By using a RSS reader, feedly, which I love more than I loved Google Reader, I can scan over 200 blogs daily. I have gotten very efficient at what I choose to use daily. I have also been adding some these to my Facebook page, Emotional Sobriety, which is my 12 step work.

The following are a few excerpts from some of my favorite blogs:

1. From codependentlife: “Enabling does not help“:

I could look at my alcoholic and see how flawed in his thinking was, but I could not see how flawed my thinking was. Who in their right mind would say and do the things that I did trying to save someone who did not want to be saved, and was angry because I tried to save him anyway. I saw my desperateness as evidence of how much I loved him. It was desperate all right, but it was not so about love as it was about fear.

What if he found someone else when he was out late and drinking with the guys. What if he left me? What if he lost his job because of drinking? How would we survive? What would our family and friends think if they knew the truth about his drinking? What if he got hurt or hurt someone else drinking and driving? What if he went to jail? What if his drinking was my fault? What if? What If? What If?

Desperately I tried through control and manipulation to keep it all together. It never occurred to me that “my helping” only helped him to deny that he had a problem, and it helped him to continue drinking. I was the one that wanted him to stop and my wants were not his wants. My helping did not help him with his drinking problem, but it did help to make matters worse.

At the time “enabling” was not a part of my thought process. I was to busy trying to control him and keep him out of trouble. It never occurred to me that all of my helping only made matters worse. His desire and need to drink was beyond my comprehension. I could nurse a drink all night long and not even finish it. I just could not understand why he could not control his drinking. In my flawed thinking I was sure that it had something to do with me. I just had to try harder to be a better wife.

2.  From sobermomwrites: “Gifts I Give“:

The quiet that goes on in my head is worth everything to me.  Not to have my every waking moment tangled all up in when, how much, and with whom I will drink is a fucking miracle.  To not have to worry about the money I’m spending or will spend or what it’s doing to my body or my kids is a blessing.  To not have to panic when it snows or over a three-day weekend is liberating.  It’s a gift I’ve given myself and it’s worth everything.

Then if that’s not enough, to have lifted that burden from my family is the satin bow that completes the wrapping of this gift.  To relieve them of having to police me, worry about me, keep an eye on me and the wine bottles, make sure I’m moderating or making it to bed when I slip is a beautiful thing.

That’s the gift I’ve given to them.  Anything less robs them of their own piece of mind and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that to them again.  Alcoholism isn’t a singular disease (condition…whatever) that only impacts the alcoholic (no matter how much we tell ourselves that it is); it’s a cancer that spreads and infects everyone around the alcoholic in some way.  To somehow make my family responsible for MY alcoholism by asking them to help me moderate is, in my opinion, a goddamn sin.

One I am not willing to commit.

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