Alcoholism – V Lynn Connelly

Losing Control and Finding Peace

I didn’t believe in Al-Anon’s first two steps until they restored me to sanity

My Al-Anon group* discussed “Step 2” this week, which is always a good reminder for me of what I should attend to (my own stuff) and what I should let go of (everyone else’s stuff).

To me, the first two steps are intertwined:

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

At the beginning, I fought these two steps with everything I had.

Sixteen years ago, a dear friend dragged me to my first Al-Anon meeting. Desperate to find a way to reach my increasingly irrational and abusive alcoholic husband, I just listened and cried. I didn’t say a word for months, but others’ stories touched me, and I found comfort knowing I wasn’t alone. I was relieved I didn’t have to explain what was happening or justify why I felt the way I did. They’d lived it too, and they understood.

I kept going.

But I didn’t buy the steps. I couldn’t be powerless! If I was powerless, I couldn’t change my situation, and that could not be true. I had agency; I just needed to find the right words to show him how he was hurting me, because surely, he didn’t mean to, and he didn’t realize it.

I hung in there waiting for the day they would finally tell me how to fix him.

In the meantime, I protected him. Like many loved ones of alcoholics, I tried to control every aspect of our lives to minimize the chaos my husband caused. I justified his absences, I covered up his mistakes, I insisted he didn’t mean those nasty things he said.

But I would get so upset with him when my attempts to control things inevitably failed that my anger and frustration spilled out everywhere. So what my kids primarily remember from that time is not how badly their father behaved, because that was just normal, but how irrationally their mother did.

To this day, they joke about “the year Mom went crazy.”

Step 1 wanted me to accept that my sense of control was an illusion and my attempts at controlling the situation were not working. To long-time control freaks like me, giving up control doesn’t come easily and looks a lot like losing control. Still, I resisted.

But then he turned on the kids.

Unlike me, my children have always had the gift of seeing their father for exactly who he is. They knew he drank too much, and they knew he was mean when he drank. They knew when to avoid him and when to ignore his words. He was a good dad most of the time, and they loved him. They didn’t bother trying to reason with him; they just kept their distance when prudent. I could have learned from them.

But as they got older and challenged our rules and opinions more, he belittled and harassed them more. I tried to deflect it, to take the blame, to rationalize his words. I would say, “Oh, he was just joking,” or “It’s the beer talking, not your dad.”

I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself.

Finally, when a freshman in college, my firstborn said to me:

“I don’t know why you put up with him, but I don’t have to anymore. My lease runs through August, so I’m going to stay at school and work up there this summer. I’m not coming home again if I have to live with him.”

That cleaver through my heart sliced through all my denial. I couldn’t fix this. My life had become unmanageable, and I was powerless.

My baby boy refusing to come home slammed me into rock bottom.

Step 1, check.

I went back to the Al-Anon lessons again and focused on what I hadn’t before. I was powerless over alcohol and my husband’s behavior, yes. My son was now an adult, and I was powerless over him, too. But I was not helpless. I was still in charge of my own choices and behaviors.

I could not change my husband, but I could change myself.

Step 2 seemed irreconcilable with my worldview, though. Al-Anon references the God of our understanding, and as a lapsed Catholic, I had grievances with the God I was raised to know. I wasn’t sure a power greater than myself even existed, but I especially couldn’t believe in a God who let terrible things happen to good people, and I refused to pray to a supreme being I was skeptical of.

But Al-Anon tells us to “take what you like and leave the rest.” I trusted my friends, ignored the God talk, and kept going.

And something magical happened when I finally admitted I was powerless over anyone but myself: I was also freed from responsibility for anyone but myself. An enormous, self-imposed weight fell away.

My mantra went from “I’ll take care of it” to “Not my problem.“

I accepted what I couldn’t change and began to change what I could. Solutions to my own problems came to me when I stopped wishing for a particular outcome and started wishing for whatever was best for me.

And without my stepping in to fix things, other people stepped up to take care of their own problems, or they experienced the consequences when they didn’t. Crises resolved themselves even when I didn’t lift a finger, or they blew up, but it wasn’t my fault.

Step 2 is reflected in the slogan, “Let go, and let God.” I can’t explain the God of my understanding, and I still don’t care to use the term God; if pressed, I’ll call it the universe. But something took over when I let go, and my mental health improved exponentially. It restored me to sanity, just as Step 2 had promised.

Many say:

“God took care of you.”

I say:

“The universe knew X was supposed to happen.”

Al-Anon says:

“Your higher power did for you what you couldn’t do for yourself.”

My concept of a higher power remains nebulous, but I’ve seen so many situations resolved in positive ways that I believe there’s something to it, even though I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just that the program and the group have infused me with their strength and hope so that my thinking is clearer.

When I stopped focusing on the semantics, I finally understood that what my higher power is and what I call it don’t matter. I just need to trust it.

Step 2, check.

I am not finished with the steps, though. We can’t check them off as if done forever.

Many people in my life still drink excessively, and their actions still affect me. I handle it better, but old fears and impulses can surface when I am stressed.

Steps 1 and 2 remind me to mind my own business and allow my loved ones the dignity to live the way they want. Even when I believe their choices are bad for them, it’s not my job to interfere or to take on their problems.

It’s not my place to decide what’s bad for them, anyway. They have their own higher powers.

Sometimes newcomers are dismayed to realize there’s no “graduation” from Al-Anon. They are in crisis, desperate for the magic wand that will fix their loved ones, as I had been. When they learn many of us have been coming for years or even decades and don’t see an ending date, they despair even more, unable to bear the idea of waiting that long to feel better.

Many, like me, can’t see the necessity of giving up control and don’t believe in a higher power.

I tell them:

I was a skeptic, but those steps I battled so hard ended up saving me.

We gently suggest they just keep coming back. We wish them well, we hope they return, and we let it go. They, too, have their own higher powers who will show them the light when they’re ready.

*For those unfamiliar, Al-Anon is a support group that helps loved ones of alcoholics recover from the effects someone’s drinking has had on our own lives, and we practice the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous ourselves. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions.

Memory is Tricky

How can I trust the accuracy of my memories?

Memory Loss from Alcohol Abuse: A Cautionary Tale

The waiter dropped off our drinks with chips and salsa, and my brother Dan hoisted his mug, took a big swig, then looked at it and looked back at me. “Hey, did you know I’m not supposed to drink?”

No shit. “I’m sure it’s not the best idea, but did someone officially tell you not to?”

“Yep, the doctor. Apparently, I have a vitamin B1 deficiency, and alcohol makes it worse. I have to take this giant horse pill every day now.”

I frowned. “Should you not have that beer then?” I had believed the damage was done and there was no point in depriving him of one of his few pleasures, so I usually let him order a couple when I took him out. We were celebrating his birthday, but I would cut him off if I had to. I didn’t want to clean up the mess of yet another medical crisis or eviction.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m getting supplements, so one beer won’t hurt.” He dug into the chips and salsa like a bear into fresh meat. He always complained the nursing home didn’t feed him enough.

“So will this treatment reverse your condition?” That would be a miracle.

“I don’t know, that’s a good question.” He pulled out his phone, in which he kept copious notes of events and conversations. Without his notes, he couldn’t trust his memory, and I couldn’t trust anything he told me.

For six months after arriving at the nursing home where he’d lived for almost two years, Dan repeatedly ranted to everyone he spoke with: “My sister took me to a drunk tank to force me to stop drinking and just dumped me off there with nothing.” He would describe meeting me in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center and riding out to an inpatient substance abuse rehabilitation facility, including details like what we talked about, where we stopped for lunch along the way, and what he ate.

Not a single detail of his story ever happened.

Memory is funny: it can seem so real even when entirely made up. Dan’s memory of being at “the drunk tank” was accurate, but I hadn’t taken him there.

I would have if he’d let me. He was a chronic alcoholic who’d lost his wife, his home, his job, and his health — he’d blown out his pancreas on a binge in his early forties, developed poorly controlled hypertension and diabetes, and had a massive heart attack just after his 50th birthday. I hated watching him drink himself to death, but I’d been in Al-Anon for thirteen years by then and knew I couldn’t force him to do anything.

Where I had taken Dan was to the emergency room, because he was repeating himself over and over and not remembering conversations we’d just had. I had ignored it for a couple of months, assuming he was just drunk again, but something about our exchanges that morning bothered me, and it was only 9 AM. We left the home he was being evicted from and didn’t stop anywhere.

At the ER, his blood pressure was 257/127, and the doctor said he should be dead. It took 36 hours to stabilize him, and they found three lesions in his brain — possible stroke damage. He was in the hospital for six days and remembers nothing.

The hospital tried to release him, but I refused to take him. “You can’t let him go! He’ll turn on the stove and then forget and burn the house down,” I’d said, “or he’ll pass out in the street from not remembering to take his meds and end up right back here.”

Apparently, those were magic words, and the case manager found him the spot in rehab. I didn’t think it would work out — he’d have to follow rules, show up on time for meetings and medication and counseling, and eventually find a job, all of which would require a functioning short-term memory. But he was no longer emergent so the hospital couldn’t keep him, and the rehab center was the only facility the case manager could find with an open bed.

The hospital transported him to “the drunk tank” via ambulance. He lasted ten days then passed out in the hallway, shitting himself in the process, which he had also done in the ER and which he fortunately doesn’t remember. But apparently, ten days was long enough for the place to imprint in his long-term memory.

The rehab facility shipped him back to the hospital, saying he needed the kind of 24/7 medical care they were not equipped to provide. A week later, the case manager found him a bed in a skilled nursing facility. He doesn’t remember the second hospital stay, either.

Across the table, Dan looked up from his phone. “It’s called ‘Korsakoff syndrome.’”

I recognized the term from my years studying clinical psychology and thought it was bad but couldn’t remember the specifics. I pulled out my own phone and found Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition:

“Korsakoff syndrome, also Korsakoff’s psychosis: a chronic memory disorder… caused by brain damage related to a severe deficiency of thiamine (as that associated with alcoholism or malnutrition)… characterized by an impaired ability to form new memories and by memory loss for which the patient often attempts to compensate through confabulation. NOTE: Korsakoff syndrome is frequently preceded by Wernicke’s encephalopathy.”
Dictionary by Merriam-Webster

Wernicke’s is treatable if caught early. Once it progresses to Korsakoff’s, it’s too late. The disorder has become increasingly rare with so much of our food fortified with vitamins now, and I could not fathom how much he’d been drinking to develop it anyway.

One cruelty of my brother’s condition is that the rest of his brain functions seem as sharp as ever, including his long-term memory, and he feels great because the nursing home feeds and medicates him consistently and he almost never drinks anymore, so he thinks he’s fine and must take our word for it that he’s not. Spend ten minutes with him, and you’ll agree there’s nothing wrong with him. Spend another ten, and you’ll feel confused — didn’t you just have that conversation? Spend ten more, and it’s obvious.

Dan knows the truth now; we’ve discussed it hundreds of times, and everyone else has told him the same thing, over and over, so it finally stuck. But he still doesn’t remember the events, only being told of them. His memory of the trip to the drunk tank with me remains vivid though he knows it’s false.

How bizarre it must feel living in such an uncertain reality. Ironically, he articulates his disorientation well: “It’s so weird. They tell me it’s normal in my condition: it’s called confabulation. Your brain doesn’t like holes, so if the memory isn’t there, it will fill the gap. I know it didn’t happen, but to me, it’s still so real.”

“Well, happy birthday!” I lifted my own mug in salute. “And cheers!”

“Cheers!” he said. “Thanks for springing me for a while.”

“Of course!”

He took another drink, looked at the mug in his hand, and said, “Hey, did you know I’m not supposed to drink?”

And around we go. But to Dan, this is a new conversation, so I treat it that way, too. “No, why?”

“Apparently, I have a vitamin B1 deficiency and alcohol makes it worse. I have to take this giant horse pill every day now.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. I’m glad they finally figured something out.”

Consider taking Vitamin B-1 if you drink

Dan was only 53 years old on that birthday, yet he’s confined to a nursing home for the rest of his life. I am relieved he’s safe, but I hate that he’ll never be independent again. I’m not saying it’s unfair — Dan made choices, and he’s living with the consequences. I’m just saying it sucks.

I can’t help but wonder if his life would be different if he’d known to take Vitamin B-1 while he was drinking. Then again, he heard and ignored many other warnings about the effects of excessive alcohol use, so I don’t know why I think he might have heeded this one other than we loved ones of alcoholics often engage in wishful thinking.

But I hope telling his story might save one family from the same hell.

Memories and memoir

My brother’s fabricated and missing memories have me considering the limits of and holes in my own memory as I write about my experiences. I don’t have alcoholic brain damage, but I do have some gaps caused by trauma. Also, every person who experiences a given situation does so through his or her own lens, so our memories may differ because our perspectives differed.

So, I review records, I compare my memories with others who experienced the same situations, and I consult friends and family who interacted with me then. I’m generally assured that I’m not making things up, as Dan does, but sometimes someone else’s perspective has surprised me, and I’ve had to accept that my own truth is not necessarily THE Truth.

Writing memoir is confounding that way.