Honors Thesis Presentation
Christine Lydon
April 29, 2011
Alcohol is responsible for about a third of all traffic
fatalities each year, is a factor in two out of three partner
abuse cases, and leads to 13,000 liver disease cases
 Cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, and
breast. In general, the risk of cancer increases with
increasing amounts of alcohol.
 Psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety, and
suicide.
 Social problems, including unemployment, lost
productivity, and family problems

Source: CDC
“As you imagine a mobile suspended from the ceiling of your living
room, notice how all of the separate pieces of the mobile hang
magically suspended in delicate harmony and balance with each other.
Although each part of the mobile might be a separate, fragile piece of
crystal or polished metal, the mobile as a whole seems to be at one with
itself - one beautiful, whole work of art. If you bumped against one
element of the mobile, it may move with a burst of energy and
unpredictable motion - but it does not move by itself. Because although
it appears to be a separate, solitary piece of crystal or metal, it is
connected nonetheless to the rest of the mobile by wire or string”
- John & Linda D. Friel in Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional
Families
“But I just never allowed myself
to be mad at him and I think
what I was angry about is that I
felt that we all got roped into
protecting him… my mother got
roped into protecting him when
she was 19 or 20 years old and
then when we were growing up,
we all protected him so he
wouldn’t be mad, and that’s what
it was, we all protected him, we
all tried to avoid things that would
upset him”



1 in 4 children in U.S. is growing up with alcoholism or alcohol
abuse in the family
Anxiety, depression, poor school performance, behavioral
problems, medical and emotional neglect, low self-esteem, PTSD,
physical and/or sexual abuse
Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) are disproportionately at
risk for drug and alcohol abuse, marrying a substance abuser,
developing mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression
“Children can represent an intrusion and a responsibility. Wife and
children become reasons or excuses for drinking… It is characteristic of an
alcoholic that he resents or avoids anything that gets between him and his
drinking” –Dr. Jack Hedblom, PhD
Qualitative
Research – “methodological techniques for
analyzing the nuances of quality of the human experience”
(Marvasti 2004)
Grounded
Theory – theory is generated through data
collection
Six
in-depth, semi-structured interviews that lasted between
45-90 minutes
 All ACOAs from the mid-Maine
region
 Participants recruited through a
local social worker
 5 women, 1 man
 All five women are recovering
alcoholics, man abstains from
virtually all alcohol use
 2 had alcoholic mothers, 2
alcoholic fathers, 2 with two
parents, both of whom were
alcoholics

“Under the rug” policy

“My mother is the kind of person is [sic] you don’t
look back, you always look forward. And I think
that’s an enabling, survival mechanism” (S1:9).

“When I first joined AA I was not willing to say
that my father was an alcoholic. In fact, one of the
things that bothered me about joining was that if I
agreed that I was an alcoholic then by definition he
must be, because he drank way more than I did”
(S3:10).
“The doctor asked him once about alcohol, and his
response was something like, he thought most everybody
who drank had a problem with it. So he wasn’t clueless, but
he also didn’t have the information”
“Back then, people didn’t really talk about [alcoholism]”
“But you only have a couple of drinks!”
“Mom, have you ever watched me mix a drink?”
“I don’t think my mother ever said anything [to my father
about his drinking]… And you know, by the time I was
adolescent and early adulthood I was drinking a lot. And my
brother was drinking a lot. So we were all like, no big deal!”
“See my dad drank beer and so I remember at around age
four, he trained me to go get his beer out of the refrigerator. And
somewhere along the line I said, ‘Can I have a taste?’ And he
said, ‘Yeah, of course you can have a taste!’ So I took a taste… I
would take quite a bit taste of his beer because that first taste
tasted really good to me and when I talk about it I can still feel
the alcohol going down into my legs. I remember feeling,
‘Woah, what is this?’”
“Her drink is her best friend. She told me that point
blank”
“I had clothes, I had food. I had nothing else. Because
it was my mother, my dad and the bottle”
“If my father was around, he would help. Well, even
though I’d have to drive, even when I was eleven”
“Whatever he was interested, I expressed an interest in.
Because he was the sun, the moon and the stars. And as
long as I had his attention, everything was great”
“I lived in constant fear. Constant. I couldn’t even go into a
darkened - I couldn’t even go into a lighted room by myself,
that’s how fearful - even when I had children, yeah. Even if I
had babies, if I was up alone I’d be scared to death. You know,
my husband could be in the other room sleeping and I’d still
be scared. And I carried that fear for a long, long, long time”
“Basically I was an infant trying to raise an infant. I didn’t
know how, I didn’t know how to be a parent [because] all I saw
was fighting and arguing and, you know, the backseat of the
car”
“I always end up in that friggin’ responsible role”
Interviewer: Both of your parents [were alcoholics]?
Rebecca: Mmhm. But my mother wasn’t, oh, I don’t know if she was, my
mother was a maintenance drinker. And her situation was more that her
maintenance drinking got caught up with some medications she was taking...
Interviewer: What do you mean by maintenance drinking?
Rebecca: Maintenance drinking is, a person like doesn’t necessarily get drunk
but they may drink a little everyday. For instance, when my mother would drink
wine, she’d water it down with water. So, so she might have three drinks in the
course of the day but there really wasn’t all that much booze in it.
Interviewer: So she wasn’t drinking to get drunk, or Rebecca: Well, (sighs) I don’t know.
 Wives more likely to stay with alcoholic husbands than
vice versa (Jacqueline Wiseman)
 Economic dependence
“He usually directed his anger at my mother. Um, the
one thing he used to tell my mother that I heard constantly
was that he never loved her and he never wanted to marry
her and that she forced him into it and of course I heard
that daily. He did not like women”
“She let him run the show, a lot”
While we must hold families
accountable for providing a
child’s basic needs, we must also
make sure that these families are
receiving the support they need
Family-centered approach to
alcohol recovery
Al-Anon and Alateen
programs in schools