This book goes beyond helping one to understand addiction and the dysfuctional family. It also helps to describe the need for a 'new profession' of therapy that is beyond the profssion of medicine. It has been my experience that people who have spiritual experiences often tell me that neither doctors or inisters have been able to help them understand these experiences. Karen is a new breed of therapist who is dealing with a vast range of experiences, which have enormous impact on people's lives. I highly recommend her book. Dr. Raymond E. Moody, Jr.
You're Not Finished Yet ...
By Karen HerrickAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Rev. Karen E. Herrick
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4567-5471-6Contents
— Introduction................................................................7— Alcoholism..................................................................22— Personality Traits from Alcoholic & Dysfunctional Homes.....................36— Problems With Your Roles Out In The World...................................50— Only the Shadow Knows.......................................................62— What About the People Who Really Won't......................................80— Wanting More Substance Through Spiritual Food...............................103— Finding Your Truth and Substance............................................127— Acknowledgments.............................................................129— Bibliography................................................................132— Internet Resources..........................................................133
Chapter One
Alcoholism
On December 16, 1985, Eileen Moon wrote on page one of the "Lifestyle Section" of The Register, a Monmouth County, New Jersey newspaper, "Karen Herrick, like many others practicing in the young field of alcoholism counseling, is using her wounds to heal. When she was a child, Herrick suffered the daily turmoil of life in an alcoholic home. Now, as an adult, she counsels others who have survived or are now suffering from the effects of an alcoholic environment.
Herrick is one of a growing number of social workers, psychologists, teachers, and healthcare workers whose personal or professional experiences have led them to seek specialized training in the field of alcoholism treatment.
I returned to college to become the man I had always wanted to marry! I was a single mother raising my two daughters after my divorce from my alcoholic husband. If I wanted a different life for me and my children, I would have to get to work.
I was very lucky that Rutgers was close to my home and somewhat affordable for me. At that time it was the only college in the United States to have a minor in Alcohol Studies. I arrived at Rutgers through a series of synchronicities. A Synchronistic Event — a Jungian term — is a type of spiritual experience. It is an event of a meaningful coincidence where two or more random events occur and have significant meaning for a person. Sometimes the person doesn't recognize the meaning at the time of the coincidence and sometimes they do.
In my final semester at Jersey City State College where I earned my Bachelor's degree, I took eighteen credits in one day, going to school from 7:45 AM until l0:30 PM. This schedule allowed me to do an internship on other days and to also be a mother to my daughters.
Just before graduation I found out that in order to really earn a livable salary in my chosen field I needed a Master s degree. You might say that not to have known this beforehand was poor planning on my part.
It's a good lesson in focusing, however. Keep your mind on the next goal. When you finish that goal, then you can begin another goal. And, you don't have to know what you want to be when you grow up. If you keep focusing on different goals, one at a time, you will eventually know and become what it is you want to be. Most people believe you have to know before you begin, but for many of us it simply doesn't work that way.
In order to save money and time, and also to allow me to concentrate on my intern work I had taken extra courses — as many as eighteen credits in one day — and I graduated ahead of schedule. My advisor was caught off-guard by my accelerated schedule and didn't realize until it was very late in the game that I would need to earn my Master s degree before setting out to make a living. I now had to set about the task of getting into a Master s program.
I contacted Rutgers University and was told the program was already full. I asked them to send me the application anyway. I filled it out, wrote my essay about how my life experience would help me as a social worker and mailed the already-late application two weeks after I got it. There were other things going on in my life, so I didn't worry about whether the application would be accepted or not.
The following June, Rutgers sent me a letter congratulating me on my acceptance for the September term. I was shocked! I had been told that the program was closed and now of all a sudden I had been accepted. Sometimes it's good to come from an alcoholic home where you have learned that you don't always have to follow the rules. Since the authority figures are busy being drunk or worrying about the alcoholic adults, the kids get away with not following the rules all the time. This is one time when just going for it worked out for me!
The stress of my first semester of Graduate School was enormous. I cut my course load back from the eighteen credits I had planned on taking to a somewhat more manageable fifteen credits. During the first two months of my first semester I was overwhelmed and I just didn't think I'd be able to make it through the program.
This stress during the first semester was finally relieved in November when a professor told us all to just breathe deeply and listen to him. He said in order to get into the program the prospective student had to write a paper and receive an 'A' grade on it. And that was why we were there — because we were all 'A' students. And here I thought it had been some sort of a mistake that I had managed to get in at all!
This is a perfect example of what most Adult Children of Alcoholics think about themselves throughout their lives. It's called the Imposter Theory: We believe we are imposters and are going to be found out — someone will find out that we don't belong with all the other "normal" people. Please remember: Dysfunction is normal. Most of the "other" people you re looking at during the day came from dysfunctional families too!
What is Alcoholism? Some simple guidelines
When I got to Rutgers and saw they had an Alcohol Minor, I thought: Well, my father drank. We didn't call him an alcoholic, but he drank. We called the man across the street an alcoholic because he went to "those meetings." My soon-to-be ex-husband said he drank "because he was a salesman," and thing were always worse in our marriage when he drank. I to k the minor.
So, different alcoholisms look different. My father was a truck driver who drank on the way home from work and many times didn't make it home at all. My ex-husband was a high-functioning salesman who only drank when he came home at night — every night. He would come home at night, have cocktails before dinner, wine with dinner and then sometimes a brandy after dinner.
Understanding the metabolism of drugs and the drugs' relationship to intoxication was one of the fundamentals of a course entitled, "Alcohol and Other Drugs." This is where I first learned that alcohol is a drug, which coming from my family was news to me. In our house, as in many homes, it was just normal to drink.
The amount of alcohol in a beverage is what counts. The chart below will show you, on average, how much alcohol is in a typical beverage if it is measured accordingly (based on one ounce).
You can see by this chart that whatever you drink, if the drinks are measured, you are getting almost the same amount of alcohol no matter the type of alcoholic beverage.
But, alcoholics do not use those small one and one-half ounce jiggers when they are measuring mixed drinks. They usually pour from the liquor bottle straight into their glass, so they are probably mixing double drinks for themselves — at least!
Most people think beer doesn't have the same effect on people as wine and distilled spirits, and even though carbonated drinks get into your blood stream a bit faster (thereby exacerbating the effect of the alcohol). The big news here is that a drink is a drink if it's measured properly.
Important Facts:
Your liver is the organ of metabolism and you need to pay attention to it for your health. Your body's ability to break down drugs (like alcohol) will be affected terribly if there is damage to your liver.
Alcohol is basically a depressant. The first drink gives a sense of euphoria but every drink thereafter is taking you down. This is why people from alcoholic families become depressed. Alcohol adds to depression in the alcoholic and for people who live with the alcoholic. Alcohol also accentuates your senses, which is why at cocktail parties everybody talks so loudly.
Alcohol can either increase or diminish prescription drug action even with moderate drinking. You should ask your pharmacist for information about drinking if you are using any prescription drugs.
Definition of an Alcoholic:
If drinking interferes in your life in any area — family, socially, job, etc. — you can be considered an alcoholic.
The Formulas are:
Psychological Dependence + Compulsion = Addiction/Physical Addiction = Addiction
Someone who has psychological dependence may also be considered an alcoholic. Psychological dependence sounds like this: "I like it. I deserve to buy a six-pack on my way home tonight. I'm going to do that and go home and watch my favorite TV show."
Compulsion — which is an irresistible impulse to perform some irrational act — is also part of the make-up of an alcoholic. Compulsion was defined in Dr. Corrigan's class, "Alcohol and Other Drugs," as the need "to take a drug on a continuous or periodic basis, in order to experience its psychic effects, sometimes to avoid the discomfort of its absence. Tolerance may or may not be present. A person may be dependent upon more than one drug."
Simply stated, compulsion means that a person usually loses count of how many drinks they have had. When someone is in compulsion, they have an inability to stop using.
After psychological dependence and compulsion, a physical dependence will develop. This is where the body depends physically on having a certain amount of alcohol everyday. This physical dependence may take years to develop, depending on your individual physical makeup.
No one starts drinking or using drugs intending to become addicted; however, if usage continues, addiction is usually the result. Physical addiction does not necessarily have to be present for an addiction to be diagnosed.
Binge Drinking
Usually an alcoholic needs to drink a certain amount unless they are a binge drinker. A binge drinker is usually someone who doesn't drink for days, weeks or even months but when they do drink they will drink to get drunk. Many binge drinkers drink for days at a time, sometimes ending up in a different city from where they started. Even though binge drinkers can go for long periods of time without drinking, when they do start to drink they consume a large quantity of alcohol at one time and usually experience negative consequences because of their drinking.
Draw a continuous line with Abstention on one end and Alcoholism on the other end. In the middle somewhere is the line that one crosses when they become an alcoholic. The chart below will help you determine that line.
Amount People Drink
A general chart to aide in understanding different amounts that may cause problems for people who drink:
__Abstainer: Less than one drink a year or not at all.
__Infrequent: At least one drink a year but less than one a month.
__Light: At least one a month but no more than one or two drinks at a time.
__Moderate: Several drinks per month. No more than three to four drinks on any occasion. Usually a "weekend drinker."
__Heavy: Someone who drinks nearly everyday, usually with five or more drinks at a sitting.
__Heavy Escape Drinker: Good predictor of possible problem.
People who drink for the following reasons have been shown to frequently have a problem with drinking:
1) It helps me relax
2) I drink to forget everything
3) I want a particular mood
4) I only drink when I am tense and nervous
Source: (Cahalan, Cisin, Crossley, {Dr. Corrigan's Class})
Gender and Alcohol
Women absorb alcohol faster into their bodies than men so alcohol becomes more concentrated in their blood.
This means they usually become intoxicated faster because they are generally smaller. Alcohol gets stored in the body's fat cells and women have more fat on their bodies than men. As women get older, there may be an increase in body fat. Women's stomachs are also less able to neutralize alcohol.
Because of these reasons, women become addicted to alcohol faster than men. Another problem for the female alcoholic in our society is that it is still more socially acceptable for a man to be an alcoholic than it is for a woman.
Intoxication or Drunkenness Varies By:
Body weight Stomach content Tolerance Age Gender The amount of alcohol you drink
Greg, an eighth-grade boy who came to me for counseling on a regular basis, once came to his appointment with a friend of his. They had both been out drinking on the previous Saturday. Greg said they both had the same amount to drink, and that his friend had gotten drunk while he had not.
I told him that he already had built up a tolerance to alcohol — he could drink more than his friend and it didn't affect him because he was used to drinking. I asked him if this was true and he answered in the affirmative. I knew Greg's father was an alcoholic and I had learned through our counseling sessions that Greg didn't want to be like his father. Children of alcoholics often claim that they don't want to be anything like their alcoholic parent.
"If you don't want to be like your dad, why do you drink then?" I asked.
He stated he wasn't going to be like his father because his father drank the "hard stuff" and he "only drank beer." Showing him the equivalency chart, I pointed out to him this same mistake most people make.
Teenagers who use alcohol and drugs don't develop a sturdy well-knit ego and so become unable to handle frustration. This person usually grows into an adult who has temper tantrums.
Tolerance must be present for a person to become physically dependent on alcohol. Physical tolerance is basically defined as a need for more and more of the drug to get the same effect. Tolerance is really just maintaining your level of the need for the drug — as your tolerance increases, you become more physically drug-dependent.
There is another kind of tolerance known as behavioral tolerance. This is where an individual learns how to compensate for the effect of the drug. For instance, I've heard recovering alcoholics brag that they taught themselves to walk a straight line straighter drunk than they could walk it sober.
Blackouts
Blackouts are periods of amnesia that last for the time a person is intoxicated. It's an early sign of alcoholic drinking and shows that you've had so much to drink that you have affected the recent-memory part of your brain. What you did during this blackout never went into the memory part of your brain and was therefore never recorded there.
This is why interventions with alcoholics — where family members sit down with a therapist and intervene with the alcoholic by reading them meaningful letters telling them of times when they have been drunk and how this has affected them — work so well. Most of the time, the alcoholic doesn't remember many of these stories because of alcoholic blackouts. Through intervention, the alcoholic begins to realize how out of control their drinking is and they often agree to get help through rehab or a therapist.
Phases of Drinking
In any good Alcohol Awareness class, you will be taught the three phases of alcoholic symptoms. These symptoms are signs of alcoholism and they may not always appear in the order indicated:
The Early Phase
Person is usually from 15 to 30 years of age Blackouts Drinking may be heavier than is customary but not regarded by family and friends as unusual Sneaking drinks Gulping first drinks Pre-drinking drinking (like drinking before going to a party) Unwillingness to discuss drinking Guilty feelings about drinking More frequent blackouts
The Middle Phase
Loss of control begins in this stage of drinking Flashes of aggressiveness Periods of abstinence Giving up drinking for Lent, for the summer, etc. This is considered to be proof there is no problem in spite of constant return to drinking Geographic escape "Let's move to another state to get away from the problem." Neglects eating Decrease in sexual drive Protects supply "If there are six beers in the fridge when I leave for work, there had better be six when I return."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from You're Not Finished Yet ...by Karen Herrick Copyright © 2011 by Rev. Karen E. Herrick. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
