A sobering look at the private hell of alcoholism

This Promises to be a difficult evening.

For one thing, all names are absolutely off limits.

For another, I’m not sure I should even be here in the first place!

You see, this is an Al-Anon meeting, a support gathering of families and friends of problem drinkers.

Like most people, I’d heard of this international self-help organization but I’d never before been to one of its meetings.

Until now, until this bone-chilling February evening at a Dartmouth church.

Two dozen people are here, all but four of them women, sitting huddled in their coats.

My invitation came from one of them, a woman who wants me to refer to her simply as Anne.

Tonight is what’s called open night, where anyone can stand and speak. Anne’s going to be meeting leader and she promises it’s OK for me to be here. In fact, she stresses, it’s important that the press be here.

"A lot of people out there are going through what we did," she explains. "They don’t know where to turn."

Al-Anon is where to turn.

Says Anne, "The idea is to work on you, not the alcoholic."

She should know. Her father was a drinker, as were her brother and sister. As was her first husband.

Anne, who’s now married to a non-drinker, hands me a pile of literature, then walks to the front to begin the meeting.

I study the material. One pamphlet lists the various Al-Anon groups in metro Halifax. I count 15. There’s even an Alateen fellowship for youngsters whose lives have been affected by a problem drinker.

Anne opens the meeting with a cheery welcome. As I’m about to learn in the next hour, Al-Anon offers a message of hope tied to a belief in a non-denominational "higher power" to restore sanity to your life.

"No situation is hopeless," she assures us. The crowd nods.

When Anne is finished, two women come forward. One recites Al-Anon’s 12 Steps, a guide to courage and serenity based on that used by Alcoholics Anonymous. The other reads aloud the 12 Traditions, Al-Anon’s code of conduct.

There are two main speakers tonight.

The first is a stocky, middle-aged man who announces he’s a recovering alcoholic.

Even though Al-Anon is for family and friends of drinkers, those who’ve caused hurt are often invited to speak.

The man talks awkwardly about his drinking, telling us how he was always insecure, even as a toddler.

And yes, daddy grew into a serious drinker.

Our guest says his own battle with the bottle began when he was still an insecure teen. He was on his way to play in a hockey tournament and one of his teammates offered him a slug of rum.

"I didn’t feel uncomfortable any more," he says.

"The essence of playing hockey was in that bottle. All my fears left."

From then on, he was hooked. He drank for 20 years, until the day he finally faced up to the fact he needed help.

The man talks for maybe 20 minutes. It’s intense, emotional stuff and everyone applauds when he’s done.

Tonight’s other speaker is a middle-aged mother of three who’s been in Al-Anon for seven years.

She, too, was an insecure child. Her mother died young and her dad married a woman who was unkind, to say the least.

"When I was seven," she relates, "she told me she didn’t love me."

When she was 12, she was so sad and lonely, she was seriously considering suicide.

And then there was the boozing. All her stepmother’s relatives drank.

"They’d come over on a Saturday night (to drink) and they’d change. They scared me."

She says her own marriage was reasonably peaceful at first. She and her husband were social drinkers but that all changed after their children were born. He became obsessed with the bottle.

"He said he no longer loved me," she remembers.

Distraught, she began to drink more and found her own private hell. And then, she says, she discovered Al-Anon and enlightenment. She came to realize that the only person who could help her husband with his drinking was — her husband.

What Al-Anon has taught her, she tells us, is that the only person she can take care of is herself.

"I needed an awful lot of taking care of," she says, her voice catching.

It’s a powerful evening. When it ends, the hugging begins.

I stay back, afraid of being overwhelmed by all the pain these people represent.

Anne materializes at my side and stands watching with me.

"You never graduate from this program," she says softly.

Never.

The Chronicle Herald