Adult Children of Alcoholics - Experience ppp

[Anonymous]

AlAnon has helped me to learn boundaries for me. I like the "Courage to Change" AlAnon book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister is an alcoholic, has been for 35 years. It’s gotten so bad the last 10 years that she can’t drive anymore or go out alone due to anxiety. She has two adult children, both females. My mother was there for the children a lot. The girls witnessed their mother get arrested for public drunkenness, fall down stairs, pass out a lot. One example is when they were elementary school age they would call my mother because they couldn’t wake their mother up. That had to be tough.

Currently my mother, their grandmother, is sick and needs a lot of help. There’s three daughters and six grandchildren. The only ones not there for her are my alcoholic daughter and her two children. No cards, no calls, nothing. I can’t understand it.

For the alcoholic sister it is all about the disease and getting the next fix. It is really unrealistic to expect any caregiving from the alcoholic sister. It would not be safe for your Mom to be getting care from an alcoholic family member. In my Dad's later decades he was eating very little food and mostly drinking his calories. He started drinking around 9:45 am. You do not want an alcoholic providing care to a senior citizen.

The two daughters of the alcoholic sister would have grown up in a very messed up childhood and have their own struggles.

In AlAnon I learned that I can only control me. The others in the family are responsible for themselves.

[Anonymous]

I found that ACOA traits were accurate in my case. The biggest thing I’ve worked to improve is my need to control (my dad, the alcoholic, was unreliable). It’s still my first thought, but I usually can switch to a healthier response.

I’m lucky in that he always had a job, wasn’t physically abusive, and with all his faults (highly critical of me), I knew he loved me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister is an alcoholic, has been for 35 years. It’s gotten so bad the last 10 years that she can’t drive anymore or go out alone due to anxiety. She has two adult children, both females. My mother was there for the children a lot. The girls witnessed their mother get arrested for public drunkenness, fall down stairs, pass out a lot. One example is when they were elementary school age they would call my mother because they couldn’t wake their mother up. That had to be tough.

Currently my mother, their grandmother, is sick and needs a lot of help. There’s three daughters and six grandchildren. The only ones not there for her are my alcoholic daughter and her two children. No cards, no calls, nothing. I can’t understand it.

For the alcoholic sister it is all about the disease and getting the next fix. It is really unrealistic to expect any caregiving from the alcoholic sister. It would not be safe for your Mom to be getting care from an alcoholic family member. In my Dad's later decades he was eating very little food and mostly drinking his calories. He started drinking around 9:45 am. You do not want an alcoholic providing care to a senior citizen.

The two daughters of the alcoholic sister would have grown up in a very messed up childhood and have their own struggles.

In AlAnon I learned that I can only control me. The others in the family are responsible for themselves.

This is an insightful response.

[Anonymous]

My ex was a dry drunk. He had a severely alcoholic Mom that then became a part of the AA cult. She found and married other alcoholics 4x through that. So he was raised by alcoholics in recovery.

His worst traits: secrecy, perfectionism to the outside world, wild mood swings, disappearing for days at a time, physically/amotionally abusive, and lots of anger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was listening to a podcast and this designation came up, and my father was a semi-functional alcoholic. He couldn’t hold down a job, and slept till noon, but he cleaned the house and cooked dinner sometimes (usually I was a latchkey kid though making frozen dinners — I honestly don’t know where he was most afternoons — I doubt bars because he was very cheap but who knows), so almost like a SAHD.

He never got physically violent, but I do remember worrying about waking him, and nervous about his temper, and my mom and him fighting sometimes. We rarely had people over because of his social anxiety, and maybe my mom was self conscious? She had her own issues of bulemia and dieting obsession which she passed on to my sister, but at least had a steady job.

Life was comfortable, my grandparents had left us their house and some money and basically my parents supplemented their lifestyle as the spent down the inheritance. So we had long beach vacations every summer, nice late model cars, which was easy to do because we moved to a LCOL area where houses cost $40k as recently as 2012.

I thought my childhood was pretty typical but definitely had it own challenges, but hearing about ACOA it is striking how much of the stereotypes apply to me, like almost to the point I feel like I don’t even have any identity outside of the traits.

The ones that really hit home: hero child, caretaker, perfectionist, hyper vigilance, intellectualization, people pleaser, fearful of authority figures. For a long time in relationships I had zero opinions, I was totally absorbed in my partners happiness— it wasn’t like I was bottling it up, I was just blank. It’s chilling.

My sister is disabled from mental health, with BPD, so I actually came out way ahead.

I guess I’m wondering about other people’s experiences with dysfunctional families. Are these traits too broad and the ACOA designation kind of kooky? Or is there a real trend here, and how do I work past them and make sure I help my own kids. For the record I don’t drink or use drugs.

This does not really describe a semi functional alcoholic and that you think it does reflects a warped view of normalcy.