u/Accomplished-Baby97

I will not make amends to any of my family members.

The main reason is, financial.

My family owns a business and they are very conservative. They do not like AA and they really do not care whether I drink or not. They never said a thing while I was drinking, and they have never said one word since I stopped almost two years ago. They do not want to hear a word about it - they are completely uninterested in discussing any personal matters. This is the culture of my family — Its literally, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

I have tried to explain to my sponsor that I will not make an amends to them. it would be very bad and my family members would view it almost as an almost criminal admission. also some of them currently drink way more than I did while I was an active alcoholic . They will DEFINITELY see any amends as me “being holier than thou” and “showing off” by doing some “saintly” apology for drinking that didn’t even bother them bc they were wasted too

anyway I adore my sponsor, love all my AA work but there is no way I am doing this. my family member are VERY nasty and I am the black sheep anyway so admitting to drinking and being in AA could definitely get me cut out of the business. I am pretty much out anyway but an amends would be a death knell for anything left

OP: You AA’s are incredible. Thank you all. Unbelievable we can have such mature, intelligent discussions about deep stuff . Dam.

My father did not raise me, he was divorced from my mother when I was 5 years old.

He never physically assaulted me but he was verbally abusive — blaming all his problems on me. He told me when I was 15 that I was “the number one problem in his marriage” even though I did not live with him and of course a child is not responsible for an adult’s marriage.

Mostly it was just pure neglect. No phone calls, no conversations. No interest in any of my activities or achievements at school. Custody visit days were spent running errands with him in his car, or I sat and read a book by myself while he watched sports on the TV. He never bought me a Christmas gift, birthday gift, no compliments, no special time. There are no photos of me in his home (he re-married and had two more children). It’s like I never existed but the reasons why were never clear. To be clear, I wasn’t a bad teen, I had straight A’s and got into a top college.

Now that I am older, the same pattern exists. He has only met my children (his grandchildren) a handful of times and he never asks about them. Doesn‘t even know their birthdays or what grade they are in. I almost never see him (once every few years) when I travel there and he is very friendly but it’s almost like he’s visiting a neighbor or someone he used to know from his past. He’s friendly but no emotion. He also has a lifelong pattern of taking little passive aggressive jabs at me (mostly he makes jokes about how I am incompetent with money or useless at my career - he was very successful financially although completely hated by all his colleagues).

I would go NC but it feels like I am NC already. He never texts, never calls, he doesn’t even know my address so again it’s not like there’s some argument or conflict that is triggering this. I just wonder why I am even bothering to call him once every six months or so? Aging has not affected him; he is 86 and does not want anything from me , even a visit . I asked him about visiting possibly this summer and he seemed unethused. He does not have dementia but I should note, he drank heavily after he retired and the last time I saw him one year ago he drank heavily during our visit.

he seems to be in a lifelong emotional coma— has anyone heard of someone like this?

I wonder if anyone has had this experience.

I’m a writer (a very bad, poorly published one) but I have been a huge reader and literature fanatic my whole life. I have been going back and reading some of my favorite authors now that I am in sobriety — and my whole view of their work has changed. J.D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Denis Johnson, Robert Stone, now I am reading a set of short stories by Robert Bingham who died of a heroin overdose at age 33.

its just painful re-reading some of these works by tortured souls. Every character is just an addict or a depressed unhealthy sick and suffering individual obsessed with themselves. i suppose most healthy people rejected a lot of these works but now I find myself almost unable to read the works of literature i used to love. it’s not that the writing is bad — it’s just so painful being ”inside the minds” of clearly suffering people.

I guess I will scratch Robert Stone from this list — he really has depth and an understanding of the human condition, its like he knows both sanity and insanity. But the other writers seem to be deep into the mire of misery.

Robert Bingham’s short stories are so alarming I cannot believe people gushed over him and thought he was a serious budding literary giant. he was compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald before he was found dead in a bed with a needle sticking out of his arm.

anyway thanks for listening. I think I had enuff of these books and going back to the AA speaker tapes for night time wind-down. I’m clearly not well enough to read books by people in untreated alcoholism or suicidal depression. I cannot believe these books were taught in schools!! no wonder I was so fucked up growing up. I grew up in a literary family

UPDATE FROM OP: Thanks for all the awesome replies. Lots of literate AA’s here on Reddit. I guess we are not all “bozos on a bus,“ not that I have anything against bus-riders or antiquated circus characters. At least my brain isn't pickled and I can form a thought before tossing a Bret Easton Ellis novel into a bonfire .