By Stephen C. Schultz
For many years, I have worked with adolescents and families struggling through the consequences of substance abuse, risky choices, and fractured relationships. What continues to strike me is that alcohol is rarely just about alcohol.
In one story, a seemingly ordinary party at the beach became a vivid reminder of how quickly alcohol can alter judgment and change lives. In another, I explored how alcohol affects memory, emotions, and relationships, particularly during adolescence when young people are already trying to navigate identity, belonging, and self worth. Again and again, I have seen that the visible behaviors, drinking, acting out, conflict, and poor decisions, are often symptoms of something much deeper.
Perhaps most interesting is what happens long after the drinking stops.
Many people assume that when an alcoholic quits drinking, the problem has been solved. Yet families often discover that sobriety does not automatically heal the emotional wounds left behind. The habits, fears, coping mechanisms, and relationship patterns that developed in an alcoholic or dysfunctional home can persist for years, affecting spouses, children, and even future generations.
Children raised in these environments frequently learn lessons that help them survive but make it difficult to thrive. They may become caretakers, people pleasers, rescuers, or perfectionists. They may struggle with trust, fear abandonment, seek approval from others, or find themselves drawn into unhealthy relationships that feel strangely familiar. Even if they never take a drink themselves, they can carry the effects of the family system long into adulthood.
The following piece, adapted from "The Laundry List," a foundational Adult Children of Alcoholics text associated with Tony A. and the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) movement, describes many of these common characteristics. Although written decades ago, its observations continue to resonate with countless individuals who grew up in homes affected by alcohol dependence or other forms of dysfunction.
As you read it, consider not only the impact of alcohol on the person who drinks, but also its lasting effect on those who learn to live around it.
We had come to feel isolated and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures. To protect ourselves, we became people pleasers, even though we lost our own identities in the process. All the same we would mistake any personal criticism as a threat.
We either became alcoholics ourselves married them, or both. Failing that, we found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick need for abandonment.
We lived life from the standpoint of victims. Having an over developed sense of responsibility; we preferred to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative.
We were dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally. We keep choosing insecure relationships because they matched our childhood relationship with alcoholic or dysfunctional parents.
These symptoms of the family disease of alcoholism or other dysfunction made us 'co-victims', those who take on the characteristics of the disease without necessarily ever taking a drink. We learned to keep our feelings down as children and keep them buried as adults. As a result of this conditioning, we often confused love with pity, tending to love those we could rescue.
Even more self-defeating, we became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upset to workable solutions.
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