Alcohol and Its Effects on Family Life

Alcohol and its effects on family life can have life long consequences for those who live under its influence. This is the view point from a child who survived the silent war that alcohol waged upon his family. I was the fourth child out of five, of which the two oldest were girls who were 10 and 7 years older. Following next in line was my older brother who was 4 years older and a younger brother who was a year under me. From what I understand, it was not always bad for us, for my sisters have told me that my father was a caring and good dad when they were little. When I came along, it was a different story, a story that is not beautiful in any sense. This is a real life experience, one that was lived by me and was considered to be acceptable for I did not know any better at this time. It was not until later on in life that I found out that the hell that I lived through during my childhood was abnormal and the consequences that it had on my life left a lasting and profound wound that may never heal.

My father was an alcoholic who would go out on binges that would last for weeks. The drinking would start out after his work, and he would come home late, tipsy, slurring his words, feeling jovial. Then on each progressive night, the time that he would come home would be later and later, along with being more intoxicated. As this progressed, so did the maliciousness where beatings were a normal part of our lives. Then towards the end of a binge, he would come in and pass out. Sometimes a taxi would bring him home and after he left the cab he would pass out on the front lawn. Sometimes when he came home in this soon to be normal condition, he would puke, urinate and or defecate on himself loosing all control of bodily functions. There were times when he came home where he would be in a mean mood and he would start beating us kids and or my mother. To me, in my eyes, this was a normal condition in our house with him being drunk, something that will always happen, a condition that I learned to live with.

One learns as one goes along in life. I remember at one time when I brought home a friend, and he came in drunk, and started to chase me, taking his belt out so that he could beat me. As he was stumbling all over the place, swinging his belt, and finally falling down on the floor and passing out, my friend was awe struck and ran away fearing for his life. What this had taught me is not to have friends. I never brought anyone home again, for I learned that anything could happen especially if he came home drunk. This led me down the path of being anti-social, where I did not communicate with anyone and where I did not form bonds with anyone. Solitude was my escape from reality and all that was going on in my life.

We were raised up as Catholics, where I was told countless times by my mother that I was going to die and go to hell. We were raised up to believe in a loving and merciful God who looks out for his flock and protects them from all things bad. Raised up to attend mass on Sundays, where we were forced to go by my mother, sometimes having to step over my dad who was passed out in the doorway just to get outside to go to church. As times got worse for me, because my older brother picked up on beating me, something that he learned from my dad, I would seek solitude. I would go down to the Hondo River which was dry for most of the year, and hide in the overgrown weeds. It was there, where I would cry, think and pray. I would pray to God asking him to come down and deliver me from all the hell that I was going through. There was no response, for things only got worse. Then I started to think that I was really bad and that everything that is happening is my fault and that God was punishing me because I was infected with the devil and his bad ways and that I was really going to go to hell when I died. This thinking led me to believe that I was praying to the wrong person, and that I should be praying to the devil. I believed that I was making the devil mad because I was praying to God and not him. Thus began my prayers to the devil and how sorry that I was for praying to God when I should have been praying to him instead. My prayers still went unanswered. The beatings and abuse continued by my dad, by my mother and by my older brother. More crying and thinking on my part, in the dense overgrowth of weeds that made up the dry Hondo River, which resulted in more soul searching, and coming to the conclusion that there was no God or Devil and that all the praying that I had been doing was for nothing. The only good thing about the solitude of the Hondo River was the fact that as long as I was there I knew that no harm could come to me. While I was there by myself wallowing in all things that was effecting my life I vowed to myself that if I ever got married and had kids that I would not treat them like what I had been brought up. I would then dream about love, and how everything would be like the fairy tales that Walt Disney wrote about. I dreamed that if my future wife were to cry, how I would gently kiss her tears away and tell her that everything would be all right. I would dream about us having children and how the house would be filled with laughter and happiness, where there would be no more hatred or beatings. The solitude of the Hondo River forged these ideas into me, for I did so desperately wanted to change my life and everything in it.

I am now 57 and have two wonderful daughters who I never laid a hand on in anger or while under the influence of alcohol. Both daughters went on to attend college and to obtain degrees. The oldest has blessed me with a grandson whom I love very dearly. The effects from my childhood still haunt me to this day. I am anti social where it is hard for me to get close to anyone or to allow them to get close to me, unless they were born within my immediate family. My wife has learned to accept this and knows about my past and I thank God that she understands as to why I hold people off at a distance. I have learned to overcome some of the bad things that happened to me from my past, but one can never overcome everything. I have learned only recently why my father was the way that he was. It was his escape avenue, his way of getting away from my mother. As a child, I thought that my mother was a saint, for it was her who looked after us. It was her who would take the metal flyswatter to us kids when we were bad and doing things that was against God’s rules. It was my mother who put the food on the table for us to eat, and it was her who saw that we had clothes to wear. My mother has disowned me, for I married a girl who was Hispanic, and my daughters are half-breeds. We are not welcomed at her house. The abuse that I suffered as a child still lingers on in my life, for even now, I long for my saint, my mother, to accept me into her life. My mother, who often told me that I would never amount to anything, who has disowned me for marrying outside my race, who will not accept my daughters, is the one who abused me the most and it is her whom I still want to please.

The effects from alcohol on ones family can not be overcome easily. The life long consequence that results from the abuse of alcohol is hard to conquer. While one is living under this problem, it may over shadow the real problems that are going on in ones household, which may take years or decades before one recognizes what or who the real problem was. One visible problem may hide the real underlying problem, for all that is visible is all that everyone sees.