FlippedRHalo

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I was raised by two alcoholics, was surrounded by a family FULL of addicts and alcoholics, was physically and mentally abused, abandoned by my alcoholic mother as a child, abandoned by my biological father, beat and abused by my step father and continued that path into adulthood by having relationships with alcoholics.

I hate alcohol. If I have one drink a year at Christmas, that's a lot. I don't do drugs. I hate drugs. It's like pulling teeth to get me to take prescribed medicine or a Tylenol.

It can go either way - I've literally had counselors ask me how I didn't end up addicted to drugs or an alcoholic. I still wonder that myself, however, I'm very grateful that I didn't. Have plenty of scars to go around though and have a raging case of trying to "save" screwed up people. :/

Florence

I had no control over my XAH.

I could be 100% supportive, provide a home that was clean and dry of any alcohol, I could quit right alongside him, I could give him the money and space to do what he needed to do, I could plead and nag and beg and pray, I could hope and worry and wish, I could manipulate, coerce, and yell. I could blame his parents, I could require him to go to therapy, I could pick apart his life story and find reasons he was an alcoholic, I could find ways to be more empathetic and understanding about his alcoholism.

He drank anyway.

I wasted my twenties chasing after him. Literally nothing I did helped. I had no control over his commitment to alcohol, I only had control over whether I wanted it, him, and this situation in my life. Ultimately, I did not.

But to make the decision at all, I had to give up the illusion that anything I did or didn't do was a catalyst for his alcoholism.

LifeRecovery

I agree with what you wrote above.

You are powerless over alcohol in AA step one.

I had to modify my step 1 to read "I am powerless over people, places and things," or "I am powerless over another choices around alcohol."

I often look at the three Cs (with an addition) to help me with some of the definitions

I did not cause the drinking, I cannot control the drinking, and I cannot cure the drinking, but my actions can contribute to the chaos of the environment(and vice versa on the last part). Unless I was pouring alcohol down his throat at gunpoint I was not controling his adult decisions.

You may influence your loved one but ultimately for him to stop and stay stopped his is going to have to make a decision like you did. His reasons might be different and the right to that decision is the same.

Do I think that you being sober and getting help can impact his decision to find recovery, ABSOLUTELY. One of the pieces for me was that influence and control are different words and mean different things, especially in recovery.

I found the best influence I could be was to be healthy myself.....because if not we were both going to circle the drain.

hopeful4

The big difference is encouragement or enabling. You can encourage sobriety. However, when it strays over to control, and it almost always does, it turns into enabling.

Alanon, Celebrate Recovery, whatever your source of recovery is, you do have to realize you cannot control another human being.