As a mother and wife it became excruciating for Naomi (not her real name) to watch her husband turn to alcohol for solace while neglecting the people he loved.
And it was only after she would have had enough and left him on his destructive journey that he finally hit rock bottom and sought help that not only healed him but helped his wife and daughter.
Today as he continues to be a recovering alcoholic his wife Naomi is on a journey of her own; one in which she has ‘found herself’ and realised that in some cases she had been an enabler of her husband’s disease. It is not that she holds herself responsible for his addiction, but the knowledge she has now has made her see that her initial response to the crisis drove him faster to the bottle.
However, it was her later non-reaction to his addiction—she said she felt dead inside—that drove him to rock bottom and eventually saw him seeking help with Alcohol Anonymous (AA). Through his journey Naomi learned to cope and came into contact with Al-Anon, an international group that was formed by two wives of the founders of AA. The worldwide organisation is for mainly relatives and friends who share their experience, strength and hope in order to solve their common problems. They practice 12 steps by welcoming and giving comfort to families of alcoholics and by giving understanding and encouragement to the alcoholic.
Naomi has been instrumental in starting a small Al-Anon (Al for alcoholics and Anon for anonymous) group in Guyana and even though it is small—members keep dropping out though there are new additions—it has been a great source of strength to her and others.
“I didn’t understand what enabling meant. I came to understand because of Al-Anon and a recovery programme that I am in,” Naomi told the Sunday Stabroek recently.
Young lovers
Naomi and her husband had a normal courtship which eventually saw the young lovers becoming man and wife but soon after there was trouble in paradise. Seven months after marriage the couple had a daughter and Naomi said she immediately he matured and began functioning as a wife and mother.
“In my husband’s case it was a little bit different. The drinking continued, it was excessive,” she said candidly adding that at the time she did not see the correlation between his father being an alcoholic and his excessive drinking.
For her the difficulty was understanding how her highly educated husband who managed a business could not see that he was abusing alcohol. As they got older the arguments got worse the expectations became higher and the disappointments became more. Part of her knew he was a good person and she believed if the alcohol abuse stopped all their problems would go away.
It is never easy to accept one is an alcoholic or that one’s spouse has this disease and so initially the couple saw a doctor and were “able to fool ourselves that it was something else, names were given like bipolar or that he is overworked or depressed.” For a while they kept “reaching for the straws” and it was during this period she enabled her husband’s condition.
Because he was well educated and financially stable, her husband was not seen as an alcoholic even though he drank every evening and on the weekends and wherever they went socially alcohol was available. But it was one Christmas season, seeing him drinking in the middle of the day that was the last straw for Naomi.
“I lost it and I pulled over… I behaved in a way that I couldn’t even recognize myself but what that taught me in that moment was that I had hit my rock bottom,” she said.
For years she had been threatening to leave and many nights as she waited up for him, her body was clenched with worry. But when she heard the vehicle pull up that feeling was replaced with a rushing rage. “So I was happy that he was home alive so I could kill him…”
Naomi stepped back and her husband then had no one to blame for his alcoholism—which is an alcoholic’s typical attitude—but he was bitter and angry and he drank more and it caused him to crash. Because of the social life in Guyana and the fact that alcohol took centre stage during the season, for Naomi Christmas every year spelt doom. That Christmas he promised that he would stop drinking but instead he drank even more and it was weeks later he said “I can’t do this anymore I need rehab.” But instead of helping him to get it done, Naomi said, she allowed him to take the lead and eventually he checked himself into rehab and “it was the best birthday gift I have ever had.”
Her husband has been a recovering alcoholic for over six years and his journey has taught Naomi a lot about herself. One lesson was that her own father was an alcoholic, something she never accepted before, but which saw the end of her parents’ marriage. She never saw her father in that light because he did not drink at home and it was not the first thing he turned to in the morning even though her parents argued all the time and the home environment was chaotic.
‘Taking care of me’
On the day she behaved ‘un-lady like’ Naomi said she felt numb and it felt final, not final that she was going to leave her husband but just “I can do this anymore, I have to find a solution and inside of me there was this dead moving person.
“On that day I made a decision and it was you [her husband] need to live your life…but I have to figure out a way to take care of me. And it was the first time in so many years that I had actually made a healthy a choice to take care of me.”
By this time she had commenced reading up on alcoholism and she realised that her husband was an alcoholic and she also learnt of Al-Anon through a close family member who knew what she was going through.
“She gave me all the material so I started reading a bit about Al-Anon and when we went to our doctor abroad she gave me some information and I started going to these Al-Anon meetings [in another Caribbean country].”
She recalls that it was not a case that the family was not happy and that there was no laughter but “the majority of time was the misery and stress.” Initially he went home at the end of the day where he would drink but when she ruled that there should be no alcohol in the home he started going out.
From her Al-Anon journey Naomi has learnt that the effects of alcohol on the alcoholic and his/her family members are actually the same.
“My husband is looking for the bottle. I am looking for my husband. My husband is hyper focused on his next drink. I am hyper focused on his next move… there are a lot of parallels like that.”
Naomi believes that there is a great need for a group like Al-Anon as there are too many suicides in Guyana stemming from alcohol in homes.
Al-Anon is group therapy coupled with literature and guidelines. The Al-Anon founders took the 12 steps from AA and lived by them; one involves admitting that you have become powerless and can no longer manage your life. During the recovery programme members share where they were, how they got there and what they are doing to change things for their future.
“That is where I started looking at myself, how do I start taking care of me? What is my attitude? My attitude was to lambaste, to shame, to argue, to scream to yell, to affect my little girl…”
The programme, according to Naomi, helps to give her peace and serenity.
“This is not a religious programme, anybody of any religion or no religion is welcomed…” Naomi revealed.
It was not easy for her to start the group in Guyana because by that time Naomi said she was exhausted in her bid to escape she threw herself into the volunteer world and “I did over the moon and back…I didn’t realise that although they were good things I was creating a lot more of my problems.”
She wanted the group in Guyana but did not want to be the driving force behind it but this changed when she started accompanying her husband to his AA meeting on open night and she got to talking to two other family members of alcoholics and the group was born.
It started with five women and within one year they were doing well but then persons left the jurisdiction and for three months, Naomi said, she sat in the room alone.
“Nobody showed up and I couldn’t care less. I sat there alone for three months reading my information… They all came back, more came in and our Al-Anon group has stayed for six plus years.”
It has not been an easy six years but it has seen Naomi grow and she wants to get Al-Anon more known because she holds it responsible for returning her self worth. The steps, she said, force members to look at who they are and give them guidelines.
One of her group members in describing how important the group is to her said everyone is born with “fairy lights inside of us and then alcoholism comes along and outs one light at a time… I came to Al-Anon and what it is doing is lighting one fairy light back at a time.”
Naomi and her husband have shared their story at open fora and hope that it will inspire others to seek help.
Al-Anon group meets every Thursday at 6.30 pm at the Brickdam Presbytery. Interested persons can contact Nicky M on 233-5844 or 600-0832 or Joanne P at 619-4835.
