For a while I had many alcoholic relative problems in the family I married into. It was amazing how the mother in-law, three daughters and son all had major drinking addictions.
I too fell into the horrible addiction, but through the help of AA managed to escape from the grips of the disease. As I look back now my behavior was appalling. Being addicted to this substance was one of the worst times of my life.
Feeding Off One Another’s Problems and Alcohol Supply-This was the biggest catch twenty-two that I have ever been involved in. Get this, two daughters and the son all lived within two blocks of one another. To top things off the girlfriends and spouses of them all were battling addictions with alcohol as well.
There was never a shortage of alcohol among the family. If you ran out, you could always take a walk for a block or so and have your choice of beer, wine or liquor. Having a party was almost a seven day a week event. There was always cause for a celebration or something to have a party about. Even self pity was a great reason to have a one person drinking party at times.
Nothing happened among the relatives that we never found out about. The gossip among the family was always juicy and it seemed like someone was always having some major crisis. We would feed on one another’s problems, oftentimes analyzing their lives behind their backs and criticizing the way they were handling life’s difficulties.
When Things Got Peaceful a Volcano Would Erupt-This was just normal living to get something stirred up and some sort of argument started when things were going well. It was impossible to have a family get together on any holiday or other day for that matter and not have some sort of major blowup about basically nothing.
These alcoholic relative problems were always related to criticism, anger and people having control issues. Sudden outburst of obnoxious speech tones and loud voice projections (or, “yelling”) where common occurrences among the family members.
I think the worst part of it all is there were many children and teenagers who were subjected to the dysfunctional behaviors. Many of them later grew up with serious issues related to drug and alcohol abuse. I suppose you could say they were becoming a product of their environment.
Alcoholic relative problems go deeper than the occasional fights during holidays though. Sometimes close relationships get completely severed, between brothers, sisters, moms and dads because of the intensity of the situation.
People who drink alcohol don’t realize the damage that they are doing to others who are not suffering from being addicted to the substance. Oftentimes, the abusive behaviors of the alcoholic relative are too much for some family members to bear. In such cases sometimes there is a separation among relatives that only God can repair.
Here again the sad part of this is that when the alcoholic begins to recover and get sober, it’s then that they begin to realize all of the damage that they have done. Most of the recovery programs point to God as the source of help in the process of trying to mend broken relationships.
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