Part 4: Families share the problem

Evan "Skeet" Ashby III and his son, Evan play with the pine derby carthey made recently. Such play days were rare before Ashby was treated for alcoholism. From left are Robert, 6; Blair, 8; Brenda; Skeet and young Evan, 11.
-- Tribune photo by Larry Beckner
Part 4: Families share the problem
‘The alcoholic makes
the whole family sick‘
April 18, 1999
By Eric Newhouse
Tribune Projects Editor
Mary Keeler‘s kids remember finding empty beer cans on the coffee table in the afternoon and trying to awaken their mother.
"She was sleeping a lot, and when I‘d get home from school, I‘d wake her up and ask what was for dinner," said her 12-year-old son Brian. "And she‘d say, ‘What are you still doing here?‘ like it was still morning.
"I didn‘t know what was wrong with her," he added, "and it scared me."
Evan Ashby‘s son remembers being afraid to get in the truck with his father when his dad‘s speech was too slurred.
"I felt an incredible peace the day my husband lost his job," said Brenda Ashby. "I felt that the worst had finally happened and now all we could do was trust in God to take care of us."
Mary Keeler and Evan Ashby III are alcoholics, an illness shared by perhaps 15 percent of the adults in Montana, according to state health officials.
On average, an alcoholic directly affects the lives of four other family members, friends or co-workers, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But it‘s the family that suffers most damage, says Rod Robinson, executive director of the Gateway Recovery Center in Great Falls.
Alcoholics focus on their drinking, often neglecting their families, he said. Most feel guilty about their behavior and take their anger at themselves out on their families through verbal, emotional or physical abuse.
They also neglect their family responsibilities, forcing spouses and children to take over some of their burdens. Experts say this leads to isolation, loneliness, insecurity and anger. Without treatment, the unhealthy family structure is likely to be passed on. Statistics show that children of alcoholics have a much greater likelihood of becoming alcoholics themselves.
Boredom and beer
Keeler‘s addiction to alcohol became serious when her kids went off to school and her husband, a long-haul trucker, was on the road.
"I was bored," she said. "I started with a little beer, but in the last couple of years, it got pretty heavy."
Housework was the first casualty. Dirty dishes littered the counters of her Sun Prairie Village home, and there were piles of dirty laundry.
"I remember once Brian asked me to wash his gym clothes, and I did," said Keeler. "But I didn‘t dry them. He didn‘t ask me to do that."
Both kids were concerned about the amount of beer their mom was drinking.
"We‘d always take a cooler of beer on our trips and that scared me," said Brian.
"I think the times that scared me the most were when she‘d get a six-pack of beer in town, put it in the back seat and drink it on the way home," said Stacy, 9.
"I was scared of accidents and of the cops finding out," she added.
But there were no accidents, not even a ticket.
Keeler‘s world changed three months ago in Rapid City, S.D., as she was on a trip back from delivering a trailer home with her husband, Doug.
They had gone out to dinner, had a few beers and gambled a little. Then she lost it.
"I started to have blackouts and hallucinations, to hear voices and see people who weren‘t there," she recalled.
"You were hollering and cussing at a candy truck," added her husband.
Doug Keeler knew his wife needed help, so he put her back in the truck and headed home fast.
"She was talking into a CD player that was turned off," he said. "She was talking to friends and people she knew through that turned-off CD player like it was a cell phone."
Doug Keeler checked his wife into the Benefis Healthcare Addiction Medicine Center, where doctors told him the hallucinations and delirium could have been fatal.
After 17 days of inpatient treatment, she was released for outpatient care.
Now the whole family is undergoing counseling and enrolled in various 12-step support groups to help heal the wounds of alcohol.
Back in the family
"I feel as though I‘ve been given the opportunity to start life all over again," said Mary Keeler. "I have a new appreciation for all the things my family is doing now that I can participate in them sober."
Brian feels a burden has been lifted off of him because he isn‘t forced to do the housework his mother had been neglecting.
"Mom‘s been getting up in the morning, driving us to the bus stop, helping me with my homework and baking stuff with me," said Stacy. "And I‘m not getting as angry as much with my mom."
"I‘m looking forward to having a family life," said Doug Keeler. "I‘m looking forward to going camping and having the while family with me, physically and emotionally."
Since alcoholism affects the whole family, the treatment must involve them too, experts say.
When the alcoholic ceases fulfilling his or her role in the family, others have to assume the burden, explained Sandra Schwartz, a Benefis family counselor.
The spouse of an alcoholic frequently becomes an enabler, picking up the pieces so the family can continue to function, she said. That enables the alcoholic to continue his or her destructive behavior.
"The oldest child frequently becomes the hero," added Schwartz. "He or she unconsciously recognizes a need for self-worth in the family and strives to provide it."
"The second child is blocked because the oldest child is getting all the strokes, so he or she frequently acts out in the other way, rebelling and creating trouble," she said.
"With the positive and negative roles already filled, a third child may disappear from the family dynamic," she said, "becoming what we call the lost child."
Another child may become the mascot or family clown, joking away the pain inside.
"These are all mechanisms for people to cope with the fear, loneliness and shame that they feel," said Mary Ann DuBay, another Benefis family counselor.
"I think people begin to heal and break the cycle when they learn to value themselves," said Schwartz. "Alcoholism is very much a self-esteem issue."
Holding the line
But it‘s also a matter of personal discipline, as Evan "Skeet" Ashby III found after he left the Air Force.
During his college career at Virginia Military Institute and during his 17 years as a navigator aboard C-135 refueling planes, Ashby kept his drinking under control, most of the time, because his job demanded it.
Then in 1994, he retired from Malmstrom Air Force Base and joined CUC, fielding incoming emergency road service phone calls.
"Without that absolute commandment not to drink for 12 hours before reporting for (military) duty, I gradually began doing things I should not have done," said Ashby.
He didn‘t spend much time in bars, but he spent a lot of time at home with a big bottle of Scotch.
"His speech would get slurry and I didn‘t want to be around him," said his 11-year-old son Evan. "He scared me."
"He spent a lot of time in his room, reading books and watching movies," agreed 8-year-old daughter Blair.
Young Evan remembers getting a glider on his last birthday and asking his dad to help him put it together. "He told me, ‘Maybe someday, but not today.‘ "
That was frustrating to Brenda Ashby, who let her anger build until it exploded in angry confrontations.
That‘s a familiar dynamic for family counselors, who tend to see anger growing in those forced to assume some of an alcoholic‘s family functions.
Only the alcoholic can choose to stop drinking, and that‘s usually only when the pain of the consequences outweighs the pleasure of drinking.
Denial to recovery
Nothing worked to block Ashby‘s growing obsession with alcohol. By last year, he was downing about 3.5 liters — or 120 shots — of Scotch a week. That‘s about twice as much as he had been drinking during his Air Force days.
"One night, he had been drinking and his speech was slurred and he frightened me, so I went to hide under the kitchen table," said son Evan. "Then the phone rang. It was my mom, and I told her dad was scaring me.
"She told me if he wanted to drive me anywhere, don‘t go," he said. "Get out of the house and run to your friend‘s house."
The drunken nights became half-drunken, hung-over mornings, and on one of them, a few days before last Christmas, Ashby was sent home to sober up.
When he reported to work the next morning, he was fired.
"When we got home that afternoon, I found my husband three sheets to the wind, so I took my kids down to the basement and asked them if they noticed anything about their dad," said Brenda Ashby.
"I said dad looked really depressed and his speech was very slurred," said Evan.
So Brenda Ashby told the kids her husband had lost his job.
Then she took the remainder of the bottle of Scotch to a friend‘s house and asked her to pour it down a drain.
Finally she came home, gave her husband a mental health hotline number and told him he needed help.
"He made the call and asked for substance abuse," she said. "I was shocked — but really happy."
"I‘m an alcoholic"
One way that the Addiction Medicine Center at Benefis Healthcare breaks through this behavior is with family group sessions, in which people who have hidden their problems for years learn finally that they‘re not alone.
"Almost without exception, women in our recovery groups heave a sigh of relief when they discover they can talk about their problems, that they can be accepted, and that there‘s hope," said Schwartz. "They also have to learn to identify their feelings and express them in an appropriate, respectful, non-blaming way."
Treatment also gives children a safe haven in which to demonstrate their feelings.
"Kids are amazing," said DuBay. "We do family sculptures and they show us physically what their roles are. A lot of truth comes out because it‘s a safe environment for role-playing. Frequently, addicts will be surprised at how others see them."
Sometimes, children can help their parents quit drinking, but usually only with the help of a trained intervention specialists.
"Children have a wide emotional swing from fear to intense anger," said Robinson of the Gateway Recovery Center, "but there‘s not much ground in the middle.
"They‘re fearful their parents will go away and stay away," he said, "and they‘re angry and hurt because they think a parent‘s drinking is their fault and the fighting that results from it is also their fault.
"It‘s an angry swirl of emotion," said Robinson. "Left to their own resources, they feel very helpless, very hurt and angry."
Without outside help, he said, children of alcoholics either adopt enabling roles or fall into drinking themselves to punish themselves and others.
Al-Anon is another self-help group for the families of alcoholics, giving them a forum in which they may bounce their problems and frustrations and receive suggestions and understanding. There are several such groups meeting each week in Great Falls.
Once family members understand the roles they play, counselors say, they can choose healthier, more normal ways of getting their needs met.
DuBay said Benefis family counselors have had a 70 percent success rate over the past few years.
"There‘s such great hope if we can get families to treatment," said Schwartz. "Families have an innate longing for peace, serenity and healing, and we can help them achieve it here."
Rebuilding family bridges
Four months of sobriety and treatment are making a big difference for the Ashby family.
"It‘s been amazing," said Brenda Ashby. "I had forgotten the person I married, but that person is back now. His sense of humor has returned, and several of my friends have commented that they don‘t know my husband now."
Ashby is working again, manning a phone for the incoming service calls for National Electronic Warranties.
The kids said their dad‘s isolation is disappearing.
"Sometimes his voice gets louder and he starts to tickle us and stuff," said Blair.
"He‘s been roughhousing with us more after treatment," agreed Evan IV. "I think it‘s a sign that he‘s feeling better inside."
For Ashby, sobriety has meant reconnecting with himself, relearning self-discipline, honesty and religion in a wide-ranging series of family discussions.
"Alcoholic insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results," he said. "It‘s denying consequences and outcomes.
"It‘s not rational behavior, but I did it for years and years," he said. "And I used to get so angry with myself for doing the same stupid things over and over again."
Now the family talks about moral values over dinner or in the car on the way to church.
"The number of times I lied to myself and to others about my drinking is something I‘m not proud of," Ashby said. "Sacrificing those moral values simply makes no sense to me now that I‘m sober."
That‘s a painful admission to make publicly.
"This (interview) is for me, to get this off my chest," said Ashby. "And if someone else can learn from this, that‘s great. We have to share, to help others.
"Reaching out to help others helps me too," he said.
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