Life after Alcohol
The last day I drank alcohol on August 7, 2016
This is the next blog in my series highlighting the key lessons and takeaways from my book Wholeness Within, and we are diving into Chapter 5, titled Alcoholism.
If you’ve never experienced alcoholism, either through a loved one or personally, then you know how soul destroying it is. If not, I truly want to express that I don’t wish this awful disease on anyone.
Alcoholism in my family played a pivotal role in my emotional development or perhaps lack thereof, and really, my survival skills.
As I write this, it is, uncannily, the week of my sobriety anniversary, marking seven years since I last drank alcohol. I really just stopped drinking on this date, and my work in sobriety didn’t come until many years later. But I believe it would have been much harder to stop drinking cold turkey had I not experienced the grief of my dad’s passing from alcoholism.
Family History of Alcoholism
My dad’s experience of this, and subsequent passing, really shaped my own relationship with alcohol. Growing up it was clear to everyone that alcohol was a big part of my dad’s life. He was a Scotsman, had started drinking when he was only twelve years old, going to the pubs in his quaint hometown called Arbroath, a fishing village on the North Sea coast of Scotland. It was the cultural norm, to deal with hardships, to connect with people, to deal with the gloomy year-round gray weather.
At that time, it was the norm for kids to drink alongside their parents in Scotland. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health in the US, youth alcohol use is a solid predictor of substance use disorders in later life.
Alcohol was how my parents let off steam, how they celebrated, how they gathered with friends. It was woven into the fabric of their lives and associated with living life to the fullest. Because it was culturally appropriate, in Scotland and France, where my mom is from, there was never an awareness of the detrimental effects, such as alcoholism.
So as the years went by, and stressors piled on to my dad, without learning better ways to deal with them, his dependence on this substance grew deeper.
Where there’s alcoholism, there’s typically codependence lurking nearby. Deep shame and guilt are also usually present. My mom did her best to manage my dad, help him see how to get support, go to therapy and AA meetings, but unfortunately you can’t do someone else’s work for them. Turns out my dad didn’t want to change, couldn't find a way to change.
Living in a home with alcoholism leads you to neglect your own needs, in service of protection from the alcoholic. You doubt your own senses, knowing something is wrong, with the secret being pushed beneath the surface and hidden. You walk on eggshells, you learn to make yourself very small so as to not be a target of anger and rage when dad is under the influence.
And you do this all subconsciously, without even realizing, adapting to a situation that is not healthy for anyone involved.
Love is Not Enough
I think the worst part of this disease is losing the person you knew to this substance. You look in their eyes and you don’t see them anymore. Nobody is home, except alcohol who has taken up residence. I learned this when I went to a therapy session with my dad and sister, and my dad, like a cornered animal, stared blankly at a wall the whole time. As if my sister and I weren’t really there, that this wasn’t happening. I knew at that point we had lost him, and that love was not enough to change someone.
Alcoholism is complex - it can be looked at through a physical lens, emotional lens, mental lens, and spiritual lens. In my book I explore these different ways that alcohol impacts our state of consciousness and being. It showed me how ill-equipped as a society we are dealing with this.
Parents aren’t perfect, they are individuals outside of their role as parents. My dad’s refusal to get sober didn’t mean he didn’t love me. People’s souls choose different paths, and I believe my dad’s soul chose to be addicted as his karma.
Everything does happen for a reason, and one of the (many) ultimate gifts he gave me was freedom from the power alcohol had over me. Alcohol became much less pleasurable after he died, and my therapist told me that I could think of this as a gift from my dad—a gift to break this legacy of addiction and choose a different path of healing.
The Effects of Alcoholism
My own experience with drugs and alcohol eerily mirrored my dads. I saw how much he loved it, it taught me that it was something to treasure and crave as well. I spent the better part of my youth escaping this way, making friends this way, and even basing my identity on how much I partied.
Just like my dad, these were the tools that gave me confidence, that I depended on, as my higher power, to heal me, to soothe me, to give me comfort. Until they started doing more harm than good. Trips to the ER, broken bones, being kicked out of public places by the police, and one last, fateful weeknight out where I woke up without a recollection of the events, and this time I couldn’t let myself feel this pain & live this way any longer.
My path was taking me in a different direction. I had started meditation, medication for anxiety and depression, therapy, learning about my patterns I needed healing, exercising more, practicing yoga, and all this collided with my old ways of ‘taking care’ of myself.
August 7, 2016, the day I decided to stop drinking, is the day I started to set myself free.
This is a distillation of Chapter Five: Alcoholism, in my book Wholeness Within: Insights from One Woman’s Journey of Creating a Life & Career in Alignment.
xo Emily Grace
