Claudia A. Black, M.S.W., Ph.D., is a renowned lecturer, author and trainer internationally recognized for both her pioneering and contemporary work with family systems and addictive disorders. Dr. Black's work encompasses the interest of both the professional and lay audiences; she originated a successful model of change in the 1970's that, today, is used in treatment programs worldwide. She designs and presents workshops and seminars, authors books and interactive journals, produces educational videos and consults to various healthcare programs in the United States and abroad. She is currently the Clinical Consultant of Addictive Disorders for The Meadows and a Senior Fellow for the Meadows Institute in Wickenburg, Arizona.Dr. Black is the recipient of a number of National awards including the Marty Mann Award, the 1991 SECAD Award, and the NCA's Educator of the Year. She is also the past Chairperson of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, presently serving on their Advisory Board and most recently, in celebration of Al-Anon's 50thanniversary, spoke on Capital Hill to members of Congress, constituents and representatives of various addiction and treatment organization.Black's books generate wide appeal. She is the author of It Will Never Happen To Me (two million copies sold and now in it's 2nd updated edition,) Changing Course, My Dad Loves Me, My Dad Has A Disease, Repeat After Me II, It's Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood, The Anger Guide, Relapse Toolkit and her latest release, A Hole in the Sidewalk. Claudia has produced eighteen videos including her two latest, The History of Addiction and The Legacy of Addiction and jut released two new CDs, A Time for Healing from Abandonment and Shame and Putting the Past Behind.
Chapter 1
Straight Talk about Addiction and Recovery
On December 31, 1986, the day after I got sober, the last thing I wanted to face was what I had done to my kids. Prior to sobriety, as a father, what I had going for me was the law, the Ten Commandments, and the tradition that adult men protect their kids. So when I became sober, the first thing I wanted to do was quickly reassert their respect for me based upon everything I had going for me. This might have worked when they were small and I had drank only a short period, but by the time I got sober nobody could say that I deserved all of the respect that the law and the Ten Commandments provided for.
I realized I was going to have to get to know the kids and vice versa. For me it meant being friends first. The kids really wanted me to be a parent, and I wanted to regain their respect. Today I have been in recovery for several years and have regained that respect, but not by asserting what I had in the first place. Instead I earned respect by "letting go" of the outcome of my relationships after I had done all I could to change, trusting that God would then do his thing. —Wally
It has always been my belief that parents truly love their children and genuinely want what is best for them, yet that message often becomes convoluted, inconsistent, and sometimes nearly nonexistent when addiction begins to pervade the family system. As much as parents want to correct this, the focus of early recovery is often on recovery practices, marriage or partnership, and job or career. This is coupled with parents frequently just not knowing what to say to their children or how best to interact with them. This confusion can be as true for the adult child as it is for the adolescent-age or younger child. In many cases it is easy to ignore the issue of what to say or how to interact with your children if someone else, such as an ex-spouse or grandparents, predominantly raises them, or they are adults living on their own. Children can also impede the process by pretending all is just fine in your relationship with them because you are now clean and sober. And, in fact, for many it is better already. Or they may distance themselves from you with aloofness or anger.
The inability to be intimate, to share yourself with your children, to be there for them is one of the most tragic losses in life. Having worked with thousands of addicted parents, I've seen their eyes shimmer with tears and glow with love when they talk about their children. As I wrote this book I interviewed a host of parents, and I was inspired by the depth of love and vulnerability shared as they talked about how their addiction impacted their children, and the hope that their recovery would provide them the positive influence and connection that they would like to have with their children.
What Do You Say to Your Children?
In recovery there is a lot of wreckage of the past that needs to be addressed, and there is a lot of moving forward that will happen as well. What your children want most is to know you love them. They want you to be there for them and with them. That can be difficult to recognize if your children are angry or distant. It can be difficult to do given the priority needed to learn how to live clean and sober. Creating new relationships or mending old relationships doesn't happen overnight. The most important thing you can do for your children is to stay clean and sober. Yet while you are doing that there are so many little steps you can take with your children to begin to be the parent they need and the parent you want to be. It is my hope that this book will help you in this journey. Thomas, a recovering parent, shared this story with me.
My daughter was grown by the time I got sober. More than anything, I loved her and wanted her to know that. I wanted her to know that the parent she saw all of her growing-up years wasn't the real me—that there was this whole other me, this place of love that I had for her that I had lost control of due to my drinking and drugging lifestyle. The hardest part was being honest. Then I had to be willing to listen and not argue with her about how she saw me. I know what she saw. She saw the addict. She couldn't see my place of love; it was too well hidden. So I listened and I didn't need to argue; I was now in my place of love. But I really wanted her to know that the things I had said or done were not the real me. Yet it could sound like a cop-out. I wasn't trying to cop out. She had her experiences because of how I acted in my disease.
I talked; she listened. She talked; I listened. Together we have healed.
Addiction is a devastating disease. It ravages one's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being. The greatest pain is that it impacts those we love the most—our children. In recovery we learn that addiction is a disease, that it is not a matter of willpower or self-control. We surrender to our powerlessness over alcohol and other mind-altering chemicals. We put one step in front of the other, often following the direction of other recovering alcoholics and addicts before us. We rejoice and celebrate recovery. For the first time in a long time, we begin to like ourselves. We begin to let go of our insecurities, our fears, and our angers. We begin to look beyond ourselves, and when we do, many of us are confronted with the reality that this disease is not just ours alone. Addiction belongs to the family. Confronted with that stark realization, how do we empower ourselves to make a difference in our children's lives so that they do not repeat our history?
Most children raised with addiction vow to themselves and often to others, "It will never happen to me. I will not drink like my father, or use drugs like my mother." They believe they have the willpower, the self-control, to do it differently than their parents. After all, they have seen the horrors of addiction, and shouldn't that be enough to ensure that they don't become like their parents? If I were to meet with a group of children under the age of nine, raised with addiction, and ask them if they were going to drink or use drugs when they were older, it is very likely that nearly 100 percent of them would vehemently shake their heads no. If I were to come back six years later when these children are teenagers, half of them would already be drinking, using drugs, or both. The majority of the others would begin to drink or use within the next few years.
These children will begin drinking or using out of peer pressure, to be a part of a social group, to have a sense of belonging. Kids often start to experiment just to see what it is like, and many simply like the feeling. Some will find that alcohol and drugs are a wonderful way to medicate or anesthetize the pain of life. Alcohol and drugs momentarily allow their fears, angers, and disappointments to disappear. For some it produces a temporary sense of courage, confidence, and maybe even power. Aside from the emotional attraction that alcohol or drugs may provide, the genetic influence may be such that these children's brain chemistry is triggered within their early drinking or using episodes, and they quickly demonstrate addictive behavior.
As a recovering parent, or spouse/partner, what can you do to stop the chain of addiction? What do you say to your children about your addiction? What you say and do depends on your own story.
Having briefly introduced you to the lives of five recovering parents in the introduction, let's delve more specifically into their different situations.
James is three years sober in his alcoholism. He and his wife are uncertain how to approach their thirty-year-old son and twenty-four-year-old daughter regarding his and her use of drugs and alcohol. James sees so much of himself in his son's behavior when he was that age. He is concerned with his son's simmering anger, his increasing isolation, his daily drinking. Both of his children witnessed the damage of his alcoholism and supported and aligned with their mother during James's heaviest acting out, but up to this point he has never directly discussed his alcoholism. Now that he is sober, he has simply attempted to be a better parent. But there are things he will want to talk about with his adult children. He is also aware that he has the opportunity to be a better role model to his two young grandchildren than he was to his children in their growing-up years. This makes him wonder what his grandchildren should know about addiction. What information would be helpful to them?
Kendra is eleven years clean and sober from her addiction to alcohol and prescription pain pills. She met her husband, Neil, in recovery. Her daughter, now ten years old, was born after Kendra had been sober for one year, so her daughter was never exposed to active addiction. Kendra's stepson witnessed addiction firsthand, as both of his parents were alcoholics. After they divorced he remained with his alcoholic mother until the age of twelve, when he moved in with Kendra and his father. While both children have different experiences in regard to their exposure to addictive behavior, they each have two biological alcoholic parents. Kendra wonders if she and Neil should talk with and parent the two children differently. She believes much of what she has shared with her daughter about addiction needs to be shared with her stepson. But she and Neil believe they may have very different conversations, as Neil's son has lived with active addiction.
Dina, a practicing member of Al-Anon, lives with her alcoholic husband. They have four children between the ages of six and fourteen. Dina is no longer enabling her husband, as she had for many years, but he is still drinking. He is frequently away from home, but he is surly when he is home and critical of the children. Dina knows she cannot totally protect the children from the hurt of a drunk and often-absent parent, but she i...
