happybeingme

There are a few other things as well. I am both an adult child and a recovering alcoholic. This is extremely common. Many adult children become addicts themselves or marry them.

Quitting drinking is also the very tip of the iceberg. I hit bottom and surrendered. At that moment all desire to ever drink again left me. But, I was left with one thing. The prospect of continuing my life exactly as it was. This scared me more than anything. I couldn't live that life ever again and I knew it was up to me to fix. I had to confront my demons and treat my depression. Had I not I wouldn't be here today. This is something that many don't realize even the addict. In order to stay sober we have to be willing to work on everything. A lot can't. They either drink themselves to death or they become dry but are the most miserable people.

Many though certainly not all addicts have underlying problems that led them down the road to addiction. Common problems are depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, and PTSD. If these issues are not addressed along with alcohol abstinence the long term prognosis for the addict is poor.

Drinking is but a symptom.

FireSprite

Welcome! My father was what might be referred to as a HFA, but in recovery I've really come to dislike that term. I feel like it is an attempt to try to minimize the reality of alcoholism & imply that some addicts are "better" than others. "He's not your typical drunk, he's high functioning." Guess what? High functioning IS typical.

Holding down a well paying job doesn't erase emotional abuse. Dressing well & taking care of personal hygiene doesn't rationalize manipulation & gas lighting. Looking good on the outside doesn't show the reality of what's happening behind closed doors or inside a closed mind.

I definitely had equal resentments with my mom for a LONG time over her decision to stay & enable my HFA father. I could understand him being lost to addiction but I couldn't understand her sober decision to stay. Every time I heard them argue or heard her cry I would pray that she would just divorce him. She was alone so much of the time anyway, I could not understand how much difference it would really make. Those memories were great motivators years later when the same dynamic presented itself in my own marriage.


My RAH & I were separated during some of his worst drinking & DD definitely exhibited behaviors that proved to me that she was better off with our situation than she had been when we were living together in dysfunction 24/7. She even verbalized it a few times, as well as a small child could. At least that gave her a space for longer stretches of peace along with some good old fashioned predictability. She said it showed her that I would ALWAYS be there for her, that she could trust me. She said that even though she loved her daddy, she didn't trust him to always make decisions in her best interests (like letting her eat candy whenever she wanted to or driving too fast). She was about 5 at the time.

isitme

This is an excellent question and one I think a lot about.

My mother was a HFA and I knew it from a very young age. However, I never really registered the dysfunction and even as a young adult I felt I had a happy, normal childhood. There was nothing I could really look back on and say I was scared of or that I ever felt unloved or neglected in any way. In fact I still feel that way today.

Sounds fine right?! Moving forward into life and becoming a partner and mother had shown me that although I didn’t relate to any dysfunction at the time, the surrounding circumstances of my upbringing certainly shaped my personality and my behavior patterns as an adult.

I entered into a relationship with a functioning alcoholic and slowly all the patterns emerged and as I started to recognized them I could already see them being mimicked by my own daughter.

I couldn’t put my finger on it initially.. but stumbled on this list a few months ago. I identify with at least 11 of these, sometimes more.

Adult Children of Alcholoics (Melody Beattie)

1. Do I often feel isolated and afraid of people, especially authority figures?
2. Have I observed myself to be an approval seeker, losing my own identity in the process?
3. Do I feel overly frightened of angry people and personal criticism?
4. Do I often feel I’m a victim in personal and career relationships?
5. Do I sometimes feel I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, which makes it easier to be concerned with others rather than myself?
6. Do I find it hard to look at my own faults and my own responsibility to myself?
7. Do I get guilt feeling when I stand up for myself instead of giving in to others?
8. Do I feel addicted to excitement?
9. Do I confuse love with pity and tend to love people I can pity and rescue?
10. Do I find it hard to feel or express feeling, including feelings such as joy or happiness?
11. Do I find I judge myself harshly?
12. Do I have low sense of self-esteem?
13. Do I often feel abandoned in the course of my relationships?
14. Do I tend to be a reactor, instead of an actor?


I’m completely co-dependent and much like Double Dragons was talking about, I thought daily drinking was normal. I started to indulge daily with my partner and as I started to see what we were doing to our children and how it was making me feel that I may have developed my own problem, things got worse and worse.

We are currently separated and the kids are handling it alright. However we’re doing a lot of back and forth still trying to make it work with their father. I’m not sure if that’s doing good or damage. But what I can say for sure is that even though I thought there was no big deal about my mother’s drinking, it’s probably shaped me more ways that I can fathom.