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Kelsey Brown of Nova Recovery Center contacted me about doing a post on the roles family members often play in an alcoholic family. While there are a few things in this write-up that do not match my point of view, I like what Kelsey has written. Since it's a long write up, this post will be shown in a series of three separate posts. I won't confuse the issue by writing in between the posts. However, when the last one is published, I will write a post giving my feelings / differences with Kelsey's post. PART THREE Guest Post by Kelsey Brown Nova Recovery Center   5 Steps to Break the Dysfunctional Family Roles If addiction is ravaging your family and you, your child, or your sibling is playing the hero, there are a few actionable steps you can take to break the dysfunctional family roles and regain a healthy, balanced household despite the addict’s behavior. Talk about what is going on. Ignoring the addiction and trying to pretend nothing is wrong is probably the w...

Kelsey Brown of Nova Recovery Center contacted me about doing a post on the roles family members often play in an alcoholic family. While there are a few things in this write-up that do not match my point of view, I like what Kelsey has written. Since it's a long write up, this post will be shown in a series of three separate posts. I won't confuse the issue by writing in between the posts. However, when the last one is published, I will write a post giving my feelings / differences with Kelsey's post. PART TWO Guest Post by Kelsey Brown Nova Recovery Center   The Hero: Using Perfectionism to Cope The hero role is very similar to the caretaker of the family, in that the hero spends a great deal of time attempting to restore the balance of the household and maintain the outward appearance that everything is okay . Although this person is often a perfectionist, extremely self-sufficient, and overly responsible, he or she may also struggle with fear, guilt, and shame regarding...

Kelsey Brown of Nova Recovery Center contacted me about doing a post on the roles family members often play in an alcoholic family. While there are a few things in this write-up that do not match my point of view, I like what Kelsey has written. Since it's a long write up, this post will be shown in a series of three separate posts. I won't confuse the issue by writing in between the posts. However, when the last one is published, I will write a post giving my feelings / differences with Kelsey's post. PART ONE Guest Post by Kelsey Brown Nova Recovery Center   Families generally seek balance, even in the chaos of addiction. When a spouse, sibling, or child is suffering from addiction, family members often take on dysfunctional survival roles to reduce stress, conflict, and anxiety at home. In the face of addiction, this roleplaying is a feeble attempt to control the chaos. But in the end, loved ones only end up hiding the truth from themselves, their children, and their fri...

It's that time of year. It's hurricane, tornadoes and cyclones... Below is a post I like to share around this time of year. It's a re-post so please keep that in mind as you read about Riley and I waiting out a tornado. Tornado warning… (5/3/2011) When the Emergency Broadcast came over the television announcing that we were under a Tornado Warning, I gathered my stuff – blankets, pillows, laptop, water, etc – and put it in a secure place in my bathroom. I was ready. Riley was in his rocking chair watching his usual NCIS. I told him we needed to get his bathroom ready in case the worst came about. He just said – “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” And being the good little caretaker that I am – I stocked his bathroom. Both the bathrooms are small and there is really only room for one person in each. As the night wore on, I settled in and listened. Wind, rain, hail, more rain, quiet, wind and more wind – but there was no rumble. I was waiting for the rumble sound of an oncoming trai...

It’s been a pretty busy and heart breaking few months for me. I was told that I could not have the surgery I need for another six months. That’s disappointing since I’ve been working towards having this for more than a year. It would have been life changing at just the right time. It will still be life changing, but at a different time and place. I was forced to move from my big old farmhouse onto a sofa bed in my daughters’ living room. My daughter is working more than 1400 miles away and I am care taking her two pit bulls (who hate my spaniel) while she is off earning a living. I want to move to Florida but my funds have been exhausted because, as a lot of seniors know, my income has been cut in half since the death of Riley. I was in the process of having my teeth fixed when Riley died and I had to stop in the middle due to lack of funds. My best friend of 54 years is very ill and she may not be around long enough for me to go visit her one last time. T O TOP ALL THAT OFF – t...

  Since Riley’s death, I’ve had a hard time focusing on a single goal. I call it “floundering.” There are lots of things than need my attention, but I can’t seem to do one thing to completion, but rather switch back and forth, back and forth. I wake up in the morning and say to myself… “Self, you will do something today that is positive and will set the course for more positive things. Today you will complete just ONE thing.” Self listens to me – for about half a nano-second. Then it’s a little of this and a little of that. Back and forth… back and forth. Back in the day, when Riley went to rehab, and there were lots of those times, I would sit in the empty, quiet house and think about all the things I needed to do. I made a mental list. Followed by a written list. Followed by organizing and categorizing the list thereby creating more lists. I would hold the list in my hand, smooth it out on the desktop, fold it into fourths, turn it over, unfold it, then tell myself I would start ...

There is a place I want to visit. It’s Denial Bay, South Australia. It’s really just a fishing and tourist village on the western side of Murat Bay about 350 miles from Adelaide. This bay and village was named from the “deceptive hope [they] had formed penetrating by it some distance into the interior of the country.” In other words it was suspected that the bay would provide an entry into the interior regions of the country, but instead was simply a bay and not an entrance. Denial Bay is now a stop for tourists who wish to enjoy a change of scenery from the salt bushes. It doesn’t sound like such a bad place to visit. It doesn’t conjure up visions of doom that the phrase “floating up the river of Denial” seems to generate. Let’s take a look at the word “denial”. It can be a verb deriving from the word “deny” or it can be a noun indicating a place called “Denial.” In this case, the real place of Denial Bay and the fictional river of Denial. I think the word “denial” has gotten a bad ra...

Let’s talk loving sex. I’m going to give you a glimpse into a very personal part of my life with Riley. When we first met and our love was fresh and new, our sex life was incredibly good. Love making took place at any time or place that the desire hit us. Foreplay started in the early morning hours and lasted through the day. I thought Riley must have been given some kind of gift from God that was my personal instructor into such parts of the life. What can I say… I was young and sexually naïve. He was my lover and I loved him completely. Let’s talk sex and alcohol. As time went on, Riley became more interested in alcohol than he was in making love to me and the very frequent basis that it had been was considerably less often. Foreplay became a means to an end and became routine. We were simply two people who engaged in satisfying sex without much expression of love. Riley began trying to encourage me to have sex in ways that I had never considered and was not interested. I didn’t want...

Alcoholism is disease that not only destroys the individual but also destroys anyone within peripheral range of the alcoholic. Family and friends desperately try to help the alcoholic understand that life would be so much better if he/she would simply stop drinking. There are really only two ways out of alcoholism – death or sobriety. Many alcoholics would prefer to drink themselves to death rather than live a sober lifestyle. It is part of the insanity of the disease. The alcoholic toxins that find a home in the frontal lobe of the brain make it nearly impossible for them to make rational or logical decisions. The only chance for an alcoholic’s survival begins with detoxification of the poisons in the brain and body. Testing to determine the extent of the damage to both brain and body can only be determined when the as much of the toxins as possible have been removed from the alcoholic’s body. Once the alcoholic’s ability to think rationally has returned treatment in a rehab facility ...

I was trying to explain that leaving an alcoholic husband or partner doesn’t mean you don’t love the person you’re leaving. It’s possible and sometimes more practical to love someone from a distance. There comes a time when the non-alcoholic must consider their own survival and express unconditional love for oneself. There are many practical reasons why non-alcoholic’s stay with the alcoholic. There may be economic considerations or simply the fact that the alcoholic has reached a point of no return on being able to take care of his or her own needs. Maybe the vows you took in becoming a wedded couple are the tie that binds you. Maybe you’re hoping there will be a change. It doesn’t matter why you stay. It doesn’t matter what your reasons are for going. What matters is that you put yourself as top priority in your life. I have loved a man unconditionally and have promised to never abandon him. But there comes a point in time when that knowledge may lead the loved one to taking uncondit...

Thank you to Sandy Jones founder of Synergy Breakthroughs for today's guest blog post. Sandy created Synergy Breakthroughs in 2010 to"assist individual, groups and organizations in developing the kind of creativity and resilience that would optimize the experience of navigating through change."  http://synergybreakthroughs.com/background/ By Sandy Jones As the loved ones of someone who is an alcoholic (or drug user, or polydrug user), our situations may vary widely; but one thing we all share is the heartache of seeing someone decline – sometimes over a very long period of time – due to the effects of a substance. Sometimes, that trajectory is reversed; other times, it isn’t. In 2009, I was stunned when my nephew, Ray, died of alcoholism. How could we (the family) have let this happen? Of course, not knowing anything, I was posing a question that flew in the face of what was supposed to be common knowledge – that this was not something that we let happen, it was somethin...