Personal Narrative: My Father's Addiction

A staggering 30% of U.S. adults have been or currently are alcoholics, and not all of them have abstained from parenthood. The essay “Under the Influence” by Russel Sanders tells the tale of a young boy who had an alcoholic father, who he could not understand why he was an alcoholic, except for the belief that he was possessed by demons. He didn’t live around any treatment centers that could help his father, for he lived in the backwoods of Ohio. He talked about the constant fear of his father beating him (which he never did), and the constant fear of his father leaving him (which he did for small increments of time). The trauma of having a father who was an alcoholic father stayed with Sanders well into adulthood.

Randomly, people will turn their drinking habits into a reason why to drink. Whether they drink to just have fun, to release some stress, or because they drink to help with various sorts of problems. Often, the alcoholic in the family starts drinking too much, causing the family to always be on edge and be cautious with his mood swings, because they never know how they’ll end up acting. Often in times a sign of abuse on alcohol is when ¨Legal problems, such as being arrested or harming someone else while drunk¨ said researchers in Talbott Recovery. Once the alcoholic figures what kind of power they have over the family, they’ll often tend to use it in a more manipulative way, to make sure they get what they want in the end of the day. And when they’re drunk, they could care less about the family and just desire to get another bottle, and to let their emotions/actions lash out. That is when a person ends up becoming an

Family problems can be at many levels. The children would lose all respect for the alcoholic parents because they cannot count on him; the

The emotional abuse that I have suffered through cannot be consigned into words. I believe the worst part of it all was never being enough for my father; I was never a good enough reason for my father to quit drinking. The abundant of support that we gave him wasn’t enough for him. All that agony has made me into the persistent and self-reliant man that I am today. From my dad’s experiences, it made me realize that he’s the type of person I don’t want to be. His disease made me able to find the many benefits of being raised by an alcoholic

Deciding to take up Commercial Shrimping, my dad bought a boat and started going out for 2 to 3 week trips. This was when my family really began to unwind. As a result, my mom began drinking and acting out more. Looking back, he must have had someone watching her, he always knew what was going in and when he came home there was hell to pay.

At a young age I was taught never to drink undrage because of how my uncle turned out as an adult. My uncle started drinking at a young age. He crashed my grandpa's truck at 17 years old while under the influence of alcohol. To this day my uncle is an alcoholic and has started doing drugs. My uncle lost his wife and kids because he's an alcoholic.

Growing up, I dealt with a mother who struggled with addiction; to be unambiguous, she was an alcoholic. She drowned in her alcoholism as it pulled her down an alarming road. She was dreadfully depressed and believed that alcohol was the only way to make her feel better, addiction blinded her from what a great life she could have ahead of her. Not a single member of our family knew how to help her comprehend how much happier she would be if she could stop drinking her sorrows away. When it came to family events, my mom would try to conform to how others were acting and act “sober” even though she was already countless drinks deep in to drinking. Nevertheless, my mother just wanted others to like her which would lead her to change her outward

Since, my father would drink on the job with his coworkers and we all know there is no tolerance of alcohol consumption on the job, he never kept a job. This affected him financially on attempting to raise four kids while keeping up with the bills. Even when he did work and got paid on Friday’s he would waste a large consumption of his check on alcohol and never worried if he had enough to pay the bills. The outcome of alcohol physically damaged my father on his health. He is a diabetic type II who never took his insulin when needed or checked his sugars. For the years of having uncontrolled diabetes he currently has damage to his feet and on a higher dosage of insulin with various times of injecting the insulin. The outcome of alcohol severely affected his relationship with his family. My father and his children relationship is at a hate and love mode by the damage he caused to the family. By the things I and my sibling had to experience as children there is not trust in his words. He would always say he would quit but never

Without a steady source of income, the bills normally acquired by a family (mortgage or rent, groceries, utilities, and so forth) begin to accumulate, affecting the families financial situation further. In the book The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls gives multiple descriptions of how devastating alcoholism can be on a family financially. Jeannette’s father, who was an alcoholic, would often only hold a job for a few months at a time, and moved quite often to avoid bill collectors. “We were always doing the skedaddle, usually in the middle of the night” (Walls 19). At one point, he even resorted to stealing from his own daughter. “One evening in May, when we’d been saving our money for nine months, I came home with a couple of dollars I’d made babysitting and went into the bedroom to stash them in Oz (her piggy bank). The pig was not in the old sewing machine” (Walls 228). One can see this not only takes a financial toll, but an emotional one as well.

By the age of seven, I became used to the smell of tequila off my father’s breathe, which then usually coincided with his absence for the next few days. It was a regular for my father to be home one day, and gone for the next two weeks. I considered it beneficial when he was gone, as the house was less chaotic and it was easier to do my homework. I didn’t want my father around; his presence was dangerous. While on a bender, my father had stolen my entire college fund that I had been saving up so he could use it as drug money, brutally beat my mother, totaled his car, and accused me of stealing his car keys. I was about eight during the time of most of these occurrences. Eventually, I had considered his addiction an aspect of my childhood.

My father is an alcoholic and so I have addiction in my genes. I have an addictive personality and I always have. I will never excuse the choices I made, but I will say I would never go back in time and change it. That part of my life has had the biggest impact on me and it made me who I am today. To this day, I work very hard to control my biological genetic addiction and I've been consistent with my sobriety and I have become a completely different and better person. I have been sober for two and a half years and I plan to keep that

This is a form of emotional neglect, and because of this neglect all three of my uncles and my dad have no idea how to talk or express themselves. They can not even talk to their own children or wives. My father and uncles were drinking when they were young, but only two of the four turned into alcoholics. When my grandfather died, one of my uncles was drunk at the funeral and was asked to leave by our family. This is what happens when parents use drugs while raising children.

Change of behavior caused by alcohols has negative impacts on one's surrounding and will, eventually, creates a rift among loved ones. Alcoholic can do anything without thinking for the future as long as they get the money to buy alcohol, ones may use the rental money for the house to buy alcohol and the worst case could happen is he loses his jobs. With this, drinker cannot be dependent on and divorce is inevitable as he could no longer support his family. Not few child abuse cases caused by alcoholic parents. Studies have shown that "2/3 of child abuse case involves alcohol" ("Facts about alcohol"). Family members also began to avoid friends, hide problems and cover up for the drinker as they are ashamed of their family member who is alcoholic. "More than one-half of American adults have a close family member who has or has had alcoholism" ("Dawson and Grant") Moreover, there is higher chances for their teenager child to be alcoholic too as they are used to seeing their parents drunk.

During withdrawal, I noticed my brother began to have tremors. His hands would shake and he would be diaphoretic. I knew these symptoms were not good but he always corrected it with another alcohol beverage. My family went through so much to help my brother. My father stopped drinking and my mother was drug free. Their main focus was getting my brother help. It took us to realize that he had to help himself in order to be successful in his treatment. After losing custody of his son and having a court order for rehabilitation, my brother started his journey to being alcohol

It is well known that a parent with a drug or alcohol problem can have a negative effect on their family members. You could say that the person with the problem is like someone stuck in a bog. The other family members, in their efforts to help, often get pulled down into the bog too. The first step in putting things right is when the others start to get their own feet on solid ground. Only after they have done this will they be able to help tackle the addiction problem.