A Family Affair
I’ve often seen generations of families getting drunk together at a bar. I’ve also seen them getting high and/or drunk at weddings, funerals, carnivals, in their own homes, at the kids soccer games and any number of other events. Heck, I’ve done it too.
While I personally do believe that there is some amount of genetics involved in addictive personalities, I also believe that addictive behaviors are learned. We learn by watching our parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, idols, etc., etc.. We also learn by being mentored.
What I mean by that is maybe when we were a baby we got some whiskey rubbed on our teething gums; or maybe when we were little we started being given sips of beer now and then; maybe we caught someone toking on a joint and they showed us how to do it too, either to show us how "good" it could make us feel or just so we couldn’t tell on them; or maybe someone taught us how to snort up, shoot up or cook up. Whatever way it happened – it happened – we learned.
The good news is we can un-learn. I’m not saying that we can ever forget what we learned to begin with because we just can’t, but we can learn to not do the things we learned. We can learn to live a new way…a new life. We can learn to live a clean & sober and hopefully healthy & sane life.
I know this because I see it happening all the time in "the rooms" of the anonymous programs I go to. I know this because I see it happening in the lives of my friends in recovery. I know this because I see it in my own life.
I got clean in a rehab that I didn’t really want to go to. I’m staying clean thanks to an anonymous 12 step program that I did not want to embrace and that I only attended because I was mandated to do so. However, by the time that mandate had expired I had begun to realize that perhaps, as much as I hated to admit it, just maybe I belonged here.
So, I decided to continue with it and little by little I have begun to see changes, not only in the people around me, but in myself. Small, subtle changes that each by themselves perhaps aren’t much, but when added up begin to amount to something of value. It’s a new me [a me I’m starting to like] and I am still a work in progress and that (in part) is what keeps me coming back.
Christine C. (me)
Anonymous Cafe 
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