Adult Children of Alcoholic Syndrome

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Read Suzanne Somers book "Keeping Secrets"

R2 Thanks for the rec

Put it behind me. Grew to understand the issues and put them in perspective.

R4 How did you learn to forgive?

I know it’s a disease, but I still can’t help but have feelings of resentment and hatred for my father.

This group has a lot of resources, the Daily Meditation book is helpful.

Does Al-anon help with this?

I like blue.

I have a friend who fits this description perfectly. I've known her for years, but it was only recently I learned her father is an alcoholic. Looking back, it all makes sense. Unfortunately.

R5 - I didn't deal with this stuff until I was well into adulthood. For a number of reasons, I had learned to understand that my parents were flawed people with their own weaknesses. Also, got to see how this was a generational issue, and that my parents' issues came from their parents. So I never felt a need or inclination to forgive (though I may have done so, inadvertently.). There's nothing I can do to change the past (my parents are dead). So I can just do the best to deal with the present in the best way I can.

I have this and my therapist wants to treat me with psychedelics (it is legal in TX for veterans). rOP, look up any of the threads on this site on using myshrooms therapeutically.

Drink heavily.

Not as much, R8.

R2, I agree. Suzanne Somers book Really helped me. Paraphrasing I’m sure but the gist of a passage that changed my life said you will keep creating the chaos you grew up in until you make the choice to stop living chaotically. Only then can you bring order and vision to your life. So true. So unexpected from Suzanne Somers. Gotta give her credit tho. Joyce DeWitt never helped me.

R8, Al-Anon officially represents itself as for "families and friends of." But their sympathy for children of alcoholics is strongly weighted to teens. Some areas do have Al-Anon meetings specifically aimed at adult children of alcoholics, R8. But generally as a whole, Al-Anon has a strong slant toward significant others of alcoholics, and some of the more hard-liner "spouses of" types, can be intolerant of issues faced by "adult children of."

Well said, R16.

Here's a support group for adult children of alcoholics.

R8 yes, at least in my experience

R16 " some of the more hard-liner "spouses of" types, can be intolerant of issues faced by "adult children of." Well they bloody shouldnt be, thats shitty behaviour if so. I dont see that in Al Anon groups I go to, and if I did I'd call it out, and I'm sure others would too

My parents aren't alcoholics but my in-laws are. It wasn't until I met my wife and got a front-row seat to her family's dysfunction that I began to really understand my own father's fear of abandonment and disapproval. He has not sought help, though he began opening up to his wife and kids about his traumatic childhood once he had passed the age at which his dad (drunkenly) died.

I can see how his fear of confrontation still holds him back in many areas of his life decades later and it's quite sad. My wife opted for extensive therapy and some visits to Al-Anon meetings. Moving past the toxic parts of her upbringing has cost her a great deal of time and money but she doesn't think she would be as functional without it.

I have every side-effect that is listed and am familiar with ACoA. I have the book and started reading it during lock-down. It's pretty intense to read about yourself so succinctly.

It's really for anyone who grew up in a chaotic household, not just an alcoholic one. If you father was BiPolar, but not an alcoholic, it will apply.

R21, I have a lot of those side effects (ACOA) and my parents were not alcoholic. They were more authoritarian (not religious, though, thank God).

It would help you, too, r21.

There are group meetings too, which you can find through their website.

^ I mean r22.

AL-ANON. It's a 12 step program for family members of alcoholics/drug addicts. Like many 12 step programs, it is a life building exercise that provides you with a community of people who experienced the same thing you did. It teaches about boundaries and how to implement them if the addict is still in your life. There's a lot to gain even if they are not still in your life.

I did not go through the 12 steps. I went to 5 meetings, learned a TON and decided I wanted to put my energy into other things. For people still in it (married/dating an addict, parent who is an addict, or child who is an addict) its amazing.

R20 I didn’t know straight men also posted on here!

I've been lezzing it up here since I was a teenager in the early aughts, R26. (Though, if any of you remember Shobe, she made me slightly afraid of other women.)

R27 Oh my bad, it makes more sense for you to be a lesbian. I can’t imagine a straight man posting on here.

Another one with all these symptoms -yet my parents were teetotalers. But Dad was depressive extremely religious son of an alcoholic. The behavior was as out of control - but it couldn’t be simply blamed on alcohol or the “disease” of alcoholism. The older I get, the more I understand generational trauma.

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Read Keeping Secrets by Suzanne Somers

Yes. It's dark, and very real. And few guys out there understand it, especially in the days of constant cocktail hours and "wine o'clock!"

Some Al-Anon meetings are specifically aimed at Adult Children of Alcoholics. Check the meeting directory for meetings in your area, they should have an ACOA notation beside such meetings.

Al-Anon World Service group has also got a book aimed at adult child issues.It's called From Survival to Recovery.

Compulsive juggling is the symptom I most struggle with, as illustrated in OP’s heartbreaking photo.

I had a childhood schoolmate in the ‘70s who often talked about wishing his mother would die. I was taken aback by his comments as his mother seemed nice the few times I met her. Turns out she got drunk every night . In retrospect, I wish I had been a better friend to him.

I used to attend ACOA meetings as a young man. After hearing story after story of horrific upbringings by some of the attendees, I stopped going. My past life had been a garden party compared with some of the stories I heard.

R36 Don't fall into that trap. Pain is pain, even when it seems small compared to others. Don't ignore or invalidate your own experiences because other people seem to have a worse life than you do. You are entitled to your feelings and the expression of them.

Stuffer? I hardly know her.

I became an alcoholic adult child of an alcoholic. After a certain point what else can you do?

My father was an abusive alcoholic and I have all of those characteristics. As a 50-year-old, I can “tame” all except the Fear of Authority— that one lives deep, deep in my brain and will just not be tamed. Fortunately I don’t have less-than-friendly interactions with “authority” on a normal basis but when I do, I mentally fall to pieces. I mean, I start shaking over the mildest things. Cops? My boss? My landlord? Forget it, I’m a basket case.

Sucks. Thanks, Dad.

Can you expand on the authority figure issue? This is very apropos for me at the moment.

The two most prominent examples-- for Americans, at least-- are Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It's kind of fascinating to compare them: the sunny, optimistic personalities; the almost desperate need to be liked; the casual attachments to many but great difficulty with true intimacy; the clinging to one strong woman who constantly alternates between soothing and reprimanding.

Hmmm. Interestingly, I have these traits in spades, but my parents are the ones who are children of alcoholics, not I.

Both my parents also exhibit the traits in the OP, albeit in different combinations and ways, and rarely drink alcohol at all, though my Dad smokes a few a day and is kind of a sober asshole. Their relationship/marriage in itself seems like a refuge--neither socialise much outside of each other, both are passive-aggressive and accept shitty treatment from each other, both seek approval instead of having healthy communication and drawing boundaries. They're also highly-oriented around security, comfort, and keeping an even keel in every way.

As for me, I am cripplingly risk-averse, avoidant, shy, people-pleasing, and self-conscious, plus I eschew both alcohol and relationships almost altogether. Sure, it's a quiet and seemingly-boring life, but there's few horrific scenes of bleak kitchen-sink drama, so there's that.

poor children

Child and grandchild of this.

My solution--not to have kids to pass this shit to.