Keep Coming Back, It Works if you Work it!
I had the pleasure of visiting one of our Alcoholics Anonymous groups last evening. It was their meet and eat meeting, so I enjoyed the fellowship of a meal and was blessed with meeting many wonderful individuals doing the excessively hard work of battling a substance that consumes a person to the point of destruction.
Unfortunately, alcoholism and addiction is a disease too many of us are unfortunate enough to be affected by. It is as rampant, perhaps more so, than cancer and like the dreaded C-disease, it has no respect for an individuals’ age, gender, socio-economic status, education level, etc. It will strike at will, any who allow the drug to sooth the pains of life. I am an adult child of an alcoholic and a three year member of an Al-Anon group in Georgetown. I write this newsletter article as an attempt to make known the disease of alcoholism and the help that is available to those struggling with the disease and the friends and family members affected by it.
Fortunately, there is help for those suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction in the form of these 12 Step groups that meet every day of the week at all hours of the day and for their friends and families. For the alcoholic or drug addict, you trade your life for the addiction. It consumes you and you give everything to feed that need. For those related to them, we stand by and watch our loved ones completely destroy their lives and many times our own lives and wonder why anyone would ever do these things to themselves and the people they love.
As an adult child of an alcoholic I’ve spent a great deal of time in these rooms working through the damage this disease had done in my life and working through my own issues of co-dependency and my need for control and how these things are learned behaviors that come as a result of growing up with an active alcoholic. Until last night, I had never attended an open AA meeting. I’m so glad I did.
I could never understand why my father drank, why he drank to the extreme he did and why this substance was always more important than my mother, his job, my siblings or myself. I’ve spent decades living with these questions and having no answers. Last night I was where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. It is yet another example of the tremendous power of God to work actively in our lives. God knew of my struggles and thankfully there were those wonderful people in that room last night who were willing to allow God to work through them for my benefit (as well as for the benefit of others). For the first time in forty-one years I gained a bit of insight into what this disease does to an individual and that it is, indeed, a disease. It is hard to imagine, but the alcoholic or addict really has no control over the substance. I’ve always known that I am powerless over alcohol, but could never truly understand that my father was powerless as well.
If you or a loved one suffers from the disease of alcoholism or addiction I strongly urge you to make your way into these rooms. If you or someone you know lives with the struggle of loving someone who is an alcoholic or addict, I urge you to visit these groups as well. Through admittance of powerlessness over alcohol and a surrender to God (or a power greater than ourselves often referred to as a Higher Power) to restore our lives to sanity many people for many decades have found the love, support and safety of living and working with others who share these struggles. Sometimes just knowing that we are not alone makes the difference between hope and despair.
Blessings,
Tracy