guess “insanity” would suffice) started to kick in.
I became completely obsessed with the idea that if I could just get her back into AA, everything would be fine. And, of course, I was the only one capable of that job, since I got her sober the first time (grandiosity much?). At the time, she had a huge resentment against AA (since it had “failed” her like everyone/everything else), and said unequivocally that she would never return. That did not even slow me down. I figured if I was just a patient, kind, loving, tolerant model of sobriety that she would eventually come to her senses. That did not happen. What happened was I started to get sick. I could not understand why my efforts were failing, and I became obsessed by the idea that she needed to get sober my way. After all, it worked so well for me! I spent countless hours ruminating about her situation. I gave up my boundaries about her not calling me when she was drunk, and then not calling me at work, and then not calling me at work when she was drunk. It started to create a strain on my marriage.
There finally came a day, though, just like with my drinking, that I had a moment of clarity and was done fighting. I knew enough to ask for help and where to ask. Two things really stand out in my memory from my early Al-Anon participation: 1) I was flabbergasted to discover that the 12 Steps in Al-Anon were exactly the same as the ones that were already working for me in AA, 2) ACAs who had one alcoholic parent and one untreated Al-Anon parent sharing that it was the non-drinking parent that created most of the chaos in their homes. I heard this a lot. It really brought home to me the insanity that being in a relationship with an alcoholic can cause.
I have been in Al-Anon for over ten years now, and, I am happy to say, my sister has been sober again in AA for almost two. She had to do a whole lot more damage to herself and the people in her life to get willing to try it again, but willingness is one the many excellent and admirable qualities she has in abundance these days. Nothing I could do got her to that place of willingness. She had to find her own place where the fear of stopping was finally less than the pain of keeping on.
While my sister was finding her new bottom, everyone in the family wanted me to get involved in the drama and could not fathom why I would not. I gently (and sometimes not so gently) recommended Al-Anon to my parents, to my brother, to my sister’s children and to her partner, but so far no takers. That’s OK. I hope I have planted a seed, or at the very least served as an example of loving detachment.
I am beyond grateful to both programs for getting me my life back (twice), for making it possible for me to be closer to my sister than ever before, and also for granting me the knowledge that this is just a daily reprieve for both of us, and I need to work a strong program today to ensure that I have one tomorrow.
*steps off of oversized soapbox*