Helping Me …

Al-anon Grand Manan rebooted in the summer of 2016.  The group, though not officially connected to the greater organization, uses Al-anon materials and resources.  I remember one early gathering.  A lady came in who had been going to an off-island Al-anon group for some time.  She had been carrying a terrible burden for her son who was struggling with addiction. Somewhere in the conversation, I mentioned something that she took exception to.  I don’t remember my words but she heard me say that we were starting the group in order to help alcoholics and addicts.

She was passionate in her response and extremely candid.  

“If that’s what this group is about I am out of here.  I am not here for my son.” she asserted.  “I am the one who needs help.  I can’t change him but if I don’t take care of myself, I just don’t know what I am going to do.  Al-anon is supposed to help those whose friends and loved ones are addicts.  I am one of those.”

I was embarrassed and gratefully reminded. I should have known this.  I remember the dysfunction that alcohol created in our home, the pain that I experienced as a child when my father came home at different levels of inebriation.  There was violence, screaming, tension and a host of other unhealthy dynamics that did far more damage to the family than the addiction.  I can still feel it even as I write these words.  I thought the answer was to ‘fix my Dad, whom I loved greatly.  But no one can fix an alcoholic … except the alcoholic and only when they realize their problem and their powerlessness.

There was nowhere to go and no one to talk to in those days.

As I have been privileged to share my own story with others, I have discovered that my own responses, the defense and coping mechanisms that I developed and the ensuing perspective on life that grew out of those experiences, were not unique to me.  In opening up, I am discovering, as a 63-year-old man that there is baggage in my relational life that can still be addressed.  There is freedom yet to be gained.  Unless I continue on this path, I will literally miss the beauty that can be found in the world today.  Al-anon exists to help me and it is.  It is frightening to open up to another human being, to share deep fears, rejection and heartache.  To admit to their existence was seen as weakness in my growing-up world. 

Alcoholism is a family illness, not one that we can detach from because we are not addicted.  Like me and many others, you are powerless over the same substance that enslaves your loved one.  They may never come to grips with it, but you can and somewhere, somehow, you must.

Reach out to us through this website if there is a way that we can help.

— Karl