Characteristics of ACOA

[MajestyJo]

It is a family disease. I thought my father was the reason I was an alcoholic and I thought it was in the genes. Yet when I looked back at my life, my father was never there, I had a lot of anger, abandonment and rejection issues, but my learned behaviors came from my mother who didn't know how to deal with my father's disease. As a result, she died as a result of her own disease. She used food to stuff and deal with her feelings. Often her anger was taken out on us. She took a willow switch to my sister's legs until they bled. She kept saying, "Wait until your father comes home." When he came home and wouldn't say or do anything. Often, just smiled and made her to look like the ogre when in fact she had been left at home with three kids wile he was out drinking and carousing.

My son has all the patterns, he is using, and there was a time he didn't want to be seen with me. He didn't want me to go to his baseball, floor hockey, and hockey games. I see him acting out in abusive behaviors and I call him on it but it is all he knows and has seen. Most I hear from his girlfriends is he is a nice guy except when he gets drunk. He still carries resentments against me. Often doesn't respect me, walks over boundaries and I have to reset them. Detaching and letting him do his own thing is difficult. It is his choice.

Thanks to this program, I have been able to change. I was the abused and became the abuser. Not to the extend of my ex, but I firmly believe we are products of our environment. I no longer go around screaming like a shrew and instigating arguments for arguments sake. I no longer use my tongue to tear someone down because I am feeling hurt and unloved.

I am powerless over his addiction, as much as I am over my own. When I surrendered and accepted my disease, I was empowered to do what I needed to do for myself.

Posted on another site in 2009 and he still choses to use in 2017.