Thank you author and speaker Lisa Frederiksen of Breaking the Cycles for this regular series sharing her decades long experience of dealing with family alcoholism and alcohol abuse. Click here to see the rest of the series.
Depending on how long you’ve been living and/or coping with a loved one’s alcoholism, this can be one of the most difficult concepts to grasp, let alone embrace – choosing to forgive your alcoholic. I’d repeatedly been told that alcoholism was like any other disease, and I wanted to (and sometimes did) shout back, “No it’s not! Diabetics don’t lie. They don’t drive impaired and risk my life and the lives of my children. They don’t constantly flip the point of the argument [their drinking] to be something I’ve done and put me on the defensive.” No, I’d think and/or say, “Alcoholism is not like any other disease.” I was wrong. Alcoholism is chronic (long-lasting, recurrent), is relapsing (happens again and again, even after a period of not) and can result in death or other compromised body organs and/or bodily functions. These are some of the characteristics of a disease – any disease. But, then, I was right, too — at least in a way. Alcoholism not like any other disease (with the exception of those, like mental illnesses, that cause chemical and structural changes in the brain and impair a person’s ‘thinking’) because of the behaviors in which a person with the disease of alcoholism engages. Theirs are some pretty rotten, nasty behaviors; behaviors unique to their disease and so very destructive to the ‘thinking’ of those who love them but don’t understand the disease.
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For me, choosing to forgive my alcoholic loved ones was much easier to do once I finally understood what had happened to their brain as a result of their addiction, and it was hearing a definition of “forgiveness” that made sense to me. The definition was something along the lines of: “forgiveness is when we quit hoping for a different outcome.” If you love and/or live with an alcoholic, understanding the disease of alcoholism and the impact of alcohol abuse/alcoholism on the chemical/structural make-up of the brain, and accepting that while your loved one is/was drinking, it will be impossible for them to ‘think straight’ and avoid those drinking behaviors that are so, so nasty, can help with the process of forgiveness. The best part about forgiveness by this definition, for me, was finally being able to let go of the anger, the fear, the frustration, the hurt and the shame that centered around my belief that somehow I, our relationship, our life wasn’t good enough, important enough, to make them want to stop. By understanding the disease of alcoholism, I could honestly let go of hoping for a different outcome. I now know my loved ones (some of whom are in recovery and some of whom are not) couldn’t/can’t behave any other way. They had/have the disease of alcoholism. As long as they drank or drink any amount of alcohol, their brains will continue to be deeply compromised, and they will continue to be unable to ‘think straight,’ but I don’t have to try make sense of it because that is a part of their disease.
For more information about alcoholism – one of the diseases of addiction – vist www.hbo.com/addiction. To see what the brain of someone who abuses alcohol, but is NOT an alcoholic, looks like (in other words, alcohol abuse compromises a person’s brain’s chemical and structural make-up, as well), click here.
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do not necessarily mean forgetting and taking back, being able to do the first two without the latter is trick many cannot master. I know I struggled with it in the past- and in a sense, with those I sponsor I guess I still do.