Originally Posted by choublak

What if your A loved one likes to cook more than you do, and tries to cook during a drunk blackout?

Originally Posted by WishingWell

More of the book "No More Letting Go" -

Letting go much like detachment has been overused and analyzed. It has become an excuse to step away from problems that require our attention. We let go when we feel immobilized, or when we no longer feel like bothering with a problem that won't go away. When we hear the often repeated slogan "Let go and let God" the question rarely asked is "Let go of what?" Nowhere in the substantive meaning of letting go are we absolved of our responsibility. The essential principal of the slogan is to let go of things we are powerless over, not the things we have power to change. However, sometimes we no longer can differentiate between what we can do and cannot do.

Originally Posted by Hopeworks

If you go back a couple of years ago and search my earliest posts you will find that I many times recommended the Debra Jay books and completely agreed with her philosophies and ideas. I incorporated them into my relationship with my A along with a counselor and his up and down sporadic AA regimen.

I was a huge Debra Jay fan as it meshed nicely with my evangelical Christian belief systems that I am my brother's keeper and completely justified my staunch, almost tyrannical and actually quite insane codie gone wild craziness.

It is what I believed and my worldview was shaped by what I knew and I could not know what I did not know.

I did not know a lot. My viewpoint caused a great deal of pain and was extremely unhealthy for both myself and the A whom I rode herd on with a huge whip and my own brand of extremely effective manipulations.

Let go???? I had my meathooks stuck way deep in this man and by God he was going to get sober because that was my job, duty and manifest destiny!

To this day he marvels at how little he could get away with I was so effective at being a detective, mother, parole officer, judge, jury and even executioner when warranted. I was the proverbial jack of all trades when it comes to the alcoholic crazy train dance of insanity.

I rewarded positive behavior and went psycho when he drank. This should have worked ... but it isn't normal behavior it is distorted thinking (broke brain syndrome) and all it did was cause a huge amount of resentment on both sides of the Mexican standoff.

Now that it is four years later and I am looking back with 20/20 vision it is pretty clear that those years of hovering, helicoptering and cleaning up his messes sheltered him from the need to face his addiction and solve it on his own... why should he when he had a full time wet nurse taking care of his life and he could hunker down from the storm and problems of life?

Hi my name is Hope and I am a codependant. Codependency is a set of maladaptive, compulsive behaviors learned by family members in order to survive in a family where there is a great deal of emotional pain and stress.

Maldaptive: inability for a person to develop behaviors which get needs met.

Compulsive: psychological state where a person acts against their own will or conscious desires in which to behave.

As adults, codependant people have a greater tendency to get involved in relationships with people who are perhaps unreliable, emotionally unavailable or needy.

As an ACOA severe codependent I became strongly addicted to my now XA ... just as strongly addicted to him and the intense emotional drama and brain chemicals released as he was addicted to the alcohol.

I was as sick or sicker than he was and today he is in strong recovery ... 12 step based... and I actually called and discussed this subject with him. He NOW agrees that the philosophy I employed in our early years ala Debra Jay hampered more than helped and that my dumping him on his head and forcing him to take adult responsibility for his own recovery was the beginning of his finding his own way out of addiction.

Why should I have sacrificed my own sanity and ability to get well from my own maladaptive, compulsive illness in order to be his "lifeline"? Who would then be my lifeline?

I did sacrifice four years of my life. I gave every ounce of energy, resources, prayers, tears and time to his recovery while severely neglecting myself. And the result?

Failure. Despite the fact that I had the power to control him completely by my own strong personality and my ability to force my will upon him and get him into detox (one time I put him my police car and he was trying to kick the window out on the way but I got him to detox! Another time I was taking him to detox and he threatened to jump out at 60 mph and I told him hold on so I could speed up before he jumped!)

Another time I was going to handcuff him to the inside of my horsetrailer in the middle of my 50 acre farm so no one could hear him scream for help as I detoxed him from his "broke brain syndrome".

Another time I went and got my weapon out of my car and dared him to take another drink....

Nope. I didn't shoot him but he didn't take another drink either!

But what if he had? I was had already busted 8 beer bottles I had found in the driveway and he was pretty pissed off and detoxing into Mr. Snake. What if I had shot him?

How would that have worked out for me? I be in prison or had electricity run through my body for murdering my dear old drunk.

Why is the alcoholic the more important person in this insane sick dance of death and destruction? Just because we don't die physically as the codies? But we do die... it is just as miserable to be the codepedent... no it is WORSE... because we do it stark raving sober! Heck... he doesn't remember half of what he has done blacked out to me and everybody else.

so... here is the rest of the story. At a certain point you really start to lose it. You have so much hate and resentment building up it is like a volcano. In my case I saw he was building up to use and I warned him many, many times that if he kept choosing not to work his recovery and if he drank it was over.

Of course he thought I was bluffing... I had said this before but this time I meant it! So when he drank (it was always when not if) I chunked him out the door and went NC.

He went to quacking and flew to Vegas. Went to jail in a few states. Burned his car up in a casino parking lot. Lost every dollar and possession he owned.

I kept praying to God to do whatever it took. Of course, historically I had always believed that what it was going to take was me and only me and I had to do my heroics and martyrdom deal to keep him safe and sober.

But one day my XA was riding on a bus thousands of miles away drunk as a skunk and he saw Jesus! Yep... Jesus didn't call on the phone he took a bus to see my XA! Jesus spoke to my XA and offered to pray with him and at that point my XA told him "I know you"! Turns out this man who was wearing a white robe and was a dead ringer for the common image we think of as Jesus the Christ was a well known actor in film and at the Holy Land in Florida. We had actually met and prayed with this man here in Florida at our church when he played Jesus in the Christmas production.

"Jesus" gave my XA his number and told him to call if he ever wanted to get help and a few weeks later my XA did call him. That phone call got him on a bus and on his way to the Dream Center in Los Angeles and his start back on the road to recovery.

Now this man had never been to Vegas before in his entire life and was there preaching in a Gypsy Church of all things! What are the odds of this? Million to one? 10 million to one? Chance or miracle?

He was drunk in Vegas for 3 months. He got sober at Dream Center for 3 months and relapsed. He drank again for a month and got sober again and is sober now. He is doing at least a meeting a day and usually more, working and is doing the steps again.

Why is it that we believe in any way shape or form that our HP requires US to get and keep them sober? My HP created the stars and set them in place and knew my XA in the womb and it is preposterous that his HP NEEDS ME to help him get sober? It is laughable now but I fully believed that God did need me!

Truth is God had it and I was nothing but a hindrance and a nuisance. Fortunately it has all turned out for good in the end but clearly I trained my XA to abuse my codie self and to fully expect that I would be handling the cleanup on aisle 5 as well as run his world for him!

Now here is the best part! My XA was the love of my life and I am happy for him but both of us are 3000 miles apart working our individual programs. I have told him reconciliation is unlikely but I wouldn't even give it any consideration unless he was in active recovery and sober for at least one full year.

He understands that I need the time and space. I told him maybe we could long distance date and meet in exotic locations a few times a year if he actually gets it and keeps it!

As air travel triggers him I may need to take my gun! Just kidding of course... but obviously we are not really a healthy match in many respects although we have plenty of chemistry and truly love the person that God created.

They say in AA it takes 5 years to kick the booze, 5 years to figure out who you are supposed to be and 5 years to become that person.

Can I wait that long???? LOL... I will be really, really old and who knows... life is uncertain!

My point is after all that is their HIGHER POWER is their lifeline and their HP gives them the ability to cry out for help and if they want help he will provide it... and maybe it will be a guy who looks just like Jesus on a Greyhound bus or maybe it will be a grizzled drunk outside of an AA meeting... or maybe it will be a talking donkey or a burning bush....

but... I know this. God has this thing. The opposite of fear is faith. I don't have faith in me. I am just a human. A very broken and bruised but healing human. I have faith in God. That he loves the alcoholic and knows their heart... knows when they are ready to change. Knows when they are REALLY ready to change and to do the hard work and be honest about it.

And if they call out and have that black night of the soul, that bottom, or high bottom as Debra likes to point out can happen... then God will be there!

And he has given me a pass to be there for me because I am his child too and I count... I matter... our children matter. Especially the children matter.

And... alanon worked for me. It gave me the tools and strength to take care of me and in the end when I gave him back his freedom to choose death or life he finally...for the first time chose life. He broke up with alcohol and told the alcoholic voice to shut the h#$@ up! And he stays in meetings for right now... he is still young in his recovery but he sounds wonderful!

But... it can end in a second. One weak moment and he could die. And I am OK with that because it is his choice how he lives and how he dies. He has survived 5 times being over 50% blood alcohol and over a dozen arrests alcohol related. He has had numerous car wrecks and even drove off from gas station with the gas hose still attached to his car and gas flowing all over the gas station!

Surely God has preserved his life for a reason! I sure hope so and that more will be revealed.

We are powerless over alcohol, persons, places and things. But our HP is not and that comforts me and gives me the serenity and loving detachment I need and DESERVE!

Take what you want and leave the rest!

Originally Posted by Hopeworks

This is an interesting discussion and as it was my passion and center of my universe to unravel alcoholism and how I personally could be a force to save alcoholi!cs.

My quest started at a very young age when my father tortured us with his severe alcoholism and abuse. I have blocked many of the most traumatic memories but his shooting guns at me, hitting my car with his truck, killing my pet dog in front of me by running it over deliberately are just a few things that still trouble me deeply. I used to beg and plead with my mother to get us kids out of the house before he burned it down with us in it. Another common threat we lived with along with his pretending to commit suicide by shooting guns out the window.

But my mother was hardwired codie and terrified he would kill her and us if she left so we grew up hostage to alcoholism and in complete fear until my brain turned off fear by destroying those parts of the brain that produce the chemicals that make us fearful. I have been in a few gunfights and didn’t feel fear. My brain is broke… it no longer works like a normal brain. Instead of fear I get chemical rushes of adrenaline and fearlessness. That is just one outcome when you don’t get your kids out of an dysfunctional alcoholic home. My brother became an alcoholic and the rest of us 5 girls just married one to complete our circle of dysfunction junction.

I am addiction book junkie but my education on alcoholism came up close and personal. I lived with alcoholism every day of my childhood and then married one and I work with alkies at work as well. I actively help people with interventions through the arrest/bond process. Hundreds and hundreds of times over a 30 year timespan. I meet the families and help them sort out some solutions to what is a crisis situation with an addictive loved one in jail and facing criminal charges…sometimes very, very serious charges involving death of another person due to alcohol or drugs.

As I have pointed out before we only know what we know and we cannot know what we do not know. What we know and believe as children often changes as we experience life. We view life through the prism of our past and our culture and through our own experience.

I didn’t learn about alcoholism from Dr. Phil, Oprah, my doctor, Debra Jay or even the many detox’s and rehabs that have shared their views on alcoholism. I learned about alcoholics, thousands of them in fact by direct contact and living my entire life with it being the elephant in the room.
I was an AA critic for many years but it was all we had for free (no Betty Ford clinic for the bottom feeder jail birds I deal with every day) and thought that intervention with teeth was the answer… you relapse we put you back in jail as part of your release contract. I did that for years. We achieved abstinence while the teeth were hanging over their heads but not true recovery or relief from the disease of alcoholism.

I have been directly involved in getting hundreds of people admitted to both free Christian 12 step programs as well as for profit rehabs for decades. There have been successes… not the kind of stats you would hope for but significant because the consequences are severe and drug and alcohol testing in place during the process.

In my own personal life I lived the Debra Jay model until my XA would violate my no alcohol boundary in my home. At that point I would enforce my boundaries with a lunatic binging blackout drunk and the war was on. The benefits to abstinence were off the chain for my XA and we had a great life and would be very happy but he always, always, always picked up again. It was just a matter of time. My XA is a beautiful soul and a great guy who loves God and people but when he drinks he becomes a crazy manic and is a huge danger to himself and to others. He is a real alcoholic and not a just problem drinker and therein lies the problem of trying to pigeonhole or suggest methodologies on a message board.
Alcoholism is a very complicated disease and every affected individual is a unique personality with layers of other issues involved. Which came first the broke brain syndrome and psychological issues or did the abuse and use of alcoholism cause the issues? In all cases the booze has to go to try to unravel the rest of the junk that often includes dual diagnosis and some pretty screwed up people sans alcohol. (Wring the alcohol out of an asshat and all you have left is a sober asshat).

My experience may not be your own personal experience although I may have mirrored the same exact methodologies and did textbook Debra Jay along with unconditional love and forgiveness of my HP. Our pastor counseled us weekly for years (except when my XA was in jail or rehab after another insane episode of relapse).

it was a HUGE effort to get my XA sober and no stone was left unturned!

The loved ones that seek information on this site and other places often and get a buffet of confusing and often conflicting information. Heck… even the alcoholics with booze soaked broken brains are trying to sort out why the institutions are telling one thing and AA says another while Dr. So and So has a brand new gig that is sure to do the trick! There is a lot of disagreement on addiction and recovery among experts as well lay people.
Bottom line everybody has an opinion and many people and doctors, researchers, book authors do claim to “have the answer” or the latest and greatest are in reality selling you something. Alcohol is BIG BUSINESS. Alcoholism and addiction is a huge industry that employs a lot of people selling drugs, rehab facilities and yes even books. We have hundreds of thousands of books, research papers and “studies” that we can read. I have read most of them… love to read them and sort out the subject that fascinates me and consumes my life… or used to anyway.

And statistics or claims… I am very, very skeptical. Very vague stuff and how do you measure alcoholism as opposed to problem drinkers? How do you measure success? Temporary abstinence? So is being a dry drunk success? Alcoholism is not something people are going to be honest about anyway! Promises in Malibu says they have the cure too all you have to do is give about 40,000.00 and they will fix the alkie right up!

I am sure Debra Jay is very sincere and that for SOME people her methods work very well but in my opinion they most likely do not have much success with the REAL ALCOHOLIC. Now I don’t have a book that I authored (thinking about it though!) nor do I have a study I funded to support my theories. I am just little old me and have my own experience to share. And at one time I could tell you all about what worked and what didn’t! Now I am a little more battlescarred and know I don’t have the answers!

I used to be an AA critic. I tried every other solution out there… seriously! And in the end it was AA that was able to help my XA every time he had any true success at all. Rehab after rehab, psychiatrists, counseling, church and every single drug on the planet was tried. We were using baclofen before ANYONE knew about it in this country. I was reading about the studies on rats in Australia before his book came out. I spoke to Dr. Ameison on the phone 2 months after his book was released and was getting it from India until I found a doctor that would prescribe it! I spent weeks and weeks on that baclofen project alone.

After years of trying everything under the sun it was back to the AA he had always hated that saved his life. The free little old AA meetings that do not promote themselves or make money on the alcoholic. Just another alkie helping an alkie find the spiritual solution.

We know what we know. We only know what our experience is. We read books and watch TV shows and we form strong opinions based on our limited experience. We are willing to stand up for our beliefs because we…well we believe them!

We can be very sincere and yet lead someone astray because we may have given the impression that we have the ability to affect the outcome of the alcoholic’s recovery if they only do this or that! And the loved one is already very sick in mind and spirit believing that she or he MUST sacrifice their life, their sanity to “save” their loved one from the deadly consequences of their addiction.

I walked the walk. I did the same things you did. I had a far different outcome. Why? Did I not do it “correctly”? Did I fail my XA because I didn’t follow the book’s instructions to the letter?

And yet… after jails, rehabs, hospitals and many near death experiences even HE IS SOBER. The alcoholic… the worst alcoholic can get sober! The trick is staying sober and being a GOOD soul… a person of integrity, honor and able to love others fully and unselfishly. And that comes when there is a change of heart and direction… a decision to become a man or woman who gives themselves over to their HP and a life of purpose and meaning. That happens when they surrender and work the steps… the steps are the program of recovery.

And unless they personally make that decision internally to give every ounce of their life to NOT DRINKING and growing as a person you can put a pole in the middle of the dinner table and dance in a negligee with Filet Mignon and Lobster every night of the week and it won’t make a bit of difference in the world… if they are real alcoholic! Now a problem drinker… well they can stop anytime they want anyway.

You can put a gun to the head of a real alcoholic or lock em up in a police car and force em into rehab but that’s just geography and forced compliance. You can Baker Act them, Marchman Act them, court order them into rehab but until they decide themselves and they are WILLING do the work and make the effort it’s just pissing them off and the dance of the alcoholic/codie continues on ad nauseum.

Or you can do your own recovery and trust your HP. Wish I had done that four years ago instead of obsessing that he would die if I didn’t “save” him from himself. The outcome may have been much better. The alkie himself NOW agrees that my early attempts at managing his addiction caused more problems and failure than helped.

Hope that sheds some light on my own experience and my own experience, strength and hope. It helps me just to write it out!

Originally Posted by WishingWell

SoloMio, I would suggest reading > Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening: Robert J Meyers Ph.D., Brenda L. Wolfe Ph.D.

I'm in process of reading it - and love it.

Originally Posted by choublak

What if your A loved one likes to cook more than you do, and tries to cook during a drunk blackout?

Originally Posted by WishingWell

To be 100% truthful - mihgab - if I was suffering and in the midst of the disease of clinical depression and had just downed a bottle of sleeping pills, I hope to GOD that some saner person would call 911 and get my a$$ to the hospital. Pronto.

Originally Posted by WishingWell

I would also hope that if I was suffering from the severe depression, my brain was not functional (as the disease of addiction also causes) that those who loved me, would work to help me find professional help. Not just leave me in the dark, on my couch, alone to figure out - the impossible. Sit back and watch me kill myself from a treatable illness. Yes, at that point I WANT a saner, healthier friend to tell me what to do. Absolutely.

Originally Posted by WishingWell

I would have a "choice" (sort of, though brain disorders cause poor choices and need ongoing treatment) then, to decide my direction.

Originally Posted by WishingWell

Thank GOD, medicine has come so far with depression, I hope it can do the same with addiction one day soon.