A spiritual awakening brings deeper understanding of the effects of alcoholism

I had knee surgery earlier this year. I’m still doing therapy and continuing to heal. It still hurts, and I am working hard to help myself. I’ve had several other health issues going on at the same time.

During my meditation time this morning, I realized within my being that I have been affected by the disease of alcoholism. In all the time I’ve been in Al-Anon, I understood intellectually that I had been affected by alcoholism. But only today has that fact crushed me like a meteor as I came to feel it in my heart.

I learned it was a family disease, but since “I” never drank, “I” didn’t have it! I have been going to Al-Anon all these years to learn how to “deal” with the alcoholic, how to love him, how to respond to his disease, and to allow others to help bear my grief and sadness—knowing, “this program’s for you, not the alcoholic”—but never really knowing.

I learned to focus on myself and keep my brain where my body is. I am not in control of a disease. I didn’t cause it, I can’t cure it, and I can’t control it. I must “Let Go and Let God.”

But it never really sank in that I had personally been so greatly affected by this disease. I was just learning how to deal with it.

I know now that just as I go to rehab for my knee I also go to Al-Anon to rehabilitate myself from the effects of a disease. This change in my thinking has been a large step forward in detachment. No one else can go to rehab for “my” knee. And neither can I do rehab for another’s disease—only my own. I know I must “Keep Coming Back.”

By Linda V., North Carolina
The Forum, September 2007

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