[Two Pronged] My mother, the (former) alcoholic

Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer:

This letter is not about sex, it is about alcoholism and my experiences as a child. Experiences that haunt me until now.

My mother was an alcoholic. She does not drink anymore. She stopped drinking 12 years ago. She is 57 years old. She stopped drinking when she “discovered” AA. She read 2 books about it.

She is the best advisor for alcoholic people in our town. She tells them she was an alcoholic like they are now. She got better and so can they. 

She tells them to follow the 12-step program. But she did not do this herself, She never apologized to me. I asked her about this once. She looked surprised. Then she said there was nothing to apologize for.

I want to tell our town about her. She has nothing to be proud of. She was an alcoholic mother and wife. My father left her. I wanted to but I was a child.

I am now 33 years old. I am still unmarried. It is her fault. I have many girlfriends and then I leave them.

What should I do? 

Tom

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Dear Tom,

Thank you for your email.

Alcoholism can be a terrible problem and programs such as AA that help people overcome it are therefore to be lauded. However, not every recovering alcoholic does so via AA and not every AA member has to follow each step religiously in order to benefit from the program (like cooking, follow the recipe until you are sufficiently familiar with the dish, then adapt it to your particular palate).

After all, what is of primary importance is to stop drinking; whether that is achieved by total or only partial adherence to the 12 steps is secondary.

From what you tell us, your mother achieved sobriety via partial adherence to the 12 step program. Nonetheless, 12 years later she is still sober which is indubitably a success story. Yet you are unhappy with this, particularly because she is now giving advice to others without having followed the program herself in its entirety. And the reason you want to denounce your mother as a fraud is that she did not apologize to you for the harm you believe she did you. In fact, not only did she not apologize, she refused to admit to any harm.

Now as you tell the story, she failed to follow these steps:

Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

However, she would presumably say that you weren’t harmed, no amends were therefore necessary, nothing has changed that assessment and therefore all 3 steps were duly completed.

Of course, it is extremely unlikely that a child with an alcoholic mother can go through life without being adversely affected. Many books have been written on the subject, two of which, though old, merit attention: Children of Alcoholism – A Survivor’s Manual (ISBN 0-06-097020-0) by Judith Seixas and Geraldine Youcha and A Guide to Recovery – a Book for Adult Children of Alcoholics (ISBN 0-918452-82-1) by Herbert Gravitz and Julie Bowden. (The first line of the former book’s Introduction is especially poignant: “There are at least 22 million adults in this country (USA) who have lived with an alcoholic parent.”)

It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to suppose that you have indeed suffered from your mother’s alcoholism.

However, you seem to have done your case irreparable harm, at least in so far as this correspondence is concerned. First, you announce that your letter is about your experiences “that haunt me until now.” This is a very powerful opening but you follow it with not a single example of these haunting experiences – except possibly for your short conversation with your mother about apologising.

That conversation in itself is also very revealing. You asked for an apology, your mother said none as needed and then apparently the conversation ended. So you went away and sulked, vowing revenge.

Now you are 33 and still blame your mother for everything in your life that has gone wrong. Perhaps it is time to become an adult, take control of your destiny and do your best to put things right to the extent that that is possible. Your past may have been blighted but there is no reason to insist that it blights your future.

Certainly, a protracted and adult conversation with your mother might put matters in perspective (for both of you). Therapy might be helpful, so might joining Al-Anon and/or researching how best to recover from the effects alcohol has had on you.

All the best,

JAF Baer

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Dear Tom,

Thank you very much for your letter.

Mr. Baer is correct in many parts of his above letter. Three examples are: his saying 1. )“not every recovering alcoholic does so via AA and not every AA member has to follow each step religiously in order to benefit from the program”; 2.) “it is time to become an adult, take control of your destiny and do your best to put things right to the extent that that is possible; and 3.) “Your past may have been blighted but there is no reason to insist that it blights your future.” 

However, (at least) one part of his letter is questionable. He says that “Certainly a protracted and adult conversation with your mother might put matters in perspective (for both of you).”

I say questionable because you have not given us us a full, straightforward account of your true feelings against her and thus, while this suggestion may be spot on, it is just as possible that it could also be (merely) worth exploring or even actually bad!

It is possible, for example, that actually talking things over not only won’t work, but will make things worse… especially if you think her a hypocrite for setting herself up as an expert when she has only read two books on AA, so lacking in self awareness she is capable of actually thinking her alcoholism had no negative impact on you, etc. etc.

Science is full of research that shows that almost all adult children of alcoholics still bear the scars of growing up during that time.

The late Janet Woititz, Ed.D., who performed extensive research on the effects of parental alcoholism on adult children and authored the book “Adult Children of Alcoholics,” realized that many of the characteristics described by adults who were raised by alcoholic parents are the same as those also reported by children who were physically or sexually abused by a parent; also by children who were adopted or lived in foster homes, with parents who demonstrated compulsive behaviors such as gambling or overeating, with a parent who had a chronic illness, and/or who were raised by overly strict religious parents so you can see that other people experience the same intensity and possibly long lasting effects of their miserable childhood but can recover enough to not be mere survivors but adults who live their life to the fullest.

The road will not be easy, but it is definitely possible. 

There are three issues/tasks I strongly feel need more attention. The first is learning to forgive your mom. This does not necessarily have to be to the extent of playing happy families or even the extent of talking to her; but forgive her to the extent that you are not overwhelmed by all this anger and resentment towards her.

The second is to realize that, while not all symptoms and/or feelings of ACOA are the same, some can be. Listen to “McKluver” an ACOA, saying: “I Want to Stop Running. My biggest frustration (and) agony, is knowing that I will lose the partners and friend that I love. I will run away eventually. I know it, but I can’t stop it. The loss hurts as much as if they had ditched me on the side of the street, and the relationships are irreparable. I desperately want to stop running and being scared — I do not want anything but a normal, permanent family. This is from a 2018 article called “Children of Alcoholics Have Intimacy Issues.” 

In other words, hindi ka nagiisa (you are not alone) and there is strength in numbers.
Finally, it might be a good idea to realize that you have given the inescapable fact that your mom’s alcoholism negatively affected you far more power than it actually could have.

If that, indeed, is correct, then it is time to wrest that power back to where it belongs—to you.

More power and all the best,

MG Holmes

– Rappler.com

Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email twopronged@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED. Unfortunately, the volume of correspondence precludes a personal response.