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The Journey Of Recovery
Learning about the ACA syndrome does NOT provide the ACA with an excuse for dysfunctional behaviour. Just as the alcoholic has to recover from the illness of addiction, so does the ACA have to embark on a similar recovery journey. This journey can take a lifetime, but the first few steps can bring dramatic changes. The wonderful thing about this journey is that it forces you to examine your life and to grow in ways you never thought possible. The journey as I have experienced it has the following components:
  1. Recognize that you are an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.
  2. Learn all about the ACA syndrome and how it has affected you. There are many good books on this subject.
  3. Learn all about the disease of addiction or alcoholism.
  4. Understand the three C’s. You didn’t cause it, you can’t control it and you can’t cure it.
  5. Get help for yourself and support from others who are recovering ACA’s or seek out a professional who is aware of and who understands about the syndrome.
  6. Talk about it. It is most important that you begin to talk about it to close friends and even among your siblings and close family. This breaks the secrecy and shame that surrounds addiction. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You have been affected by a serious illness.
  7. Begin to take care of yourself, listening to your own needs instead of the needs of others. Learn to say “NO”. This does not mean that you have to turn into a selfish ogre. Even the Bible teaches us to love others AS WE LOVE OURSELVES. We have to learn to give at least as much to ourselves as we give to others.
  8. Take responsibility for those behaviours that are causing harm to you and to others. This is VERY important. Understanding why you behave in a certain way is only a part of recovery. The most important part is learning to make changes. It is not helpful to know that there is a hole in the road and then to keep falling into it. If you want the best for yourself you will learn to avoid the hole and eventually take a different road!
  9. Learn to accept those things that you are unable to change.
  10. Be patient, gentle and kind to yourself throughout your journey.

"The most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit. That sin is committed every day in families where there is an alcoholic parent/s."

Personal Comment:
Having been in ‘recovery’ for many years, I have observed a tendency for some adult children of alcoholics to make a career out of being ACA’s. It seems to me that they never get better, but seem to drag around a backpack of their wounds and troubles, allowing the past to contaminate and dictate their present and their future.

I do not want to be defined by my past. And so I resolved to lay my pack down as soon as I was able and walk away. I find it so sad that many ACA’s ruin a perfectly good present by allowing it to be contaminated by their past. I constantly say to myself . “You are a child no longer. You have the power to make choices about your life. Choose to be happy. Choose not to worry unduly about the future and allow the past to remain where it is…in the past”

I do work hard to achieve that. I journal daily, exercise, read enlightening books that are good for my soul. I try to ‘parent’ myself as well as I know how. I remember some of the funny moments of my childhood and have reached the point where I am grateful for everything that has happened in my life because it has brought me to where I am now. God does not waste any experience.

In any journey there must come a time where the hard work of climbing uphill is rewarded by a good view.