Get Out! I am 21 and have finally admitted to myself that my father is an alcoholic. For years I was the one defending him against my sister, and now I understand where her anger comes from. My father is not physically abusive, but sober or drunk, he always picks on us. Nothing is ever good enough, and we have to walk on eggshells around him. Saying the wrong thing causes him to throw a fit. Two years ago I was diagnosed as being severely clinically depressed, and I completed a year and a half of therapy. Now I am free of it. I dealt with my own issues but feel utter frustration, anger, and sadness at my father. He works the nightshift, goes to the bar all day, and comes home in time to sleep an hour or two before work. We have to wake him up, which is a terrible ordeal as he yells at whoever wakes him. Sometimes he has his drunk friends at the house while my mom is at work, and they trash the kitchen.

Recently, he took my car and got drunk, then left it in an abandoned parking lot while his friend drove him around bar-hopping. I tracked him down to get my keys and begged him to come home with me. He laughed in my face like it was a joke and went off with his friend.

I do not know how to deal with this. My sadness is turning to rage and it seems to increase every day. I am also terrified of something triggering me back into depression, and I never want to feel that kind of pain again.

~ Rolf

Rolf, denial and alcoholism go together like a key and a lock. But it’s not only alcoholics who deny reality; often people treating alcoholics are in denial, too. That’s why we have no use for the term Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

That term implies something fell out of the sky and landed on children raised in an alcoholic home once they come of age. The accurate term for allowing a child to grow up in a household with an alcoholic is alcoholic child abuse.

In our experience most children growing up in alcoholic homes are severely depressed, and this condition is usually undiagnosed and untreated.

Depression is the natural expression of despair. It results from spending each day for years coping with the belligerence, arrogance, smugness, often violence, and always neglect of an alcoholic.

We have all seen the scary movie where someone hears a sound in the basement in the middle of the night. We want to scream, “Don’t go down into the basement,” but, of course, they always do. Then the flashlight fails or a puff of air blows out the candle.

Our advice to you is: don’t go down into the basement. Your depression has a known cause. Remove yourself from the known cause. Make inroads on healing by getting out of this household.

Take the focus off your father and put it on yourself. If you can’t leave now, think how you can leave in six months or a year.

That you once defended your father against your sister is not unusual for two reasons. First, we look to our parents for love and support. It’s an inborn human response, present even when we have parents who don’t deserve it. Second, children of alcoholics cling to the few good memories of an alcoholic parent as a defense against thousands of bad memories.

You and your sister have endured years of cringing, but you are fortunate in one respect. You have each other.

Take care of yourself, and if you find yourself slipping into depression, get help. Above all focus on yourself and your sister. The two of you have your lives in front of you, and now your lives are what matters.

~ Wayne & Tamara

Authors and columnists Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com. Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email: DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com. Direct Answers appears in newspapers in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, Grenada, Guyana, Spain, Lesotho, South Africa, Antigua & Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya.   Direct Answers Archive 2009

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