Here I am again, contemplating the effects of adding the drug alcohol to your brain. How can I even begin to explain the impact that alcohol has had on my life. It's in my genes. I have known it to cause death from an early age. While still in elementary school, our next door neighbor, who was a very close friend to my Dad, died holding my Dad's hand. He was in his early 30's. This warm and caring father's addiction progressed to vodka and decimated his liver. I can remember them playing checkers on snowy winter days. I can remember his little 5 year old girl being fatherless. I can remember my Dad crying.
The next family that lived in that same house became guardians of three teen agers, two nieces and a nephew after three drunken sailors hit the rest of their family of ten head on in St. Louis, MO. Seven of the ten family members were killed. At 56, I can still see the newspaper picture with all of the coffins coming down the steps of the church. Mom and Dad and five children were killed. I remember the teens talking about their baby sister being cut in half diagonally and as they tried to put a bow back in her hair while in the coffin, her hair fell out in their hand. Too much sadness.
I don't know where either of these families are today, but I am still effected by these memories. My own immediate family, as a child was not untouched by alcohol. I learned about how AA can help the terrible family destruction of alcoholism. I participated in support groups for Alateen and Ala-non. It's been fifty years of trying to learn all that I can for myself, my family, and how to help others so that they won't have to experience this disease that will take everything from you, even life.
With all the research today, how are people still tearing up families with their disease? How are people still dying?
The next family that lived in that same house became guardians of three teen agers, two nieces and a nephew after three drunken sailors hit the rest of their family of ten head on in St. Louis, MO. Seven of the ten family members were killed. At 56, I can still see the newspaper picture with all of the coffins coming down the steps of the church. Mom and Dad and five children were killed. I remember the teens talking about their baby sister being cut in half diagonally and as they tried to put a bow back in her hair while in the coffin, her hair fell out in their hand. Too much sadness.
I don't know where either of these families are today, but I am still effected by these memories. My own immediate family, as a child was not untouched by alcohol. I learned about how AA can help the terrible family destruction of alcoholism. I participated in support groups for Alateen and Ala-non. It's been fifty years of trying to learn all that I can for myself, my family, and how to help others so that they won't have to experience this disease that will take everything from you, even life.
With all the research today, how are people still tearing up families with their disease? How are people still dying?