Al-Anon/Alateen

That's awfully important for all of us to do.

And I really believe that, that of, of, of, of all the activities that I engage in in AA, probably the most important is paying attention to another drunk or an Al-Anon or the kid of an alcoholic.

It doesn't really matter.

Just conveying that we do have some concern.

It almost feels like

Al-Anon or, you know, that the partner needs to go through some healing on their own to not continue to progress sort of the ruminations and the constant questions or the constant reassurances or any of the above.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Trauma bonds thrive in isolation.

A trusted friend, a counselor, a support group like Celebrate Recovery or Al-Anon, these relationships offer a different kind of connection, steady rather than cyclical, which your nervous system genuinely needs to experience regularly in order to remember what steady relationships feel like.

Number four, expect the pole to intensify when you create distance.

This is important.

We just drank our brains out.

A couple of us almost died of alcohol poisoning of my four closest friends, three of us are in AA and one's in Al-Anon.

And two of our wives are in AA.

And so we had a lot of alcoholism.

That was still just, you know, I have...

I'm grateful that he introduced me to Al-Anon.

I'd like to think that I still would have found it, you know, somewhere, because recovery at one point in my life was a huge part of my life.

No, so much of that was... guilt and his own still having you know he completely and totally and utterly dehumanized me as a child he had literally beaten all of the sense of human Me feeling like a human being had beaten that out of me.

It's really across the board.

And when it's used as a political cudgel, that's really... that's really damaging and at the same time to your point the very fact that we over and over and over again will elect officials uh who have history of sexual violence and it doesn't stop any you know any of that um i think that says enormous amounts about our culture and what is our tolerance for women's uh women's suffering

i agree Well, one of the things you mentioned before that I'd like to come back to is you talked about what you called the Al-Anon term of getting a geographic cure, of getting out of town.

And against your therapist's advice or concerns, you did go back home and Doing this project put you back in the belly of the beast and passing the truck stop and going back to the adult bookstore and seeing where the garage had been and led you and Janelle to directly confront those who'd harmed you, those who knew but did nothing, and those who actively saw it.

I have a PhD.

I've been to Al-Anon for 25 years and I come home and my husband has passed out on the couch on opiates, but I'm not really knowing it.

I'm like, You know, is he tired or did he take a bunch of Percocets? I don't you know, the insanity that goes on.

Right.

Is it disruptive to the ecosystem or how would a Minion, could they go and just say, because...

Again, protecting that ecosystem is important, but is there a way where without even mentioning the narcissist, like not even making it about them at all, but going to if there's key people where they realize like, oh, could they go to those people and say – Hey, I just have realized some things and my role in it and my behavior, but really keeping it, and this is sort of Al-Anon talk, but keeping it your side of the street because I think where it can get messy is when you try to bring in other things.

And if you truly don't want to be disruptive or part of the problem, you just own your role and try to make amends or at least apologize and then they can do with it what they want.

But would you...

My dad's drinking.

And I asked my daughter-in-law, the good Al-Anon that she is.

She said, I think you had a couple of drinks.

And God bless him.

Exactly.

And so did you ever go to Al-Anon or any

group? I went to meetings with them and everything.

I sat through a few of those hour, two-hour meetings with speakers and all that kind of stuff.