By Rev. Ned Wicker,

http://Drug-Addiction-Support.org 

The group session on spirituality was just wrapping up when one of the staffers opened the door and asked "Are you almost finished?" For Janice, one of four women in the group, it was time to go home. She had finished a five-day stay at the residential drug and alcohol treatment center, and this day, as she put it, was "graduation day."

It was a strange, almost surreal moment. After a stay in the hospital or treatment center, it should be good to go home and be with your. People, given they are medically stable and out of danger, heel better at home. Going home should be a good move. But was it?

Out in the lobby, her husband and pre-teen son waited. Now if my wife had been in treatment and was getting to go back home, I'd be excited. A big part of my life would have been missing, but in his case, the expression on his face told the whole story. Words can't express the look. "OK, it's time to take the addict home." The son sat in a chair, head down, and when his mother came out, he didn't seem at all enthusiastic about seeing her. In a moment, the family situation became very clear.

Drug addiction tears up families, as those watching their loved one struggle with the disease will bear the emotional scars long after the addiction is under control. What might have been concern for the addict at one point in time sadly can turn to anger and resentment. It's a kind of "Look what you've done to us" mentality and nobody has to say anything. You can read it immediately. The family goes down the addiction path too, playing their roles. Organizations like Nar-Anon and Al-Anon/Alateen are there just for families. Just as the 12-Steps were created by addicts for addicts, those principles were the basis for family groups. And just like the addict, the family member is not alone. There is help and support.

Janice gathered up her things. There was a short re-uniting in the lobby as she signed out. The moment was not joyous, no kisses, no "I love you" and it was like the husband was picking her up from work. His look told the whole story. She was leaving the structure and security of the treatment center and going back into the environment she was in while using. "Graduation Day" should be celebratory, but something was missing.

In treatment, Janice received compassion and understanding from the other patients. In group it is obvious that they all can relate to each other. There is human connection on a surprisingly deep level, even though the people in treatment may only see each other for a few days. That was going to be missing. Perhaps she had resources lined up and could call on them at a moment's notice. My sense was she did not. Graduation day didn't look so good.

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Yes, it all fits. He is spending time away from both his family and his work during evenings, and when she learns that these meetings are mostly attended by lonely women, there is this gigantic "aha."

If there are no men-only meetings in the area, then a desperate Al-Anon man is forced to attend meetings made up mostly of women.

Somewhere deep inside she knows that neither she nor her husband have been capable of providing either the emotional or physical intimacy that they had before the disease progressed. He must be getting that elsewhere.

I remember one of those early-in-my-recovery Friday night meetings that ended in one of the worst battles we ever had over "my program."

After the meeting there was a tradition that those who didn't want the meeting to end would drive across the freeway to a Denny's for coffee. I had never attended one of these social meetings, but on this particular night I was invited.

I remember standing right outside the door of the meeting room in the parking lot talking to a small group of ladies the moment I was invited to join them. I gladly accepted, much preferring to continue interacting with healthy sober people...women or not, to what I knew by 9:15 would be a wife with four or five hours of cheap wine under her belt.

Unfortunately, the ladies all piled into their cars and left me alone with this newcomer. This lady proceeded to tell me that her alcoholic husband was not only violent, but insanely jealous! I remember imagining him sitting in the darkness across the street looking through a high-powered rife scope sight at the area just between my shoulder blades.

I still had those serious doubts about my masculinity that every male Al-Anon has in the early days of recovery, and I was wondering to myself what James Bond would do in this situation?  I decided that James Bond would calmly invite the newcomer to ride with him to Denny's. So that is exactly what I did.

But the eyes that I felt between my shoulder blades were not those of a jealous husband. They were those of two women. One was my wife, the other our neighbor, Evelyn Meyer, whom Deb had asked for a ride to the hospital. She had told Evelyn the whole sad tale. She suspected that her husband was having an affair with another woman, and that they had been meeting on Friday nights at a nearby hospital.

To make matters worse, I remember the newcomer doing some crying.

When I finally came home that night I walked in the front door to the words "...I SAW YOU! I SAW YOU drive away with that woman, and Evelyn is my witness! This went on, again, deep into the night. I remember thinking myself really clever at one point when I told her "...yes, yes, I am in love with that woman. I'm in love with her and with every other woman in there!

I'm in love with Betty, and Mary, and Gladys, and Pat. I love them all!

This "affair," which almost every alcoholic wife imagines, allows her to shift the shame from her disease to her husband. Tragically, sometimes what she suspects is true, but often, as it was in this situation, her accusations are just another flavor of her bluster. The most tragic outcome happens when she manages to threaten and bully him into abandoning his recovery process. That outcome perpetuates the disease in the family and dooms them all to continue downward in their elevator.

If this sounds familiar, call to find a meeting where you can start your own recovery process. Al-Anon people will help at 1-888-4-Al-ANON or check out www.al-anon.alateen.org

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   Denial is the favorite device for self-protection for everybody in an addicted household...the addict, the codependent spouse, the sick reactive children, even the enabling figures around the family like bosses and neighbors.

This is a special form of insanity. How can there be a problem, if we simply refuse to admit it? We enablers of addicts are just as self-deluding as our counterparts in the addiction dance. We know that "we are special", and that the laws of physics somehow do not apply to us.

   But here is the rub. Reality keeps intruding into our delusion. The cops show up. There are DUI's. We end up in the ER bleeding through our guts from perforated ulcers just like the addict. It isn't always as dramatic as this. More commonly there are many days of work lost. How many cases of "liquid flu" have been reported by anxious spouses to bosses who want to believe them when everybody knows somewhere deep inside that somebody who is not in this conversation got loaded last night!

As the enabler, on the surface you feel confused. "So what's the deal? I always tried to do my best, I was always the good kid, I kept my nose clean, I always kept a job and payed my taxes. Why is my life such a mess?"

 The second step used by the millions living by the 12-step programs so popular throughout the world today says;

"We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

   Until insanity is acknowledged, recovery is impossible. At meetings we admit our insane behavior and thinking out loud in a safe place. Other recovering people nod their heads as we describe raging at a person who isn't even mentally present. Other Al-Anons smile as we tell of sleeping fully clothed so that we can be ready to bound out of bed and head for the emergency that we just know is going to happen tonight while our addicted son is "out there" in harm's way.  

   Until you "suit up and show up" at a meeting, you will be doomed to living in your own head. That marble keeps rolling anround and around through the same insane groove until you ask for help. You may someday accept the fact that the only sane approach to living with an addict is to admit that you cannot handle it alone, then go out and ask for help from people who have been there.

 Anything else...anything after "yes but," is insanity!

If you are honestly searching for a better life in the face of these realities, PLEASE...contact Al-Anon and find a meeting. There is probably one within walking distance of your house as you read this that meets every week! 

Al-Anon QWorld Service Office, 1-888-4-AL-ANON, or see their web site at www.al-anon.alateen.org.

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But still, there has to be another, successful way to be in recovery without the religion or the 12-step.  There are addiction treatment centers that offer treatment methods as an alternative to the 12-step, so there's got to be aftercare adopting a similar philosophy.  I think any way that paves the path to recovery is awsome and should be embraced, but it's curious to me why I never hear about any alternative measures to recovery.

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   Scott Peck's first sentence in his seminal work , The Road Less Traveled was "Life is difficult." Program people understand this. Only those of us who have finally been reduced to desperation understand the internal forces that have to work  against a codependent man that finally drive him to surrender and seek help.

   I  must have really looked like the "deer in the headlights" as I sneaked into my first Al-Anon meeting in the little upstairs room at an AA club one night in Dallas, 300 miles from my home. I was there, not so much because I was seeking growth or recovery...I didn't even have those notions available at that point in my mind. I was there because, after one horrible night in my livingroom I had surrendered and found the Al-Anon office in Houston. There God arranged for my first sponsor, Scotty L., to walk into the room. It was Scotty who just stayed after me to attend a meeting. I owe him so much today.

   It was upstairs. It seems like it  always is the first time. Looking back I see the symmetrical juxtaposition of God's universal plan. I had to take those old rickety wooden steps one at a time just like I had to take the 12-steps  over the next two years.

   The upper floor was poorly lit. The room was overcrowded and too loud with what I thought as pure banter. They were all women, they were all older than I, and I knew none of them. All of these cheesy posters were stuck with thumbtacks high on the walls around the room. When they read the 12-steps I realized someplace inside that this was a terribly serious undertaking, this taking of these steps. In fact, I remember thinking to myself something like "...how could I possibly really do all of that...how could I admit even a fraction of my own faults to somebody else?"

   About this moment there was a burst of laughter from across the hall. This was where the real action was happening. The big room across the hall was where the AA's met, and they sounded like they were having a great time over there. As I sat there in this little room that felt oppressively serious I was thinking something like this; what the Hell am I doing here? I've done all of the right stuff to prove my manhood. I've worked myself through college, sired three sons, and coached, managed and umped Little League games. I have carved out a career in a gut-wrenchingly competetive profession. I once carried a drunk engineer up some rickety wooden stairs out of a dark underground bar on K street in Sacramento while drunk myself. More steps. What am I doing here?

   When it was finally over I was out the back door without a word to anybody that night. I remember nothing eccept the feeling of being overwhelmed and guilty at furtively going to this meeting while away from home. I worried about betraying my wife, and, most of all, I feared the emotional pain I knew that she would cause me if she ever found out that I had told myself  about her drinking, and then those ladies at the Al-anon office, and even Scotty!

   Thank God, the years and the program have been kind. I no longer have to live with active alcohol consumption in my home, and, because of the Al-Anon program, I am surrounded by love every day! I will never know all of the miracles that led me here, but I do know that there are other men right this moment  who are where I was then.

    If you have not yet climbed those rickity dark steps, please seriously consider doing so. You have nothing to lose but your agony. 

   Call Al-Anon World Service office at 1-888-4AL-ANON, or access their excellent web site at www.al-anonalateen.org to learn where there is a weekly meeting near you.

Ken P.

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