My Daddy Was a Drunk, How ’bout Yours?

Adult Children of Alcoholics, I’m surrounded by them. I am one. There are 2 variations of an ACOA, one who stumbles through life unaware of the ‘qualities’ that come with this affliction and one who is aware of the affliction and stumbles through life in spite of it. I am of the later ilk, but my husband and 2 daughters are all in different stages of becoming aware. They’ve all been made aware of the blood that runs through their veins, but lately I’ve found myself having to remind all 3 of them of it.

It’s not a simple process, this figuring out what being an adult child of an alcoholic means and how it affects you. And it never ends; you learn something new almost ever day. Once you become aware. You begin to understand why you are who you are.

The first step is to eliminate denial. It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever do. Looking at life in the harsh light of reality isn’t easy for ACOA. Being taught to pretend your whole childhood gives you a false sense of security. Stripping away the only security you’ve ever known isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s like peeling back layers of skin until your left with open, weeping, puss filled wounds.

It isn’t any easier to stumble through life unaware. It offends your soul, the pretending. It’s painful and it is emotionally expensive. It mutilates your psyche. Babies are born with total trust, innocent and pure. Its experience and life itself that shapes who you are, who you become. If you don’t acknowledge part of yourself, pieces of your life, that part, those pieces become distorted.

You begin to compensate. Your birth order in the family of the alcoholic influences the role you play. More often than not the oldest children are over achievers, middle children become the peace keeper, the lost child and the babies the clown. In every family there is at least one child who will follow in the footsteps of the parent who has let the alcoholism gene mutate.  

People don’t grow up thinking they will become a drunk when they get older. It isn’t an aspiration for the alcoholic, to become one. Under all those layers of denial they had hopes and dreams too, just like everyone else. Most alcoholics are well intentioned people with little self control over their addiction. They are aware of what they are doing to themselves and their families but in most cases the denial grows and goes so deep they don’t realize the damage they are doing.

As a child begins to mature they learn their place in the family dynamics. It’s deeply ingrained. It doesn’t matter the order they were born, Certain things are shared responsibilities. They feel guilty. They begin to pretend, They cover. They don’t bring friends home after school or have sleep-overs. They begin to mimic the actions of the alcoholic parent. They hide the ‘secret.’

Only when the ’secret’ is said out loud will the child be able to grow, become aware, and realize that while they were a victim before they can break that cycle.  We share no responsibility for what happened to us as children, but there comes a point when we have to decide not to let it continue to influence us. Only then can we become the person we were meant to be.