katie6

I have some questions, as I am contemplating going to my first meeting soon.

My parents are addicts. I have a very good friend whose father is an alcoholic. We have a LOT in common in terms of growing up and the way we see things. Neither one of us want to go to a meeting alone so we were thinking of going to one together. I found an Adult Children Al-Anon meeting. I see nothing on the website about addiction, but I think that addiction is addiction, so we should both be able to benefit from this, right?

ANother beef I have with Al-Anon is something I have read about the 12 steps. The 12 steps for AA are the same 12 steps I see in Al-Anon, and this may make some people in here mad, but why do I have to make amends and apologize to the people I have wronged? I have some other issues with the 12 steps, but I am not going to go into them right now.

I want to do this, I really do, but some of this stuff just doesn't seem like it would fit me. Can anyone reassure me about this before I take the plunge?

Astro

Hi Katie,

I'm in AA so this is the opinion of an alcoholic. Yes, you could both benefit from the meetings. I attend Al-Anon meetings, the way I see it the more informed I am the better, it gives me so much peace and serenity to listen to and be with people that I have something in common with, even if it's a disease.

In practicing the 12 Steps and making amends we are freed from the wreckage of our past. For me it's a lifetime of work, but without it I'm a prisoner of mental bondage, my life isn't calm without the principles that the program teaches me. Try to keep in mind too that the 12 Steps are a suggested program of recovery. We strive for progress, not perfection.

You don't need to take the plunge, just stick your toes in and test the waters. When I opened my mind to recovery, I dove right in and I'm still enjoying a good swim;-)

katie6

I wanted to add that in the whole step about apologizing for my wrongs, I just don't understand what it is that I need to apologize for.

Thanks for the insight. I appreciate knowing that the 12 steps are suggestions and not rules.

Peter

I too felt the same way.I felt that more harm had been done to me than what had been done to others but after putting pen to paper and talking with my sponsor I began to realize that harm can desquise itself in very subtle forms.

The coldness and indifference which I showed to my siblings was a form of harm which I needed to make amends for.

Astro

Perfectly stated. I wasn't sure how to answer that question except with regards to myself. It was in doing my 4th Step that I realized how extensive my character defects were, and how many people I had harmed in my lifetime.

Taking5

Why not? Are you exempt from atoning for your wrongs simply because you are not the alcoholic/addict?

katie6

Goodness no! I apologize when I do things wrong and I know I am not above doing or saying things wrong to begin with. Just this morning my husband and I got into a stupid fight about nothing becuase I said something totally wrong. When I forgot to get something in the mail in time that I promised a friend I would I apologized to her becuase it was my mistake.

What I am saying is that I guess that I don't know what it is about my parents addiction that I need to apologize for. I have been trying for a very long time to conquer the idea that it is my fault that they are addicts and that I drive them to the behavior. So by me apologizing for my behavior (and I know, it is not just apologizing to them) that means that I was right all along. It's just another thing I have to apologize for. I apologize enough...too often I am told. I am just not comfortable going to a place where I am going to be told to look at myself and figure out what else I can add to the list of things I have done wrong in my life, when I am really trying to go somewhere to figure out how to stop being angry at them and to forgive them.

Does that make more sense?

lanie67

From the perspective of an alcoholic, the way I understand it is that we have a mental obsession with alcohol. What the AA Big Book teaches is that we have a 'spiritual malady', meaning a lack of connection with God, a higher power, the universe, Buddha, whatever, that allows us to act as if we don't have a conscience, maybe we are just using alcohol to numb our conscience. But inside, somewhere, we still feel guilt about what we do. We develop the mental obsession with alcohol/drugs as a way of coping with the underlying guilt, and as you know, alcoholics harm others because we allow a chemical to control us rather than being in control of our faculties. The mental obsession with alcohol leads to the craving and the compulsion to drink, we start drinking and then we can't stop. So what the 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th steps do is give the alcoholic freedom, indirectly, from the mental obsession that covers up our guilt feelings by relieving the guilt, so that we can live free of a desire to drink.

The reason that al-alon uses those steps too is that people who grow up in homes where there is addiction get a warped sense of their responsibility for the behavior and problems of other people. And it becomes a pattern of behavior that one can gain comfort or feelings of familiarity from. For people like me, it becomes an addiction in itself wherein I am attracted to addicted people. I use the chaos that they bring into my life, plus the sick gratification I get out of being needed and 'helping' a troubled person (addicted persons must be willing to take the steps they need to help *themselves*, or they won't get better) as a drug, and a 4th and 5th step in Coda or Al-anon or ACOA can free me from some of what it is in my conscience that keeps me propelling myself into these sick interactions with addicts. Please don't take the discipline of the steps personally. You can look at it like algebra, something that is part of the process before you move on to geometry or trigonometry. It doesn't mean you are a bad person, it's just something people in 12 step programs do as a gift to themselves, really. It does not at all negate any of the pain that your parents alcoholism may have caused you, or the things that they may have done while drinking that may have hurt you. But being that you have grown up in an alcoholic home you are predisposed to draw addicts into your life, and the steps are one way of gaining self-awareness so that you may break the cycle of co-dependency, or nip it in the bud before it even starts.

SaTiT

Even after I got sober. My thinking got clearer from the actual alcohol abused.
While I improved in many ways, however I was still in a presuit of what
normal ment to my my father. Not so much in the things he was teaching me.
But in seeking of aproval form me my alcoholic father.

For many years, I thought my fahter's drinking wasn't any of my bussiness.
He drank gallons of the stuff every night and went to work. But our home
life was nothing of normal or heathy. A lot of bad habits ot traits.
All the triats listed on the ACOA sticky...that pretty much explains me
and the codi triats, I get 9 out of 10..

Alcoholism kicked my butt from day one.
The 12 steps help me peel the layers of it away.
I apply the principles of the 12 steps.

Craming myself with possitive thoughts and attitude works for me ...only so far.
I needed to get to the bottom and rid myself of my fractured perception of life.

I also needed to heal and be stronge enough to face a lot of my childhood
memories...some of which i denial ,blanked, or numb out.
A lot of abused pyhsically, mentally, emotionally, spiritaully.

For me...it took over a decade of being clean and sober. I thought
I was doing good and life was better than I've known. But my past
came up and bit me in the arss. I bascially started having break downs.
Mostly it was after an encounter with my father...hind sight is 20/20.

An analogy is...there was a splinter in my mind and emotion...My wounds
healed over it...I basically had to go dig out that splinter. It was painful,
however the recent pain I was living in became just as bad.

I feel much better now, see much clearer since the splinter been removed.
I apply the 12 steps with my alki father in mind. Another psychic shift or
piont of clearity.