SPOTLIGHT ON
ACOA helps children deal with alcoholic parents
By Tryshah Taylor
For Pacific Sunday News
I have been a child of an alcoholic all my life and that life is all I know.
My father is sober now, but as any recovering alcoholic will tell you: "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, just no longer drinking." This pertains to the children of alcoholics as well: "Once the child of an alcoholic, always the child of an alcoholic."
Growing up in an alcoholic home was tough. It was frightening, embarrassing and terribly sad. Unfortunately, my dad was not one of those happy, love-everyone drunks you see on TV. He was a blend of the functional, still-go-to-work drunk and the mean, unpredictable drunk.
From my earliest memories, I remember lots of shouting and cursing, and both physical and emotional abuse. When Dad was drunk, we never knew what would set him off into a fit of rage. Most of it was directed at my mother, but sometimes the abuse was focused on my sisters and me.
These memories are my deepest and darkest moments of growing up the child of an alcoholic.
One particular night I remember most often was a night of intense blackness, of terrifying silence contrasted with a rage that seemed to come from the depths of hell. My father had come home from the bar, drunk and angry for reasons I've never known. I was 7 at the time, and my big sister had let me sleep with her in her room, calling it a slumber party. When the shouting started, we just laid there, forced to listen. I don't know how we ended up in the closet, but I remember hiding there, listening through the walls to my mother being beaten.
When it was obvious how violent my father had become, my sister, who was 16 at the time, left me in her closet, telling me to stay there and hide, so she could go help my mother. I can only imagine the courage it took for her to go out there. I stayed there, in her dark closet, curled up in a tight ball amongst her shoes, hidden by the hems of her clothes, and cried. The rest of the night is a blur, with the police being called, and the police officer was the husband of my mother's best friend.
It wasn't until I was 15 that my father finally sought help to stop drinking. At this point, the alcohol had cost him a business and his family. Though we were still together in the sense of the word "family," my sisters, who were now addicts of their own kind, were frequently estranged from my father.
My relationship with him was one of hostility and disdain. My mother continued to live in constant fear and, perhaps, the helplessness that seems to be a commonality among battered women.
My father has been sober now for 19 years, and it took him a long time to find himself -- the man he was without the alcohol. It took him an even longer time to discover the husband and the father he could have been without the drinking.
Almost 10 years after his sobriety, my father and I finally began to establish a meaningful relationship. Most people think once someone goes through recovery, life will be happy and simple. However, sadly, it's just not that easy.
Though addicts change their focus from alcohol to sobriety, their behavior may stay the same, only compounded by the frustration of wanting to drink. Families seem to get lost here, caught up in the disillusionment of recovery.
This is where my family and I seemed to be stuck for so long. Enter the support group ACOA, or Adult Children of Alcoholics.
As children of alcoholics, though we aren't addicted to the alcohol, we are in a way addicted to living a way of life that will keep the alcoholic happy. We have no idea how to be functional as a family unit because all we've known is dysfunction.
Being a functional ACOA takes work. However, it can be made a bit easier with the help of others, others who are like you, others who have been where you've been and have felt your pain and shame. These "others" can be found at ACOA meetings.
Leaving the past behind is hard and painful, but it is nowhere near as hard or painful as living in the past for the rest of your life. It took me a long time to realize that.
I am happy now. I have a wonderful life free of addiction and pain, and I have a great relationship with my father, a man I admire and love.
This does not mean the ghosts of my past don't haunt me from time to time. What it means is that, as an ACOA, I can see them for what they are, simply ghosts of my past.