Written by Judy MacKenzie

The journey that leads to the road of Alcoholic and Addiction Recovery is often filled with detours and side trips for the person taking that journey. Along the road families and loved ones are often discarded and left behind. For those of us who have chosen to continue on the trip it is often a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride. A ride that changes life as you have known it - a ride that can take you to amazing places if you allow yourself to go.

I’ll never forget the night I told my husband “You’re a drunk, get yourself some help or get out because I’m done”! That was just the beginning on the long road of recovery. To my amazement and shock he did just that, which in turn gave me my first of many UH OH! Moments.

As I left him at the recovery screening center, from which he would be transported to an inpatient center, I knew my life would be immediately better…after all this was his problem to fix and not mine. It was so much better, for a very short period of time, until I realized he would be coming home and the shambles of our life had to be put back together or dissolved. My bluff had been called and I felt that I had no choice but to stay, as I had told myself many times throughout my life “if someone just shows me that they would do anything for me I’ll go to ends of the earth for them”. Now it was my turn to get into my own recovery. Time to put to rest all of the demons that I had carried around since I was a child…time to stop fixing everyone else’s problems and not my own…time to discover why I invited non-stop drama into my life.

I did not appreciate the inpatient program agenda. Everything was about the “poor patient” and his disease. I felt very little attention was paid to the plight of our family unit and the mess that had been left behind by my alcoholic spouse. Upon his release from the program I was told of everything I needed to do to help him in his recovery. WAIT! WHAT ABOUT ME! I was told that I was sick, too! An awful sickness called CO-DEPENDENCY. However, I had to seek out help for myself while still being mindful of his recovery. All the while seeing my whole life change before my eyes and not wanting it all to change just because he had a disease that I and others could not understand. Why couldn’t he just quit drinking and our lives go back to normal, whatever that was? Why did it get to be all about him, when he had caused the problems? Emotions were rampant, quiet anger around every corner and I continually questioned myself. Did I really want this change? Wasn’t life easier and more fun when he was still drinking? Couldn’t I overlook the fact that I no longer respected him and didn’t want to be around him when he drank or even sometimes when he was sober?

From somewhere the answer came and I knew that I must go forward with recovery no matter what I was feeling. So started my journey.

First stop, SURRENDER.

Tags: alcoholism, co-dependency, family, recovery

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.