Walking Wounded: Young ACOA
What do these people have in common? Formerpresident Ronald Reagan. ex-Dallas CowboyHollywood Henderson. Writer Lorian Hemingway,granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway. ComedianLouie Anderson. Actress Susan Sullivan Formerhockey star Derek Sanderson. And performerSuzanne Somers.
Hello. I’m Robin Young, and like everyone I justnamed, I grew up in an alcoholic home. Now Iknow some of you may remember me as a co-host of Evening Magazine, a formercorrespondent for NBC News, but now I also referto myself as something called an adult child of analcoholic.
Now I know that doesn’t make sense at first. Adultchild. What does that mean? But please listen,because tonight’s program may make somepeople’s lives make sense, some for the first time.
We’re going to be talking about adults confrontingthe fact that the alcoholism they grew up with wasnot only very painful when they were children, buthas had a profound effect on them as adults.
And this alcoholism isn’t always easy to see. I mean, sure, there’s the violent drunk that you seeon television, but we’re also talking about the silenthomes where kids grew up in constant fear thatthere would be violence, that Mom would fallasleep drunk with a cigarette or Dad have a caraccident driving home. No one ever talked aboutit, and these kids always thought it was their fault.
I know alcoholism wasn’t even mentioned in myhome until my dad died from it three years ago.And even then it was hard for me to talk about,until I heard other people’s voices.
He was a really sort of Jekyll/Hyde personality.When he wasn’t drinking he was charming andbright and insightful. And when he was drinking hewas angry.
I believe my father’s alcoholic. And I love himdearly and I can’t get him sober. And he thinkshe’s just a boozer.
My childhood was normal to me. Craziness,violence, hitting, screaming, crying, staying up allnight. All those things were just our normal life.
Confusion is why I couldn’t figure things out. Whycan’t I figure out the confusion? So I wasconfused about the confusion.
I used to think that a bolt of lightning was going tocome and crash down on me if I talked about it.
Once it was easy for people to see me on theoutside and think that things were going OK. Thelast year things just went dramatically downhill.
I thought if I was a better kid that maybe hewouldn’t drink.
Now I know, because I was one once, that thereare some cynics out there. Someone recentlywrote that it feels as if we’re about to have supportgroups for third cousins of excessive sherrydrinkers. How important is this?
Well, there are 28 million Americans who have atleast one alcoholic parent. That’s one out of eight.And most of the people that we’re talking abouthave worked very hard at looking really good sono one knows there’s a problem until their livesjust fall apart and marriages break up or they’reprofoundly depressed and they don’t know why.
We get a lot of mixed signals about alcohol in thiscountry, so this program is also importantbecause it may help you figure out if some of theproblems you’re dealing with have to deal withgrowing up in an alcoholic home. If so, thisprogram will tell you that you are not alone. And itwill tell you how to get help if you decide to stopkeeping the family secret.
I never saw my father falling down drunk. But Ionly saw him, when I was really little, that half hourbetween him coming home from work andbedtime. And of course that coincided with thecocktail hour, so–
Growing up with excessive social drinking is a lotlike growing up in those amusement park house ofmirrors. Everything’s just a little distorted andthings change and especially as a little kid, youdon’t know why.
But there’s a broad spectrum of alcoholic homesand at the other end is the violent one.
When you see Suzanne Somers perform in LasVegas, it’s hard to believe she’s had any problemsother than keeping that hat on. But SuzanneSomers was not always the fun-loving performerthat she appears to be today. She kept up theimage of a ditzy blonde on the hit sitcom Three’sCompany. People loved her, and few would know,until she wrote her autobiography, KeepingSecrets, the dark childhood she had as theyoungest daughter of a violent and verballyabusive father.
It didn’t enter my mind that it was a sad childhood.It just entered my mind that it was something that Ishouldn’t let other people know about.
But still, I was shocked at the events in yourchildhood. Dishes flying and people fighting, kidshitting parents, parents hitting kids, and the yelling.It was dark.
All those nights of hiding in the closet to escapethe reality of hearing the yelling and the crazinessand worrying that someone was going to be killedin the next room, what a terrible thing to live with.For a child to worry each night that one or theother members or yourself might get killed intonight’s fight.
There were words that your father used againstyou that I didn’t even know existed in the ’50s andthe ’60s. These were nasty things you just don’tsay.
Big O and nothing. You’re nothing. And I wouldhear that over and over. You hear you’re nothingand worthless and useless, and then the rest ofthe language that I can’t say here, which is part ofan alcoholic home–
I couldn’t believe it. Let’s try to trace this. How didyour father’s put-downs of you when you wereyoung affect you when you were older. Did youactually hear his voice telling you you’re nothing,you’re no good?
It’s not that I heard the voice. It was me. I wasnothing. I was worthless. I became what he said Iwas. So I didn’t have to hear his voice. I knew thatI was useless and worthless. I knew that.
Her siblings had the same low opinion ofthemselves. Maureen, Danny, and Michael allbecame alcoholics. Suzanne was determined notto drink, but what she didn’t know was that shehad taken on other characteristics of an alcoholic.She lied, even saying her dad was dead.
I didn’t want to be the daughter of the drunkanymore. You get a mixed message of lies. You’retaught, on the one hand, my mother is a good IrishCatholic, church-going woman, teach me neverlie. And yet I’d hear her on the phone saying, Mr.Mahoney can’t come to work today because he’ssick. And I’d look at him and I’d think he’s not sick.He’s drunk. He’s passed out.
And so I got the message, OK, you’re notsupposed to lie, but there are some lies that areOK. So lying became a way for me to protect thereality of who I thought I was.
One lie led to another. The crisis became worse.She had to marry at the age of 18, had a baby,and shortly after that she had an affair that costher her marriage. Ill-equipped to take care of heryoung son, she took whatever modeling job shecould get, even posing nude for this Newsweekcover. And the lies continued.
The crisis was all I knew. And when I left thehouse, the environment, the crazy environment,to go have a normal life, I didn’t know what normalwas. So I just created the patterns of mychildhood in my own life. So I created my owncrisis. So therefore I wrote bad checks for aperiod of time
You were arrested.
I was arrested, yes. Yes. It was part of the crisis,though. Because what our parents do to us, goodor bad, affects who we will be as adults. And thisis how it manifested in me.
Today, as honorary chairperson of the NationalAssociation of Children of Alcoholics, SuzanneSomers speaks with conviction and hope. Shetells of her entire family’s recovery. Brothers,sister, and father, all sober for several years. Andher mom is now in a support group. But it’s onlyrecently that Suzanne got from her father the onlything she ever really wanted.
Nonetheless, he’s been sober for 11 years andI’ve been waiting for something from him, for himto recognize what his disease did to me and tomake amends. And two days ago I got a letterfrom my dad that said that he was sorry, in themost– It’s just a beautiful letter.
It makes me emotional because it ends it. And Ithink every child of an alcoholic would love tohave the opportunity to hear from the parent, I’m sorry. And so many children of alcoholics’ parentsdie before they have the chance to say that
I think that I first understood that my father was analcoholic when he died. What happened was theyear before, he had become ill and the doctor saidto me, well, you know he’s an alcoholic. I wasfurious. I called my sister and I said this doctor issaying Dad’s an alcoholic.
And she said, no kidding, Sherlock. She’d beentrying to tell me. And of course I couldn’t hearwhat I didn’t want to hear. One of my brothers andI, we went to his bedside and we pleaded with him to please get help.
And the miracle did occur. He decided to go intorecovery and he did become sober, a totallydifferent man. And we were all adjusting to thischange when several months later, his liver justfailed. And on Christmas Eve he died.
And in many ways the worst things hadhappened. Here I was convinced that I had saveda parent, which I guess maybe Id’ trying to do allalong, but come to find out that of course I hadn’t.And it would be a while before I realized that I hadto try to save myself.
Well, after my dad died I set out in time-honoredfamily tradition, working hard to avoid dealing withit. I did so many alcohol-related stories for NBCthat a friend said to me, Robin, I’ve been electedto tell you, alcoholism is not a beat. I think since I’dfailed in saving my dad, I was going to try to saveeverybody else.
And I was also seeking out soulmates, like thebrother and sister that I met here in Boston. Thenightmare of every child of an alcoholic had cometrue for them. She told me that she was riding thetrain and she looked up and there in the seatacross from her was her dad. A bum.
The most incredible thing happened after thatstory aired. My mother had been watching it withmy sister and she told her that our grandfather,my father’s father, had in fact been a bum on thestreets. Knock me over with a feather. Thatwonderful old man who had moved into our homewhen I was really young had apparently neverrecovered from the Depression. And my fatherhad been forced to take him in.
And suddenly I just was aware of all the pain ofseeing this wonderful old man, but rememberingnow that I could see his shame. And also realizingthe tension that existed between my father and hisfather, the fact that he had to be confronted everyday with that failure. I was overwhelmed by notonly remembering the pain, but realizing that wehad never, ever, talked about it.
Around this time, I noticed a book that hadbecome a publishing phenomenon, a bestseller byword of mouth. And I did a story on the author,psychologist Janet Woititz. Today she continuesto lecture on the link between the alcoholic and thechild.
You see, the alcoholic, for example, is dependent.The people in that system who get caught up inthat cycle are what we call co-dependent. As co-dependent, they lose a sense of themselves andtheir own value and they devote themselves totrying to fix the alcoholic. If we’re looking at theadult child of the alcoholic, we look at somethingthat’s more complicated, because thesebehaviors become a part of what they internalizeas who they are. And so it’s more serious.
There’s no time for a child’s feelings in analcoholic home, and support groups like this one,run by Janet, try to make up for that. Thousandsof groups across the country provide a safe placefor old wounds to finally be healed. When I wasgrowing up I guess I was always waiting for theshoe to fall, because my father was a late-stagealcoholic when I was young.
And whenever there was a family gathering orwhenever there was a holiday, it was how long isthis day going to be OK? When is the first incidentgoing to happen? How much time do I have toplay?
It’s relationship problems that usually bring peoplefor help. Issues of control, trust, intimacy, thesestir up trouble as the child of an alcoholic tries toget close to another person.
A real specific wall is not being able to have thekind of relationship that they want and not knowingwhat it is that goes wrong. Not knowing why theymake the choices that they do, not knowing whythey get stuck in the ways that they do, notknowing how to fix it when they have anargument, not knowing– One of the walls has todo with their own children, not knowing how to be a parent.
The problem is children never forget thecontradictory messages from their childhood.
You can’t do anything right, I need you. You growup in a situation where no matter what you do itisn’t good enough. So that’s who you seek. Soyou’re very drawn to people who are warm andloving one day and rejecting the next. Those arethe ones who turn you on.
In other words, while the ACOA is going throughtheir problems, the people involved with them–
May not have any idea at all what hit them. Andthose that get involved are generally looking andbegging for space. They end up saying, I love youbut please go away, which is the set up. Andthat’s how they play out their childhood.
In fact, Janet Woititz says that adult children ofalcoholics don’t take lovers, they take hostages.But the real problem is that the opposite is alsotrue. That same person who will hold on too tight in a relationship will run as fast they can in theother direction if their partner actually responds tothem. It can make for a horrible emotional tug ofwar.
And there are some other characteristics thatJanet lists in her book, so why don’t we take asecond and see if any of these are familiar to you.Do you find yourself fiercely loyal to employerswho just don’t deserve that loyalty? Do you craveapproval but can’t stand compliments? Are yousuper responsible or super irresponsible? Do youfind yourself wondering just what is normal,anyway? And are you more comfortable readingother people’s minds than your own?
And sometimes it becomes masked. They use food to compensate. They might use alcohol ordrugs to compensate. They may become verycompulsive in their exercising. They may be verycompulsive in money spending and that maycreate a crisis enough for them to saysomething’s going on. But they don’t say, gee, Iwas raised in an alcoholic home, I need morehelp.
Claudia Black is a co-founder of this ACOAmovement, so is Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse.And like many other leaders, they’re also childrenof alcoholics.
We have a tendency to hold back, to share less.Our whole life has been, don’t talk, don’t trust,don’t feel.
Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel. That is the battlecry of children of alcoholics, but some peoplewant to change that. And in fact, what was an ideaof a few years ago has become a movement. This is the fifth annual National Children of Alcoholicsconvention in San Diego.
Hundreds of professionals and adults who grewup in alcoholic homes have come from all over theUnited States to try to get some understanding ofthe past. What they learn is that many painfulchildhood memories begin at this age.
How are kids hurt when there is a mom or a dadwho drinks too much or uses too many drugs?What are some of the problems that kids have?Yes, Jessica.
You can get really ignored.
Kids get ignored.
What does that mean?
What does that mean? That’s a good question.What do we mean when we say kids get ignored?What do you mean?
They don’t get any attention paid to them.
Mom and Dad don’t spend enough time with them.What were you going to say, Connie?
Sometimes they get hurt. The parents could hitthem or abuse them.
Abuse them. Hit them or abuse them in someway.
Jerry Moe, author and workshop leader, knowsthat most children of alcoholics already believe thealcoholism is their fault.
Children have an incredible sense that it’s theirfault. Part of it is just developmentally, young kidssee themselves as being the hub of the universe.Everything revolves around them.
Kids who desperately want their parents to stopdrinking will do anything to make them stop.
I took bottles of vodka, dumped it out, and puttonic water in there or bubbly water in there.
So is there anything that we can do?
Nothing.
In this exercise a child tries to get Mom to take offthe blanket, which symbolizes her refusal to stopdrinking.
Are you in there?
Yes, I’m here.
Will you please come out from under that blanket?
Go leave me alone. Go on.
I’ll clean the house or do better in school if youstop.
To me the most devastating consequence ofgrowing up in an alcoholic home is it robs childrenof their childhood. I believe that in order to survivelittle children of alcoholics sell their soul, sell thatlittle kid inside, to survive and take on incredibleadult concerns, like is Mommy going to fall asleepin bed tonight with a lit cigarette. Am I going to takecare of my younger brothers and sisters to makesure that they have a lunch packed to go toschool? And as a result, they don’t get to play.
This is what a kid’s life should be like, thoughtLinda Hollingdale, a counselor on the campus of Saint Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont. Shesaw young adults struggling, but it wasn’t until sheheard Claudia Black speak that she understood.These kids were already straining to look normalso no one would guess their secret.
We hear again of the more physical, blatant formsof abandonment. But we’re talking about what kidsdon’t get to hear. They don’t get to hear the I loveyou. They don’t get to hear that you are important.They don’t get the kind of time that implies that.
The other thing that happens with these kids, thatwe refer to as the walking wounded, that reallylook pretty good, is they’re often highlyperfectionistic.
Using Claudia Black exercises, these studentsare beginning to understand the repercussions ofgrowing up in an alcoholic home.
What these cards represent is basically what theysay. Anger can be any type of anger. Sadnesscan be loss, grief, any kind of sadness issues. I’dlike you to take cards that represent youremotional state and the number of cards you takewill indicate the intensity.
Do I take one of each?
Guilt’s really taking a beating. Here we go.
Sadness, guilt.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Now let’s start off with mine. This is as far back asI can remember. I just wanted to try to get as faraway from how I feel now. Happiness and fearwent hand in hand because I was always afraid oflosing my mother, like at 5 o’clock I’d lose her,when she started drinking. But I was very guiltybecause I thought it was my fault that theycouldn’t love me after 5 o’clock.
I never remember seeing drinking but I rememberdistinctly my mother being two different people.And I was always confused about why sometimesI was really loved and why sometimes I feltignored.
I always, always felt like there just was somethingthat I wasn’t doing right. Mainly I was never doingwhat I was doing to the highest level possible,which is what seemed to be what my parentsseemed to want. And I always felt guilty that I wasletting them down, letting myself down.
And I was always fearful that things were nevergoing to change and that I was always going tofeel the same way, and that I’d never feel happylike I felt everyone was always happy.
You know, as tough as it is to hear that pain, I findmyself envying kids who are aware of theirfeelings. When I was that age it seemed like theonly option was just to feel nothing. And the resultis I remember very little of that time. It would havehelped to have known that there are distinct rolesthat children in an alcoholic family take on.
There’s the hero, the over-achiever. They try todo everything right.
The scapegoat is the one that rebels. Theyprobably do drugs and they don’t do anythingright.
Then there’s the lost child. They just watcheverything quietly and blend into the woodwork,while the mascot provides the comic relief. Andnext we’re going to tell you a story about a manwho made that pain his profession.
Why is it that brothers and sisters from the samealcoholic home react differently? One reasoncould be they see different degrees of theirparents’ alcoholism. For instance, an older childmay leave before it becomes too bad and becomesuccessful, but they may pay later. In fact, somepeople believe that they may suffer somethingsimilar to post-traumatic stress syndrome, thesame delayed reaction that Vietnam veterans hadto leaving comrades on a battlefield.
The fact is, no matter how successful theybecome, it seems that no one gets off scot-free.
Try to get the car. That was a big deal, you knowthat. Hey, Dad? I cleaned the garage. I did thelawn. I built that addition. [LAUGHTER] Can I use the Bonneville? Take the Rambler.
Louie Anderson was the 10th of 11 children of analcoholic father. He was terrified as a child andused comedy as his escape.
And he’d give you those keys. He’d always giveyou a lecture with it. Now listen, I’m not giving youthis car so you can screw it up. Well then I don’twant it.
Yes. I use my dad. He’s a big part of my act.Probably 30 or 40 minutes of my three hours ofmaterial is about my dad. So I use that all the time.
I thought if I was a better kid that maybe hewouldn’t drink. He was the kind of father who wasan alcoholic so his love affair was not with hischildren or his wife, it was with alcoholism.
Well, he was never really physically abusive withme. He was emotionally abusive with me. Some ofmy older brothers and sisters say he wasphysically abusive with them. And I know that heused to hit my mom. I remember that.
Louie hated the way his father treated the family,but he also adored him. In many ways he was agreat guy. That combination of love and anger canbe crippling to adult children of alcoholics. They have to bury the. Feelings And like many, Louiedid that with food.
My dad would say when are you going to lose some weight, those kinds of things. And thosekinds of things are the things that really areproblems when you’re a kid. It wasn’t said for aresponse, it was said as a judgment. And thenwhen you would come into the room and thefather would look up at you and go, eh. Thosethings stay with you a long time. The eatingcomes from wanting to fill that emptiness that youfeel and also to calm and soothe everything, kindof a medication. So instead of alcoholism,because you are so repulsed by that idea, yourcompulsion becomes drugs, it becomes food,those kinds of things.
In fact, Louie first went to therapy for help with hisweight, only to find out there was a strongconnection between that and his father’salcoholism. He began to explore his feelings bywriting. Eventually these notes became Dear Dad,a book of letters to his late father.
Well, originally the book was not meant to be abook, first of all. It was a therapeutic tool formyself to get through these feelings.
Dear Dad, It’s been about a month since my lastletter.
Louie first read excerpts of his book to anunderstanding audience, the National Associationof Children of Alcoholics convention.
Parents influence their kids, pass on all theirbehavior in their children. I look at us and I see itas clear as I see you rolling those Bull Durhams inyour big easy chair. I tried to roll my own BullDurham one day. You weren’t home. I loved to sitin that chair and act like you. I’d pretend orderpeople around. Hey, cat, get over there. No slinking around the house.
At the end of the book I was able to leave a lot of the resentment behind.
Signed, Feeling the Loss. Thanks a lot.
No question about it, there are more eatingdisorders, more learning disabilities, there’s moreviolence and more sexual abuse in homes wherealcohol is abused. Women stand a greater chanceof marrying an alcoholic and men stand a greaterchance of becoming one if their raised in thatenvironment. But the child that’s dealt the worstblow is the one whose mother drinks during thepregnancy.
Push. Good job. Again. Bear down–
This is a normal healthy birth.
It’s a her. You were right.
Children born to mothers who are alcoholics anddrink throughout their pregnancy begin life withmany strikes already against them.
For a child to be diagnosed as having fetal alcoholsyndrome, they have signs in each of threeareas. They are growth retarded. Both at birth andas they grow, they stay small. They have centralnervous system abnormalities. In the most severecases, the face is more characteristic and youreally can see the differences. In the less severecases the face will look more normal.
But both parents affect a child’s genetic makeup.And in fact, just recently scientists isolated a genethat confirms what many already suspected.Alcoholism can be inherited.
So when you put the genetics together and thenyou put being raised in a dysfunctional familytogether, we’re increasing the probabilities. And sochildren of alcoholics are four times more likely todevelop alcoholism. We know that that’sstatistically, empirically proved.
I believe my father’s alcoholic. And I love him dearly. And I can’t get him sober. And he thinkshe’s just a boozer. And I would love for him totaste sobriety.
I talk to my dad all the time about it. I tell him, I gota bed for you, Harold. Yeah, but I’m just a boozer.Nah, I’m okay. Dad, get sober. You’d enjoy life somuch at your age. Nah. And he tries. He sees it.But it’s the most natural thing in the world for a drunk to drink. And he justifies it and rationalizesits use. I don’t think he’d appreciate me talkingabout it.
When I went to rehab they wanted me to say I hated my parents, that my parents areresponsible for me being alcoholic. I havetremendous difficulty with that. I chose to pick up,nobody put a gun to my head and said become adrunk.
As we’ve heard, genetics can be a loaded gun ifyou don’t understand the connection. As a child ofan alcoholic, Derek was at birth already four timesmore likely to become one himself. But he didn’tthink about that when he was the heavy drinkingstar of the Bruins. No one did.
So I would drink until 3:00, 4:00 in the morning,play a 1 o’clock game the next day. I figuredbecause I passed out for a few hours and had ashower I was fine. I didn’t realize that I wasplaying drunk.
But eventually the drinks and the drugs began toshow, even in a televised interview.
Here’s the key. Meet me in the room.
Derek’s downward spiral was swift and hard. Hehad it all, he lost it all.
And you think that’s normal behavior. Athletes,everybody goes for a few beers. I was sleepingunder bridges in Central Park, totally broke andstill didn’t realize alcohol was my problem. Ithought the world was against me.
I was carrying a gun. I was in blackouts a lot. If Iheld anybody up, I don’t remember. But I was inblackouts at the end sometimes up to a week.Functioning, but still blacked out, which isdangerous. And I know I had a weapon. And Iknow it was empty sometimes and I had to reload it, but I don’t know where I shot it.
Eventually his teammate and friend Bobby Orrintervened and took Derek to the first of 13 detoxcenters.
He’s getting himself caught. He’s taking chances.
Derek’s been sober now for eight years. He doesplay-by-play for hockey games and he talks tokids about the effects of drinking on his life. Onething he doesn’t talk about is his own dad’sdrinking.
I can personally dispel a lot of ACOA theories. Iwas never hit. I was never abused. I was loved,cared for, and it was a very concerned, giving,loving family organism. It was something that wasjust perfect.
This may be a good time to stop and point out thatthis is not about blame, sitting around and listing allthe things that your parents did to you. This isabout trying to understand their drinking so thatyou can take responsibility for your own behavior.But it’s true. The family member that stands upand is the first one to say, there’s somethingwrong here, can feel very disloyal.
Lorian Hemingway– Yes, she’s thegranddaughter of the famous American writerErnest Hemingway– lives a quiet life here inSeattle, Washington. She comes from generationsof destructive alcoholic behavior thatmasqueraded as eccentric family fun. In fact, ithad become so acceptable that when Loriandecided to halt the cycle and declare heralcoholism to her 17 year old daughter, she wasmet with disbelief.
When I told her I was alcoholic, she said, I don’tbelieve you. I explained the sort of drinker I was. It was easy for people to see me on the outside andthink that things were going OK. The last yearthings just went dramatically downhill.
The thing that is ironic about having that sort ofhistory is seeing your own mother go through it,and say to yourself, I will never, ever do that withmy life. And then ending up, when you’re 35 yearsold, worse than she was at that age, near thepoint of death. And seeing that you did indeed dothat. That’s a little frightening.
The drinking history of Lorian Hemingway’s familyis really quite staggering. Her grandfather, ErnestHemingway, one of America’s finest writers, wasalso one of its most famous drinkers. Several ofhis children would become alcoholics. Lorian’sfather, his son, and Lorian’s mother were bothalcoholics, so was her famous cousin MargauxHemingway. Drinking was a family sport.
1980 is when it started kicking off in– I don’t want to use the word earnest– in full force. That wasnot as bad as years down the road, no. That waswhen my family was still having fun. Lorian candrink anybody under the table. Why don’t we haveher participate in the contest? It was well knownfact that I drank a lot. And a lot of people said, youdrink because you’re a Hemingway.
Lorian wanted to follow in her grandfather’sfootsteps. Like him, she became a writer, in factwriting many articles about him. And like him, shetook up fishing. And again like him, she took upheavy drinking.
That sort of passion and that connection to himgrew at a particular point in my life, probablyduring my mid-20s, when I tried to be the femalepersonification of my grandfather. Sheer idiocy,looking back on it now, but I think it was probablysomething that I had to go through.
Lorian got help, got sober, and in August of 1989wrote an article for Washington Magazine. In it,she describes coming face to face with her ownalcoholism, how her mother ended up in aninstitution because of the disease, it’s devastatingeffect on the rest of her family, and her pain athaving survived.
It saddens me that my grandfather ended up asuicide and that my uncle ended up a suicide, thatmy mother is where she is. It’s a gift that I wish Icould give them, this knowledge that you cansurvive past it. And that there is hope. But there isnothing I can do about that.
Hollywood Henderson, once a powerful linebackerfor the Dallas Cowboys, was brought to his kneesby drinks and drugs. It was only after his careerdreams were totally shattered that he began tolook for the roots of his drinking.
I don’t know. My mother or father, being regulardrinkers, probably gave me a sip of beer at anage before I knew what it was.
Like a sip of Coca-Cola?
Yeah. Alcoholics do that to their children, youknow. They give them a sip. They do.
For his new sober lifestyle he’s taken back his oldname, Thomas. He’s also reaching into the pastfor painful memories of traumatic events that werethe result of his parents drinking.
But at 12 years old I witnessed, on the front porchof my house, my mother shooting my father. Hewas my stepdad. And he had physically abused her earlier that evening.
Thomas Henderson will tell you now that hismemories help him to understand his parents, notto blame them. But that wasn’t true when he firstbegan to write about them in his book called Outof Control.
When I first started to write the book it was goingto be a tell-all on everybody but me. And thensomething happened to me in my recovery.
Thomas Henderson got help at Sierra Tucson, atreatment center in Arizona.
When you’re sober for five and a half years,sometimes you think you got it all together. But ifyou haven’t dealt with the family of origin issues orbeing an adult child of alcoholics, then a lot ofthings are still not clear and you still may act out incertain areas.
So I went in to Sierra Tucson and what happenedwas I was crying for three and a half days, anddid some work on my mother and my father. Letgo of some shame and some guilt.
I was so angry. There’s no way that I could comefrom a family like I did and have the tools that ittakes to raise children.
[? Kathy ?] [? Higby ?] was as devastated asThomas Henderson but for a different reason.She thought she’d done everything right, that shehad outsmarted her past, that she, and thereforeher children, had escaped the horriblydisappointing alcoholism that [? Kathy ?] grew up with.
Both my parents are alcoholics. My father died atage 49. I don’t really remember seeing my fatherdrunk, but later I realized I never saw my fathersober. Never. And my mother, when she drank,the effects were much more apparent physicallywith her. She was the one that was supposed tobe OK, and when she started drinking that wasreal hard on me.
Rigid control would become her escape route, andthe whole family felt the pressure to be perfect.She was unconsciously trying to do as an adultwhat she couldn’t do as a child: fix her parents.
Me as a child decided that I better get in control ofthings because nobody else was going to do it for me.
She became a social worker in Warwick, RhodeIsland, married a family practitioner, had threebeautiful daughters and a lovely home. But oneday her tightly controlled world collapsed. A son,born prematurely, died.
And that made me stop and say I can’t do thisanymore. I no longer had control.
It was that experience that made Kathy seek helpfrom Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse.
But there’s no room for the good things to happenwhen there is a reservoir of toxic anger inside.Anger has to come out. Shame has to come out.Guilt has to come out. Hopelessness has to comeout and leave that person feeling void of all ofthose pent up years of feelings. That’s when thepositive healing feelings can begin to begenerated.
How are you feeling right now?
A little nervous.
A little scared?
That’s normal.
Now Kathy and her husband Ray lead workshopstogether for children of alcoholics. Usingsomething called Family Sculptures, therapygroup members play the roles of people in theindividual’s alcoholic family.
Say, you are an alcoholic, because he is nowyour father.
You are an alcoholic. You are very abusive,mentally and physically.
You. I don’t know where your sense is at all. I should beat some in you, for God’s sake what’sthe matter with you?
What are you feeling?
I feel like did then.
What is that?
I’m feeling worthless, like I’m no good. And feelingalone.
The next step is to try to release all that hurt andanger that’s been kept inside.
No more.
You never listen. Never listen.
No more.
You’ve got to listen. Why don’t you listen to me?You know I know more than you do.
No.
You know I know more than you.
No.
I’m a better person than you.
Now comes the hard part. As tough as it is to admit that a parent is an alcoholic, it’s devastatingfor the child to realize they have to change. I guess the old saying is true: the devil you know isbetter than the devil you don’t know. And it’s scaryto express emotions like anger. That can be verydangerous if you were growing up in an alcoholichome.
Someone just said to me recently, how are yougoing to do this show? Don’t you still get angry?Don’t you just lose it? Of course I do. And I havefound a safe and appropriate place to put thosefeelings. Next we’ll talk about getting support.
I remember the first time I ever went to a supportgroup. You see, every day thousands of peoplewho have been affected by other people’s drinkingget together in rooms across the country to talk. Iwent to my first meeting, I remember I literallylooked at my watch and said, oh, I have about anhour, let’s just get this thing fixed, shall we? Howhard could it be? I didn’t have a drinking problem. I didn’t have a problem with drugs. I was just goingto fix this thing. And I figured one, maybe twomeetings at best.
Three years later I am still attending meetings. I’vebeen astonished at how hard it is to changenegative thoughts about yourself. I’m convincedthat it’s as hard for a child of an alcoholic to dothat as it must be for a heroin addict to kick theirhabit. There are now 4,000 groups across thecountry which are just for adult children ofalcoholics. You’d be amazed at who you’d findthere.
I wanted to somehow make it better. I wanted tomake him feel better. I wanted to make therelationship between my mom and dad better. I wanted to make it OK. And I thought, well, if Iclean the kitchen or cook dinner or I’m very quiet–
You may know Susan Sullivan for her starring roleon Falcon Crest for seven years. But Susannever trusted that success. What seemed likemodesty was actually a grim resignation. Shebelieved anything good was going to vanish.
What kind of a man was he and what kind of a drinker was he.
He was a really sort of Jekyll/Hyde personality.When he wasn’t drinking he was charming andbright and insightful. And when he was drinking hewas angry. He was just so angry and he wasvery verbally abusive. I could tell by the way hewalked which dad was coming home and whetherI could run out and greet him or whether I shouldhang back a little.
My father was very critical. I always felt that I wasnever quite enough and that what I was doing wasnot enough.
What would he say?
Oh, I remember when he would talk about what Iwas doing as an actress. It was always, well, yes,you’re doing that and that’s OK. But I rememberwhen I saw Katharine Cornell. So the unspoken,or not so unspoken, was well, you’re doing all rightbut you’re not Katharine Cornell.
That’s a very cruel–
He said, well, because I thought you needed tohave that kind of encouragement. I thought that’swhat you needed in order so that you wouldn’tglide across the top. And I have felt and strugglewith to this day that I glide across the top. And thereal challenge for me now is to be able to go indeeply into anything, into a relationship, into mywork, into new work and new ventures, withoutfeeling this terrible sense that I’m not going to beenough.
Children of alcoholics do judge themselves withoutmercy, turn criticism in on themselves, oftensabotage their own success, whether or notthey’re celebrities.
Sometimes I will feel this sort of free floating ennui,this sort of depression, and it’s real hard, becausemy mom will say things like, oh, honey, why areyou depressed? Look, you have a beautifulhouse, you have a wonderful man, you havemoney in the bank, why are you depressed? Andthen you feel, why am I depressed? How dare Ibe depressed. But you are.
My struggle now has been to learn how to grieve,to learn how to grieve for the things that were notand that will never be, and then basically to takecare of myself.
Susan realized that her late father’s acceptancewas not only impossible to get, it wasn’t even thebiggest problem anymore. She joined a supportgroup to begin accepting herself.
That part of myself that’s a little more frightenedand suffers from not being in control and maybebeing stupid and all of that stuff, that part I don’tlike to let her out. I try to take her out more and Itry to dress her properly. She gets out she has ahole in her sock, her shoe is worn down, she isjust impossible. But it’s OK. She was the other daywithout any underpants on in the car with me. Ilooked over, I said, little Sue, I’m going to takeyou– No, it’s all right.
So the way I understand, you haven’t just sort ofsuddenly split into dual personalities here. This isyour image of you as a child, little Sue. And theone that’s still with you, even though you look justgreat and you’re big Sue now.
I’m big Sue. And I have my pants on.
You see, we do have a sense of humor and weneed it. Asking for help is one of the toughestthings that an adult child of an alcoholic will everdo. But Janet Woititz advises that you not try to goalone.
You see, the recovery begins when you get itoutside of yourself, when you put it out there. Andyou put it out there by saying it to a therapist,putting it down on paper, talking to another personwhom you select very carefully. It should not beyour boss. It should not be somebody on the firstdate. It might be somebody that you meet at ameeting. If you own up to this and you make thedecision to go into recovery, on the one hand it willbe wonderful. On the other hand it has some implied threats, because you’re going to be anoutsider in terms of your family.
A warning: there are now so many books on thissubject it’s hard to know where to begin. But beginby trusting your instincts. Find the one that feelsright for you.
Adult children have a wound inside and I refer to itas an emotional abscess. And it’s just like aphysical abscess. And we need to go in, drain it.And we drain it by talking about it, crying the tearsthat have to be cried, releasing the anger that hasto be released, so that some of the new feelings,like serenity and gratitude and hope and joy canbegin to happen. And as that happens and thecompulsions are eliminated, obviouslyrelationships begin to work out in a whole differentway.
Very, very treatable. Does not have to go onforever.
My younger brother Jimmy once told me that he’dwatched a television show much like this one. Hebegan by thinking, this is sort of interesting.Halfway through he literally got up, crossed theroom, and sat down in another chair, thinking, thisis me.
Well, there’s a chance that someone tonight hashad that same kind of light bulb go off. And if youhave, we have some thoughts for you.
First of all, it’s never too late. One of theprofessionals we met tonight told me she has an86 year old client who is just now figuring out thatshe grew up in an alcoholic home. And what’smore, she plans on doing something about it.
It’s also never your fault if a parent drinks.
And finally, you are never alone.
I’m Robin Young. Good night.
Films Media Group (1990). Walking wounded: Young ACOA. Adult Children of Alcoholics: A Family Secret, na.
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