Al-Anon Family Group

The Forum magazine articles - October 2005

The following articles from the October 2005 issue are reprinted with permission of The Forum, Al-Anon Family Group Hdqs., Inc., Virginia Beach, VA.   For more articles, check The Forum archive. 

A friend who was a coworker and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous told me I needed to go to Al-Anon.  I didn’t understand how Al-Anon could possibly help my situation.  She said my spouse’s drinking wasn’t my problem.  I insisted it was.  If my spouse stopped drinking, that would solve all my problems.      My friend suggested that my problem was my inability to accept my spouse’s drinking.  She went on to say that Al-Anon could help me work on myself, but it wasn’t a place to learn how to fix my spouse or to get him to stop drinking.  I had difficulty accepting the possibility that I needed to work on myself.  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.      I did begin attending Al-Anon meetings and found people who were in situations similar to mine.  They shared how they coped with the problem of alcoholism in their lives and how Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions helped them.       Soon I realized I had choices.  In fact, I had lots of them.  I could choose to be happy or not.  I could choose to hang onto my serenity without allowing others to ruin my serenity.  It was okay to hate the disease of alcoholism, but I could choose to detach with love from the alcoholic.  I could also choose to get off the emotional merry-go-round I had been on for so many years while living with an alcoholic.  Thank you, Al-Anon, for giving me choices!

Three months into the program, I finally had the courage to ask someone to be my Sponsor.  She felt she hadn’t been in Al-Anon long enough to sponsor another member.  Her response crushed me so much that I decided I didn’t really need a Sponsor—I could get along without one.      After attending a newcomers meeting for several months, I shopped around for a home group.  Life went on.  My husband and I adopted a baby.  We arranged our work schedules to avoid placing our baby in day care.  I worked Monday through Friday and my husband drove a truck on the weekends.  He left Friday night and returned early Monday morning before I went to work.  That seemed to operate smoothly.      Following a particularly stressful workweek, our refrigerator broke over the weekend.  It was full of food so I had to deal with keeping the food cold, contacting our landlord, and purchasing a new refrigerator—all while taking care of our baby.      When my husband called Sunday night to tell me his truck had broken down and he would not be home before I went to work in the morning, I was livid!  Screaming into the phone, I blamed him for the rotten week I had.  It was his fault the refrigerator stopped working.  He must have done something to cause the truck to break down.  How dare he not come home when I had been doing everything the last three days!  Without a backup plan for someone to watch our baby, what would I do?  I had to go to work and I couldn’t take our baby just anywhere.  I would need to register at a day care and provide the baby’s immunization card.      What was my husband thinking?  He had to be home before I left for work the following morning.  I was so angry that I hung up on him.  With the baby in my arms, I sat on the floor next to the refrigerator and sobbed.      Finally I was receptive to my Higher Power.  I could see clearly that I was out of control.  I’d been in the program for a year and I felt I was no further ahead than when I started.  Step One came into my mind:  “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”  My life was unmanageable and I had just proven it.  There was absolutely nothing I could do about my husband’s truck or his ability to be home when I needed to leave for work.      Then I thought of Step Two:  “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  Yes, I could see I was not sane.  Nothing I had said to my husband was sane and I understood why I needed a Sponsor.  In trying to work the program on my own I had gotten nowhere.  Somewhere deep inside me I knew if I really wanted to change I would do what the Al-Anon members suggested.       I solved my day care problem and even apologized to my husband.  A few days later, I called a woman my counselor had suggested I talk with before I started attending Al-Anon.  We had never met, but we had talked.  I felt very comfortable wither, so I called and asked her to be my Sponsor.  She said yes and I’ve been on the most wonderful journey of my life because she has shared her experience, strength, and hope with me.  Now I understand my Higher Power had a plan for me all along.  He knew how to reach me and who would be the best Sponsor for me.

I had a problem when other people controlled me—I hated it—but I didn’t realize my behavior was controlling.  I knew what everyone else’s problems were and exactly what they should do.  However, I had few friends, wasn’t popular, and people avoided doing anything with me.  I tried volunteer work and served on committees, but that didn’t help me make friends.  I had no idea what my problem was, but I knew I felt lonely and unlikable.      When I first found Al-Anon, I thought I was scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for friends there, but those people accepted and welcomed me.  During the meetings I listened to members talk about their controlling behaviors.  They said their lives had been miserable before Al-Anon.  I could indentify!  I began accepting that I had a problem.  The members shared that they felt much better and had friends in Al-Anon, so I kept going back.      In the beginning I couldn’t tell when I was controlling another person unless someone else pointed it out to me.  I felt hopeless and thought I would never change.  One of the first tools I learned in Al-Anon was that progress, not perfection, is the goal.  Then I learned that change happens slowly.  As I continued attending meetings and reading Al-Anon literature, I eventually became aware of my controlling behavior while I was actually doing it.  Finally, I became aware of my controlling behavior before I did it.  I did have a chance to change!  The possibility of a new, happier life opened up to me because of Al-Anon.       I still have a long way to go in my recovery, but I have hope thanks to Al-Anon literature and meetings.  Now I have friends, new understanding, and more good days than bad ones.  Life is exciting and worth living.  I’m less interested in perfection and appreciate each moment with a sense of joy.  I accept the people in my life without judging them and have more serenity and love in my life than ever before.