Today, over two million men and women have stopped drinking in AA. This figure includes many different sorts of people, from teenagers to octogenarians. It is clear from a review of its membership that AA has been able to help women, men, aged persons, young people, the rich, the poor, the highly educated and the uneducated. This, like all AA books and pamphlets, is based not on theory but on experience – many experiences of those close to alcoholics, those who know what it is like to live with them.
If these people could sit down with you, they might say: “We know what you are up against. We know how baffling it is to live with a problem drinker, to see close and loving relationships torn by irrational anger and conflict. To see family life upset, to see much-needed money spent on liquor or on alcohol-related hospitalisation, instead of on necessities, see children growing up in an abnormal, unpredictable atmosphere. But we all know that if the person you love recognises the problem and really wants to stop drinking, there is a solution that has worked for those we love and can work for the one you care about, too.”
In spite of all the trouble that drinking may have caused, you may not wish to admit to yourself that a loved one is an alcoholic. A problem drinker, yes but not an alcoholic. The word may have too many disturbing associations for you. Even if the alcoholic admits to being one, you may find yourself trying to deny it. Many people have felt the same way about someone they love until they understood that alcoholism is a disease, a fact that modern medicine now confirms. Previously, an alcoholic’s loved ones may have believed that they had somehow been responsible.
How and why alcoholism begins, we do not know; but later adult relationships apparently have little effect on its severity or progression.
Alcoholism, like most noncontiguous diseases, is the sole property of the individual unfortunate enough to have it.
The AA Estcourt branch hosts meetings every Tuesday at Forderville Primary School from 7pm to 8pm. Contact Desigan on 082 849 3014.
