by Joe Schrank, who’s been on both sides of the bottle and still has a working bullshit detector
Let’s talk about Al-Anon.
For some, it’s a life raft. A place to go where other people nod in recognition as you describe your life with the recalcitrant teen… who’s now 42, hasn’t had a full-time job in a decade, and still blames you for that time you forgot to pick him up from baseball in 1993. Or the husband who drinks a “little too much” every single night and has done so since the Bush senior administration. You’ve tried everything: threatening to leave, dumping the booze, praying, nagging, pleading, Googling “what to do when your husband is drunk again,” and yet… here we are.
So you go to Al-Anon. Some folks find community, wisdom, and even some healing. Others find it off-putting. And to be fair, it can land somewhere between a group therapy session and a Sunday school lesson about surrendering your will to a Higher Power who may or may not be a bearded man in the clouds. It’s mutual aid cloaked in a language that doesn’t always resonate. And if you’re not careful, it can veer into a pity party where everyone takes turns talking about how much pain they’re in without ever actually doing anything about it.
My personal favorite is the Al-Anon meeting full of needle-pointers—like a cozy little stitch-and-bitch circle. Good vibes, handmade coasters, and a low hum of emotional devastation.
Still, let’s not throw the whole thing out. Because here’s the part worth listening to: having a loved one who struggles with addiction is a full-time job in emotional labor—and that experience alone is a powerful place from which to do your own work. Not because you caused it, and not because you can cure it. But because, let’s face it, being in relationship with someone deep in addiction will expose every crack in your emotional foundation.
You don’t have to accept every tenet of Al-Anon to get better. You don’t have to pretend powerlessness is noble or that your growth depends on divine intervention. Though I sometimes wonder, if there is some micro-manipulative God up there, is He/She saying, “Jesus, do I have to do everything? I give you people options… use them.”
You do have to do something. Start here:
If Someone You Love Has a Substance Use Problem, Try This:
- Get support, but be choosy. If Al-Anon isn’t your thing, find a therapist who gets codependency or try a secular support group. Just don’t isolate.
- Stop trying to fix them. You’ll go insane. Address your own reactions, boundaries, and patterns. That’s the part you actually control.
- Learn the difference between help and enablement. One feeds recovery. The other feeds resentment.
- Take inventory. Not just of your stuff, but your payoff. Ask: “What am I getting out of this?” You’re not a victim, you’re a volunteer. So what’s the glue here? Do you get to feel justified, needed, superior? That’s a hard question, and it takes guts to answer it honestly. But all behavior is purposeful.
- Find your own goals. Recovery isn’t just for the person using. It’s for anyone whose life has been hijacked by someone else’s chaos.
Al-Anon says “detach with love.” I say detach with a backbone. The solution isn’t to fix the drinker, the addict, or the perpetually disappointing adult child. The solution is to fix you—or at least start asking better questions about what you need, who you are, and what a full life looks like beyond someone else’s crisis.
You’re not powerless. You’re just tired. And tired people deserve better tools than magical thinking.
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