Dear Primafacie,
Welcome to SoberRecovery and thank you for sharing your story.
My father was an alcoholic for his entire life and my family of origin is pretty dysfunctional. After struggling in a number of aspects in my life, I started going to therapy when I was in my mid-thirties. I too felt that my childhood "wasn't that bad".
However, so many things in my family were messed up. There were things that my father couldn't do because he was so consumed by alcohol. There were things that my mother couldn't do because she was so consumed by my father's drinking. When parents are not emotionally available to their children, for whatever reason, it creates a huge loss in a child's life.
I am truly sorry for the loss you have experienced.
When I started my own recovery, I found a great deal of comfort in the 3 C's:
- You didn't cause it.
- You can't control it.
- You can't cure it.
I needed to let the members of my family of origin figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and I turned the focus on me. You'll find tons of resources here and other places on the Internet for how Adult Children of Alcoholics can learn to detach from their family's craziness.
With my own father, I did confront him many times about his drinking. I was never able to get him to stop drinking, but I set the boundary that I didn't want to be around him or interact with him when he was drinking. It helped me.
Another recovery phrase that I find useful is "Take What You Like and Leave the Rest". People on this site come from a variety of backgrounds - there are addicts, recovering addicts, people who live with addicts, sons/daughters affected by their parent's addiction, etc and many people fit in more than one of these categories. I find this useful because it has helped me see both sides of the equation (I really do feel like I understand both my father and mother better) However, I try not to get discouraged by negative remarks of others.
Wishing you well on your own recovery journey.
Keep reading and posting!
Warm Regards,
db