Just Let Me Do It!
Just Let Me Do It!
Just let me do it!
For American men in particular it is especially difficult to step aside and let somebody else do anything. Why is this? This is because of what we were taught from birth, who our parents were, and our built-in cultural bias that favors self-sufficiency.
First, the people who settled America at the outset were not typical of those who made up the population where they were born. This situation has been studied and documented throughout history, so I need not belabor the point, but there is and since the beginning of American history there existed a distinctly American personality. That personality has been celebrated in many forms for its self-sufficiency.
Second, those who study the archetypical man have identified him as an independent soul. An archetype is defined by Webster as follows:
The original pattern, or model, from which all other things of the same kind are made; prototype. 2. a perfect example of a type or group.
Going back to oral histories of primitive cultures, on through the earliest written documents depicting the differences between men and women, there has emerged an archetype for a man. Poets, artists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians…all of these disciplines have divided the sexes into the two archetypes. The following chart developed by Dr. Herbert Agan summarizes the overarching bent of each of the sexes. It was taken from Dr. Agan’s course titled Psychology of Gender from The University of Houston, which was recently filmed and aired over PBS television.
Over arching bent:
Men
Women
hierarchical
competitive
mastery of skills
achievement oriented
aggressive
egalitarian
cooperative
receptive
relationship oriented
process oriented
in touch with nature
I believe that our current state of affairs with men assuming the role of the enabler to alcoholic and the addicted family members in their lives, especially the women who they love, stems in large part from the above two deeply rooted archetypes. But here is the real issue; women are drinking more now than ever in history, as the following shocking studies indicate, and we men’s enabling codependent behavior is allowing them to die of their alcoholism earlier than their mothers or grandmothers.
As recently as June of 2008, a massive study was published documenting the increase in alcohol dependence among younger women since the end of World War II. Led by Richard A. Grucza, the researchers examined the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES), conducted in 1991 and 1992 and the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), conducted in 2001 and 2002. They compared lifetime prevalence rates from the same age groups and demographics, while controlling for age-related factors.
Women born between 1954 and 1963 were at 1.2-fold higher odds for lifetime drinking and those who drank were at 1.5-fold higher odds for lifetime alcohol dependence, compared with those born between 1944 and 1953.
“We found that for women born after WWII, there are lower levels of abstaining from alcohol, and higher levels of alcohol dependence, even when looking only at women who drank,” said Grucza in a news release. “However, we didn’t see any significant tendency for more recently born men to have lower levels of abstention, or higher levels of alcohol dependence.”
Grucza said these results shed more light on a “closing gender-gap in alcoholism,” due to higher levels of problems among women, while men have been more or less steady in their levels of alcohol dependence.
These researchers list five factors that they speculate have led to this jump in alcohol usage rates among women:
It became more socially acceptable for women to drink.
More women entered the workforce,
More women went to college,
Women were less hampered by gender stereotypes, and
Women had more purchasing power.
I am suggesting a sixth factor based on shorter-term more recent studies showing 14-22 women today matching their male counterparts in the use of alcohol, tobacco, and both legal and illegal drugs. We men, as police officers (see earlier blog post, “Why Grandma Doesn’t Get A DUI), attorneys, judges, physicians (see earlier blog “Doctor shopping Among Alcoholic Women), and clergy, husbands, boyfriends, sons, etc. continue to run interference for the ladies. We have to stop that and allow them to experience the consequences of their increased alcohol and drug usage. Only in that way will those bottoms be reached, forcing more women into recovery.
If you are a man who is enabling a woman to destroy herself with alcohol, please get help from a community resource such as Al-Anon (dial 1-888-4AL-ANON or access www.al-anonalateen.org), or reach out to any one of thousands of capable treatment centers, rehabilitation facilities, or hospital programs. PLEASE!
Alcoholics Anonymous has a term called “low bottom drunks.” This was the cycle in which Ken P. was raised as a child. Neither of his parents drank, but both were children of alcoholic mothers. Both parents had family trees filled with alcohol addiction in past generations. After watching two uncles die of acute alcoholism, he was married for 20 years to a woman who became an active alcoholic.
He is a singular man in that he has been active in the Al-Anon recovery program for 30 years, a program usually attended by women. He started attending meetings when men in Al-Anon were extremely rare. In 1976 he was one of only four male Al-Anon’s in a large town in central Georgia. During his three decades in Al-Anon, he has attended two to three meetings per week, led meetings, sponsored many men, spoken at major Al-Anon and AA conferences, and served as chairman of the board of directors for the Al-Anon Intergroup office, which serves over 200 weekly meetings in the Atlanta area.
He earned a BA degree in biology during the sixties. He performed menial labor for five years, working nights, weekends, and summers to pay his own way through college while supporting a young family.
Upon graduation, he entered the pharmaceutical industry as a sales representative. He was moved to Georgia and made responsible for sales to hospitals affiliated with medical schools, and then managed representatives responsible for sales in medical centers throughout the south. He was in the first class of hospital representatives selected for special training to set up and monitor drug studies. He successfully retired at 54 years of age.
The 12-step program of Al-Anon has given him a totally new life, which he shares with his wife. Next to his relationship with the God of his understanding, he values the deep loving relationship he and his wife have formed more than anything else.
Friends and family describe him as a high energy, focused man who throughout his lifetime has excelled at tackling major projects that require years of dedication and completing them with great success.
Recently, he has dedicated himself to his 12-step program, and to tutoring high school students. He began writing about the recovery process for men with addicted family members in June of 2006, and was soon joined by the son of an addict and father of an addict. The three men realized that the combination of their experiences in the corporate world, plus their exceptional levels of mutual trust developed after years of working the program together, they had a unique mix. Also, similar backgrounds with addicted family members were present. One had survived an addicted wife, one an addicted mother, and another an addicted daughter. Each could therefore approach the subject of addiction from a totally separate but unified viewpoint. The collaboration netted publication of the article titled “Are you Living with an Addicted Person?” in the July 1, 2007 issue of Going Bonkers Magazine. Soon another article for parents with addicted children was published, and material is now being published in magazines and in E-zines on a regular basis.
For the husband of an addict personally, publication of the book represents the chance to help the families of addicts on an even broader scale, which he is convinced is one of the most important purposes for his life.
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