I come from a long line of alcoholics. My gradfather was an alcoholic. My Dad and half his siblings were alcoholics. The other half were Southern Baptists who believed that drinking was a sin (talk about weird family dynamics). I and one other brother (out of 6 kids are alcoholic). Half my cousins are alcoholic. The only real question in my family is are you in recovery or not?.

Growing up, I just took my Dad's and other realtive's drinking as normal. He never got violent, unlike one of my uncles, he mostly got sad after drinking. I think he suffered from PTSD from his experiences serving in WW2 and killing one of his daughters (she would have been my older sister) in a car accident when they were in an emergency evacuation of Angola during the civil war. I just thought it was normal for him to get drunk every night. Other than that he was a good Dad.

Things got really bad though after my Mom died when I was 13. He couldn't cope with her death, and so proceeded to get drunk and stay drunk for 2 years. I coped by denial and burying myself in my music. I was studying piano pretty seriously at the time, so I upped my practicing to 4 hours a day, I also took pretty heavy duty theory courses, music history, and harmony classes. I played in a band, and I volunteered to play piano at seniors homes in my town. Music became my refuge and my salvation. I did resent him for being absent so much.

After 2 years I think he was forced into councilling by his job. He went into grief councilling and got his drinking back under kind of control. He remarried (which is a whole other nightmare for another thread) and restricted his drinking to evenings, but he got drunk every night. When my stepmom went out of town he'd get plastered with one of the neighbours, and I often had to let him into the house because he was too drunk to get the key into the lock. I resented him and loved him at the same time.

I feel like I understand him a lot better now that I'm dealing with my own addiction. I couldn't stop until I was absolutely desperate enough to stop. Not my friends, not my relatives, not even loosing my job, could make me stop. It took landing in hospital and almost dieing during withdrawal to get me to enter rehab, and even there I relapsed. i've struggled with relapse for the last 5 years. Longest period of sober time I've had is 14 months. My addictions Dr. says I just happen to have a particularly severe case of the disease. I'm currently sober and doing my best to stay that way. I pray that I'll never have another relapse, but I can't be certain.

I'd encourage you to go to Al-anon or Narc-anon. You'll find other people dealing with similar issues, and get support.

Hang in there.

--spliitmage