Kim's Story

This personal narrative describes Kim’s emotional journey from the chaos of living with an addicted spouse to finding personal peace. Initially, she mistakenly believed her own perceived flaws were the cause of her husband’s drinking and that she possessed the power to control his recovery. Through the support of Al-Anon, she realized that she was not alone and shifted her focus from trying to fix her partner to healing herself. By embracing the 12 Steps and spiritual principles, she replaced her feelings of inadequacy with dignity and serenity. Ultimately, the text illustrates how a person can reclaim their identity and build a fulfilling life regardless of another's choices.

True Stories of Alcoholics and Addicts.  Struggles, insights, physical, emotional and spiritual recovery.

Transcript

Daryl 0:24

Hey, welcome to Miles of Recovery. The last couple of weeks we spent with Family for Memorial. So thanks for waiting for us and well, this week we get a bit of insight into my lovely co-hosts recovery journey as a non-alcoholic. Her recovery looks different than mine, but the 12 Steps to Serenity are the same. What a great lesson for both sides of the alcoholic coin. I've learned a lot from Kim's story and her response to living with a heavy drinker, a lesson in the importance of the eighth and ninth steps for alcoholics and recognition of the damage done to loved ones and cohorts during our drinking years. So here's Kim with her story.

Kim 1:05

If I were funnier, smarter, sexier, maybe he wouldn't drink so much. This was my mantra back in my days. Married to a daily heavy drinker. It was such a confusing time for me 'cause I didn't know much of anything about alcohol use disorder and he didn't look anything like what I thought an alcoholic looked like. I mean, he was well educated, had many outdoorsy hobbies, generally was able to hold down a job, and most importantly, to my mind, wasn't living under a bridge and didn't drink his booze from a paper sack. These were my only ideas of what a problematic drinker looked like back then. In fact, he was very much into the finer things in life. So the hobbies were fancy skiing German cars and exotic vacations, all of which we couldn't afford. And the alcohol ran along the lines of fine wines, boutique imported French laurs, and a bottle of top shelf vodka, always freshly stocked in the freezer. All I knew was that each week the recycling bin was overflowing with empty bottles, and I was scared to answer the home phone due to screaming creditors. And that I was utterly miserable. The chaos of those days was crushing and slowly eroding my confidence. Something had to change. Little did I know at the time that the change would be in me as many of us affected by someone else's drinking. I thought I was somehow both the cause of his drinking as well as held the elusive cure to his drinking. Oh, the hubris. So let's back up a few years. Early on in our dating life, we were young and carefree and definitely enjoyed a cocktail or three soon dating led to marriage, quickly followed by the birth of three amazing kids while pregnant nursing, and with the responsibilities of being a mom to young ones, I no longer drank at all. I think because I was no longer imbibing, I just didn't really notice the alcohol consumption happening in the house. He bought all of his own alcohol, you know, from the fancy wine importer. And although the overflowing recycling bin didn't square with that one glass of wine he'd purportedly have each evening, we hadn't yet reached what I would later call Defcon one. There were several standout memories from those days leading up to my recovery from the effects of someone else's drinking. There was the time I snuck off to the public library and looked up books on alcoholism. I spent hours reading the stacks. I was too ashamed to check out any of the books and learned that many of my notions about problematic drinking were incorrect. Then there was the time we were working out in the garden on a hot day, and I had the jarring realization that his sweat literally smelled of booze, or the time I took my kids to visit my parents for a week and came home to find him red-eyed, bloated, and clearly having been on a seven day bender. All the while my pleading to cut down his drinking fell on deaf ears. By now. I was desperate and knew clearly there was a problem. As I searched for a solution each morning on my daily run, I'd repeat over and over if I were prett or sexy or funnier. Made more money. Maybe he wouldn't drink so much. But despite my mantra, nothing I said or did ever made any difference. One day in the early days of the internet, I looked up Al-Anon and found they had a service office and a bookstore near my house. It took a lot for me to muster the nerve to walk in, but a kindly older lady asked how she could help and with a warbling voice. I asked her to point me to a book that would show me how to get my husband to stop drinking. I figured these Al-Anon folks knew how to do this, and were just meanly keeping this information to themselves. I'll never forget the kindness she showed me as she gently placed her hand on my shoulder and said It's a bit more complicated than that. As she placed the book titled The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage in My Hands, along with several pamphlets such as Al-Anon Path to Recovery. I read the book cover to cover in the parking lot. I had felt so alone in my experience and here was a whole book about my life. I cried the whole time. Shortly after that, I attended my first Al-Anon meeting. Funny thing is I had resisted going to meetings as so many of us do. Resentfully rebutting suggestions to attend Al-Anon with why should I go to a meeting? I'm not the one with the problem. Ho, ho. Wrong again. I guess we have to hit rock bottom two. So one sunny Saturday morning, I took my terrified self to my first meeting. As I sat there trembling, feeling haggard and Ill, a beautiful, smiling young woman began to share. She had a soft southern accent and said, I used to think if I were just prettier, funnier, smarter, maybe he wouldn't drink so much, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Here was a warm, beautiful woman repeating my mantra, which also meant I was not alone in my misery. These people knew me. They were me for goodness sake, and most confounded, they were happy whether they were still living with an active alcoholic or not. As the saying goes, this was the first day of the rest of my life. In Al-Anon, I gained the tools to work on myself, the only person I actually had control over. And just as it states in three views of Al-Anon, practicing the 12 steps myself, I gained a life worth living. Light, peace and serenity appeared where there had been nothing but agonizing doubt, fear, anger, and guilt. I learned that those affected by others drinking were often sicker than the alcoholic themselves. After all, we didn't have their medicine. The alcoholic was in the anesthetized calm at the center of the storm. The rest of us were battered by armed with Al-Anon literature, a sponsor to work the steps with, as well as weekly and sometimes daily Al-Anon meetings. The miraculous began to happen bit by bit. My sanity, my sense of myself, and my confidence were all returning to me. I was recovering from the effects of another person's drinking. Fast forward 15 years, the wisdom to get a divorce and the courage to enter into a new marriage, to a wonderful man, 18 years sober In recovery, my life could not look more different. Paradoxically, although I no longer have the dewy skin, the firm body, the sharp mind, or the earning power of my younger days, my old mantra feels like it was daily uttered by a different person. Today I am affirmed for who I am by God, my husband, and my family. Today I'm living the Al-Anon promise that quote, serenity and peace will have meaning for me. As we allow our lives and the lives of those we love to flow by day by day with God's ease, balance, and grace, and that with dignity. We will stand for ourselves, but not against our fellows. Today, I harbor no ill will toward my qualifier. I recognize alcoholism for what it is a disease. So although my life is not perfect, there is no such thing. After all that painful mantra of my past has thankfully been replaced with Let go and let God. And thy will not mind today. I'm grateful for the women and men who came before me and Al-Anon who forged this path so that all of us have the opportunity to recover. Thank you.

Daryl 9:02

Wow, that really touched me. Kim made me leave the studio while she was recording 'cause I started tearing up. It really brings the pain endured by the non-alcoholic in an alcoholic relationship to the forefront. It also shows me as an alcoholic, the trauma I caused those close to me with my self-serving behavior and attitude during my drinking years. What follows is a review analysis and some poignant insights into Kim's story. Enjoy. And we apologize for the abrupt ending. What if, what if the sickest person in an alcoholic marriage. You know, the one who is really suffering isn't actually the alcoholic. Today we're looking at a reality where the collateral damage of a disaster is actually, well, it's worse and way more complex than the damage right at the center of the storm. So welcome to our deep dives. Our mission today is to explore the often invisible ecosystem of addiction. We are gonna trace this really counterintuitive journey of recovery. And not for the person drinking Right, exactly. For the loved ones left in their wake. It's just this inversion of how we typically view the problem. And, our guide for this exploration is a deeply personal, candid essay by a woman named Kim. Yeah. It's titled, if I were Funnier Right. If I Were Funnier. And through her lived experience, we are going to deconstruct these really stubborn societal myths of what. A problematic drinker actually looks like, because it's rarely what we see in the movies. Yeah, exactly. We'll analyze the psychological trap of trying to control someone else's behavior and ultimately unpack a framework for regaining your own sanity when you're caught in someone else's chaos. Because addiction isn't an isolated event. It isn't just about the person consuming the alcohol. It is an entire ecosystem that profoundly alters everyone around it. Like the loved ones literally start to absorb the sickness. They absolutely do. But the first barrier to recognizing that sickness for both the loved ones and society at large, is usually this thick. Reinforced wall of preconceived notions. Kim starts her story. By contrasting the extreme stereotypes, our minds used to hide a problem against the glaring, painful reality she was actually living. Yeah. Because her husband did not fit that traditional cinematic image of an alcoholic. Right. When Kim thought of a problematic drinker, she pictured someone living under a bridge, you know, drinking cheap booze out of a brown paper sack, which is the image we're all sold. Really? It is. We think of the paper sack. But, uh, she was looking for this societal caricature of rock bottom. But her husband was highly functional. He was well educated. He held down a respectable job, and crucially, he loved the finer things, right? Living this way is like, it's like living in a house with severe termite damage. Oh, I like that analogy, because the paint. Looks perfect on the outside. You've got the German cars, the fancy wine, so you convince yourself the foundation isn't actually crumbling. Yeah. The finer things acted as perfect camouflage, which Kim notes that they couldn't actually afford, by the way. Yeah. It was all built on debt. Yeah. But society implicitly tells us that if you are drinking like imported French liqueurs, you are a connoisseur, not an addict Ill, or the top shell vodka. Always freshly stocked in the freezer. It's treated as a status symbol. It's a total aesthetic defense mechanism. What's fascinating here is how the contrasting reality of Kim's day-to-day life behind closed doors was just stark. Oh man. The overflowing recycling bin. Yes, the veneer was sophisticated, but every single week their recycling bin was completely overflowing with empty bottles and the creditors. She was terrified to even answer her own home phone because of the creditors calling to collect on the debt from that fancy lifestyle. She was living in misery. Yet the German car in the driveway kept telling her Everything is fine. It's just incredible how we let the aesthetics of success completely override the reality of chaos. Why do we clinging to these extreme stereotypes? Why is our capacity for denial so robust? Well, because if she admits the overflowing recycling bin is a symptom of a progressive disease, she has to confront a terrifying reality. She has absolutely no idea how to navigate. That makes sense. It's just too overwhelming. Exactly. Denial isn't just stubbornness, you know, it's a protective psychological armor. It's also tied to something deeper, a deeply internalized sense of responsibility, which psychologists often call an internal locus of control. Right? She thought it was her fault. Yes, Kim had this central mantra. During this time, she would tell herself, if I were funnier, smarter, sexier, maybe he wouldn't drink so much. She took the entire burden of his drinking. And placed it squarely on her own shoulders. She did. And in psychology, this is known as magical thinking. It is the belief that your internal thoughts or like slight modifications to your behavior can influence external events that are entirely out of your control. Oh wow. It's a defense mechanism against powerlessness, if she is the cause of his drinking because she isn't funny enough, that secretly implies she also holds the cure. Uh, so if she can just become the perfect, funniest, smartest wife. She can fix him. Precisely. That is the trap of control, the hubris of thinking we can control another person's disease, keeps loved ones locked in this exhausting cycle of modifying their own behavior, which inevitably fails. Always. Yeah, because you cannot cure a neurological and physiological disease with. Personality trait, and when it fails, it slowly, systematically destroys their self-confidence. It's exhausting just thinking about it, girl, like you're constantly performing, hoping that today's performance is good enough to stop the drinking. Right. But psychological armor has a critical weakness, right. It simply cannot filter out physical reality indefinitely. Which brings us to how Kim's denial finally started to crack. Yeah. The progression of the disease was insidious in their early dating life. They were young, carefree, enjoying cocktails like a lot of people do. Exactly. But the dynamic shifted dramatically when Kim started having children. She stopped drinking through pregnancy, nursing, and taking on the responsibilities of being a mom. And because she stepped out of the drinking culture of their relationship, she didn't realize how much his drinking was escalating. It's like, so I've heard people use the old boiling frog metaphor for this, but that always feels a bit cliche. It's really more like olfactory fatigue. If you work in a perfume factory or a paper mill, after a week, your brain literally stops registering the intense smell to protect your nervous system kim's brain had adapted to the chaos of her husband's drinking. But when she stopped drinking for her pregnancy, she essentially stepped out of the factory. And when she finally stepped back in, she realized how toxic the air actually was. She started hitting these moments that she calls DEFCON one, her internal alarm system for a total crisis. The physical weight of that shame is palpable. It really is. And then the physical realities of the disease started confronting her in ways that shattered the camouflage, like the gardening story. She recalls gardening together on a hot day and having this jarring realization that her husband's sweat smelled of booze. The aesthetic of the finer things can't hide that. No, it can't. And it escalated. She took the kids to visit her parents for a week and came home to find he had been on a massive unsupervised seven day bender the entire time his family was gone. Undeniable proof, and if that wasn't enough, she literally finds a handwritten note from his doctor saying, keep it to two drinks per day. But Kim's desperate pleading for him to just cut down, consistently fell on deaf ears because she was applying a logical solution to an illogical disease. Exactly. Just cut down. Look at the lab report that works for a dietary issue. Maybe like if you have high cholesterol. Mm. It does not work for an addiction. Logic fails because addiction physically rewires the brain's reward and survival pathways. So if you're listening right now. How do you recognize these Defcon one moments in your own life, whether you're dealing with addiction or you know, just a highly toxic workplace or relationship? Well, you recognize it by looking at your own behavior, not theirs. Oh, that's interesting. Look at Kim hiding in the library stacks. The profound isolation, the secret, keeping the shame. She felt that was the real flashing red indicator that the environment was toxic. Wow. When you start hiding your reality from the world, and when you're logical pleas for someone to change their behavior, fail repeatedly, you are forced into a state of utter desperation. But that desperation, surprisingly, is exactly what became the catalyst for the next phase of her journey. Driven by that utter desperation, Kim finally goes looking for help. But she is entirely looking for a way to fix him, which leads to this massive, shocking revelation that she is actually the one who needs a program. It's the turning point of the essay. In the early days of the internet, she manages to look up an Al-Anon service office in bookstore near her house. Oh, the bookstore scene. She goes in, her voice is warbling with anxiety, and she asks a kindly older lady working there to point her to a book that will, and this is a direct quote, show me how to get my husband to stop drinking. I love the innocence of that moment. She legitimately assumed. That these Al-Anon folks had like the secret mechanical instruction manual for fixing an alcoholic, and they were just meanly keeping this information to themselves. Exactly. She walked into that bookstore looking her an instruction manual, and they gently handed her a mirror. Instead, the older lady just touches Kim's shoulder and says, it's a bit more complicated than that. Such a gentle response. Right? And she hands him a book and some Pamphlets and Kim takes that book, goes straight to her car. Hmm. And reads it, cover to cover. Sitting right there in the parking lot, just crying the whole time. Crying the entire time because for the first time in her life, she realizes she isn't alone. Like there is an entire book written about the exact secret life she is living. Behind closed doors. But even with that profound revelation, the resistance is still incredibly strong. She resentfully rebuts the suggestions to attend a support meeting. Her internal monologue is indignant. You know, why should I have to go to a meeting? I'm not the one with the problem. Right? She realizes that the non-drinker has their own rock bottom. I really wanna push back on this concept. I mean, I get the psychological mechanism, but emotionally that is a really bitter pill to swallow. You're telling someone who has been desperately holding the family together, paying the bills, shielding the kids, and literally screaming for help. Yeah. You're telling that person actually, you're the one who needs a recovery program. Yeah. I would be furious. Is it really fair that the person who is not causing the chaos has to do the incredibly hard, painful work of recovery? But here is the hard truth. Fairness is a concept that simply does not apply to a disease that's heavy. Think of it this way, if you are standing next to a leaking nuclear reactor. It's not fair that you get radiation sickness when you didn't build the reactor and you didn't break it. Oh, wow. Right. But you still have to go to the hospital and seek treatment for your own radiation poisoning. You have to mourn the fact that the universe isn't fair before you can actually start healing because the chaos infects the loved one's. Thinking just as thoroughly as the alcohol and fix the drinker's liver. Exactly. That is a brutal reality to accept. But she does accept it. She finally takes her terrified, exhausted self to her first Saturday morning meeting, and she describes sitting in that room trembling, feeling totally haggard and ill, and while she's sitting there, a beautiful, smiling young woman with a soft southern accent begins to share her story with the group. Yeah. And this stranger says out loud to the entire room, Kim's exact private mantra. Here is this warm, beautiful woman saying the exact shameful thoughts. Kim had been running on a loop in her own head on her morning runs, right? It completely shattered the illusion that if she were just better, the drinking would stop because this woman clearly had it all together and it didn't stop the drinking for her either. Exactly. And let's unpack why hearing a stranger say those words changes anything. It's about the physiological mechanism of dismantling shame, shame requires isolation to survive. You know, it thrives in the dark. When Kim heard that woman speak, the isolation was instantly broken. The physiological burden of carrying that secret just evaporated in an instant. That shared vulnerability is the actual mechanism of recovery in these groups. Wow. She looked at these people who were genuinely happy, some still living with an active alcoholic, some not, and realized that inner peace was entirely disconnected from trying to control the drinker, which uss in the paradigm shift, like the hardest pivot of all. Oh, absolutely. Having accepted that she absolutely cannot fix her husband's drinking. Kim has to tackle the most difficult task imaginable. Learning how to survive, how to heal. How to work on herself. This is where she encounters what is arguably the most counterintuitive concept in recovery circles. Yeah. She learns that the loved ones affected by another's drinking are often sicker than the alcoholic. And the reasoning she provides is The alcoholic is in the anesthetized calm at the center of the storm. Yes. While the loved ones are the ones actually being battered by the storm without any medicine to numb the pain. Exactly. The drinker isn't anesthetized, but the family feels every single piece of flying debris. It's a powerful image. But how does that actually manifest psychologically? Like why does the family get sicker? Well, it comes down to hypervigilance. When you live with an unpredictable, chaotic person, your nervous system is constantly in overdrive. You are always anticipating the next crisis, the next chew to drop, right. Walking on eggshells. Exactly. The alcoholic is self-medicating their anxiety with a depressant, but the loved one is absorbing all of that anxiety raw. Over time that chronic hypervigilance physically damages the non drinker's nervous system. It creates deep codependency, severe anxiety, and a total loss of identity that is the sickness she had to recover from. I think that is a massive aha moment for anyone dealing with addiction. Think about how often we obsess over trying to control someone else's behavior instead of managing our own response. We take on the stress of the storm while the person causing it is oblivious If we connect this to the bigger picture, the work Kim had to do was fundamentally about radical emotional, un enmeshment, She had to learn emotional autonomy. She finally gains the tools to work on herself, which honestly is the only person on earth she actually has any control over. Right. Letting go of control isn't giving up on the person you love. It is the ultimate act of reclaiming your own life. So what does that reclaiming look like practically? Because for Kim it meant utilizing the 12 steps. She used them alongside a sponsor, like a mentor. Who's been through the process as a cognitive behavioral framework. Exactly. She read the literature. She attended meetings. It was work. It was a lot of work. The 12 steps in this context are essentially a structured method for separating what you can control from what you cannot. It's a framework for radical acceptance, and by applying that framework. The miraculous began to happen for Kim. Bit by bit. Her sanity returned her sense of self and her confidence came back. She found the antidote to her own sickness, and the beauty of it was that her recovery was entirely independent of whether her husband. Ever put down the glass, which brings us to the resolution of her story. Yeah. Fast forward 15 years from those early days trembling in a church basement. A lot changes in 15 years. And she notes a beautiful paradox about her life today. She writes that she no longer has the Dewey skin, the firm body, or the earning power of her youth. Her old mantra, if I were just sexier, funnier, smarter, feels like it belonged to a completely different person. Today she's affirmed for exactly who she is. She genuinely feels funnier, sexier, and smarter than ever before. That is just so beautiful. She's living what are known as the Al-Anon promises, right? Like a set of guiding hopes that materialize when you practice this autonomy. Exactly. She writes that her life flows with ease, balance, and grace, and she stands with dignity. For ourselves, but not against our fellows. Yes, not against our fellows. And crucially, she harbors absolutely no ill will toward her former husband. She refers to him now simply as her qualifier, which is recovery speak for the person whose addiction essentially qualifies the loved one to need a seat in those meeting rooms. Right? It's a term of objective fact. It's completely stripped of blame or malice she simply recognizes alcoholism. Purely for what it is a disease. She expresses immense gratitude for the people who forged the path of recovery before her. You know, the people who sat in those folding chairs and shared their shame so that she had the opportunity to grow and thrive. Absolutely. So to you listening, the ultimate takeaway from Kim's deep dive into the darkest parts of her life is a powerful message of liberation. Because true serenity doesn't come from perfectly managing your circumstances. And it definitely doesn't come from constantly curating the behavior of the people around you. Never works, right. It comes from internal progress. It comes from recognizing your own enormous potential when you finally put down the magnifying glass you've been holding over someone else's life and pick up a mirror to look at your own. Which leaves us with one final vital question to ponder as we wrap up today. All right. What is it? Well, if the illusion of control is just a trap and trying to control the uncontrollable makes us sicker than the person creating the chaos, what other areas of your life are you secretly trying to micromanage? Are there relationships or perhaps situations at work where you are putting your own life on hold, waiting for someone else to change so that you can finally feel happy? We sure. Hope you enjoyed and got something out of today's show. I know. I sure did. As a reminder, this podcast exists to share experience, strength, and hope, not advice or instructions, and is not a replacement for meetings or professional help. Support is always available through the national help line at 1-800-662-FOUR 3 5 7. We are producing this as a not-for-profit project. Nonetheless, we are asking for donations only to help defray the costs involved in producing and publishing the podcast. There is no obligation, but if you feel inclined to donate to Miles of Recovery, it's easy at buy me a coffee.com/miles of recovery. We hope to hear from you and we truly appreciate all the recent feedback. Keep them coming. Feedback and story submissions are always welcome at Daryl r@milesofrecovery.com. That's D-A-R-Y-L r@milesofrecovery.com, and if you enjoyed this podcast, remember to like, share and follow. We'll be back next week with a story about an interesting and enlightening ninth step journey. We're looking forward to sharing with you then. Thanks for being with us.