Families in Recovery

A writer for the Globe and Mail write the following:

This past summer, during a dinner I had with an accomplished family lawyer, a single woman in her early 50s, the conversation covered many subjects - divorce, marriage, men, work, travel, dating and, at one point, alcohol. I wanted to know what she thought of the relationship between women and wine.

Yes, I said relationship.

"It's huge," she replied. Many of her female clients talk about their use of alcohol during the breakup of their marriage and in the throes of divorce, she said. (I remember joking to my divorce lawyer about "self-medicating with wine" when I was in the worst period of the separation.) My dinner companion went on to say that among her single friends, and for herself, too, alcohol is often a form of companionship in the evenings.

Approximately 7% of all adults are dependent on alcohol - alcoholism as it is often referred to. The path to alcoholism is not the same for most people - there are many ways to fall down a mountain. But it always starts with a first drink and then another drink, and there is inevitably one drink too many, one step too many on the slippery slope.

For children of alcoholics (COAs), this slope is both steeper and ‘slippier’. The author above describes very accurately how some people cope with loss, with divorce, with the everyday challenges of living. And for most people, they can come back quickly from this edge once the sadness and the grieving runs its course. Far more than in the general population, a tragic number of children of alcoholics don't come back from this edge, but rather descend into their own abuse and dependence.

Tread lightly on this slope. As COAs, we often lament that we lost parts of our childhood, that we were denied many of the family perks friends took for granted (no one passed out on the floor for example). Sorry, but this is another place we get the short shrift. We can't screw up like others because we are so much more at risk. If others self medicate for a brief period with wine, odds are good that they will stop after a brief period of time. I should state here that many are at risk of the pain and consequences of abuse, while others do in fact trigger their own alcohol dependence. But for COAs? We self medicate with wine and we are at least 4 times more likely to not come back from the edge. We start ourselves down a path from which many struggle to return.

What does this mean? Like most things I talk about, there is a big upside for every downside. If the oblivion of self medication (which, let's face it, is a terribly unhealthy way to cope anyway) is too dangerous for us, what is the alternative? REAL HEALING. We need to learn to walk past the slope and instead start focusing on how to heal ourselves, how to cope and make peace with the circumstances around us which we can't control.

We might have to skip the slippery slope altogether, but really, is that such a bad thing?

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This represents my first blog entry in what will become a regular series of posts, collectively titled Scott's Take. As founder and president of Families in Recovery, I am able to talk to many children of alcoholics along with people who care about us. I will use this space to offer some personal insight and perspective. These are not the views of Families in Recovery, but rather are my own.