alcoholics’ children who grow up looking good and acting perfect and then, later in their lives, begin to fall apart. What seems at first to be their healthy self-reliance proves to be unhealthy loneliness brought on by a parent or parents who could never be trusted. I was hoping we could discuss this—see, perhaps, whether there were danger signs in our own children, ask ourselves what we might do to heal such an injury. The meeting never did get around to this; but for me, the topic was far from closed.
When I came home, my wife told me, with some emotion, of a conversation with our six-year-old daughter earlier in the evening. She had asked our little girl to be especially kind and patient with Ben, her fellow first-grader, who lives on our block. Ben’s mother, she explained, has a crippling disease that keeps on getting worse, and she cannot do most of the things that other mothers do. Ben has talked about his mother’s sickness, and he knows that she’ll never get better. He probably thinks of it a lot and gets sad and frightened, and that is why he seems to be hurt so easily and cries a lot.
Our daughter seemed to understand immediately, and this was her response: “Oh yes, I know. Remember when Daddy was sick and you both would argue so loud at night? I would go into the bathroom by myself and just cry and cry—and I was so scared!” And then, after a thoughtful pause: “It sure is lucky that you both had things you could get better from!”
I had no idea that such a thing had ever happened even once, let alone repeatedly. But that is not so surprising, for in my drinking, I had become totally insensitive to everyone and everything about me, and the blackouts wiped away what few thoughts I had. But we were surprised that my wife had not seen the child run from the room to hide. And why had she waited all this time to say anything about it? It hurts me to accept the obvious explanation: Her memory was triggered because her feelings on those awful nights were as terrible as those she thought Ben must have at seeing himself being left more and more alone, looking with dread toward the time when that abandonment would be total.
These thoughts came tumbling out, along with a flood of painful memories. Painful they will always be, but thank God, they are kept from being bitter memories by one thing—the new life that the AA program has given to all three of us. My disease has been arrested. As my daughter said, it is something I could “get better from.”
I don’t pretend to have a perfect understanding of her young mind on this or any other topic, but last night did give me a fresh insight. On our vacation last year, I spent one of our precious evenings in Paris getting to a meeting at the American Church on the Quai d’Orsay. My daughter was a bit annoyed by this, and asked me why I had to go to all those meetings anyway. I told her it was something I had to do to keep from ever getting so sick again from alcohol. I finished with the rhetorical question, “You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
“Oh no!” she said. “It’s no good for anyone to be alone!”
I wasn’t sure whether she was thinking of me or of herself as being alone, or even whether those rather cryptic words simply reflected her limited command of language, rather than the more profound significance I was attaching to them. Now, I see that she really had felt the terror of loneliness, of estrangement, of isolation beginning to envelop her. She has just told us that the memories of those past days are still with her. I hope with all my heart that no more than the memory is there, that the feelings themselves are gone.
I do not take her for granted. All I have to do, if I think “our kids, the monsters,” is remember how my drunken ravings sent her fleeing in terror. I want to do all that I can for her and, especially, with her. I expect no praise for this; it is neither a penance nor a burden. It’s one of my greatest joys, one of the rewards beyond the price of my new life.
K.C., Racine, Wis.
Don’t Hide In AA
January 1967
Around our AA program we generally hear, “Keep active in AA and it will help you to remain sober.” What about our activity on the outside, in our daily lives? I have seen AA members whose entire personal activity seems to be centered on AA to the exclusion of everything else. I may be wrong, but I do feel that this is a form of hiding, something like what we did when we hid behind the bottle, and just another escape from reality. It is actually using AA as a crutch.
Of course for those who have little or nothing else to focus their lives on, AA must be the pivot of their existence in order to keep them sober. But for the average AA member, who has a job, a family, good health, and is, of course, sober, it seems to me that activity in all areas is essential for his well-being. People in AA aren’t the only ones who can benefit from our sobriety, and the world, as I see it, now that I have been sober nearly three years, is a wonderful place filled with wonderful things to do. I, for one, can’t find the time to accomplish all the things I want to do each day.
A word of warning here, too. Don’t overstep yourself. Activity, like all of man’s pursuits, should be done with moderation. Overreaching ourselves may lead to overtiredness, to fatigue, to rotten thinking, to drinking; it’s as easy as that.
Inactivity, to me, is a form of death, and I see AA as a program of action. I came into AA in order to live, and everything that lives grows. None of the Steps, except the First and the Second, can be taken without action. We have to work hard in order to change ourselves, and we have to learn to grow outside AA as well as inside it. We can close ourselves up behind four walls and emerge only for AA activities and remain sober, but I don’t think we can achieve happiness that way.
I may offend some good AA members by my next statement, but I do feel that some of us in AA think we have achieved Nirvana by getting sober, and that this is an end in itself. We may go on for several years giving lip service to the program and not reap its full benefits because we are still afraid to rejoin the human race and go out and face reality—that is, lead a normal, productive life.
We are told very often, especially by old-timers in the program, “Utilize, don’t analyze.’’ This, to me, means living my life the way God meant me to live it and not the way I was living it while I was drinking. I had lost my husband and was in danger of losing my three lovely young children and my sanity and finally my life, through the use and abuse of alcohol. With the help of my sponsor, good AA friends, and the Twelve Steps of our program, I have been able to stay sober, one day at a time, for nearly three years, and today am fortunate in having not only my children, but my husband (who is now also in AA) again with me.
I realize I am one of the more fortunate ones, and can show concrete evidence of the benefits of sobriety in terms of my own life. I believe that without AA I would certainly be dead. Instead I have a home and family, my health and sanity and, greatest of all, sobriety. I know that I am fortunate in being able to enjoy life because I have a lot of physical energy. In terms of my own sobriety, I find that to sit around doing nothing for too long is bad for me. I need a certain amount of time for quiet and meditation, but in general I have to be up and doing; this is my nature. The restlessness that, while I was drinking, was nothing more than a destructive drive, can now, through sobriety, be channeled in constructive areas, and the same energy be applied for good, not evil.
Action to the newcomer may mean just taking a walk when he gets the jitters. Even reading can be a form of activity—at least we are thinking of something besides ourselves while we are doing it. Keeping busy, no matter how, is a good way to avoid self-pity. We can find new interests, new scope for our returning enthusiasm for life (which may seem a long time in coming, but does return).
“Hard work never killed anyone” is an old maxim, and a true one, but apathy can stunt and warp the mind. And what did we get sober for if not to live and enjoy life? AA gives us the tools to do this. In our Twelve Steps we have a blueprint for living. I read things into
