I'm glad that AA worked for you. And yes I couldn't be happier either that alcohol is no longer part of my marriage, and immediate family. It was a real 'three's a crowd' feeling in the marriage. I haven't seen anything good come from drinking and I've seen a lot of the bad. I've never been drunk ever, so I am totally biased and anti-alcohol but I have 3 out of 3 siblings that are alcoholics. One is disowned for the last 5 yrs. so I don't know about him today, my one other brother has been heavily drinking for the last 3+ yrs. from financial problems and took up pot too (yeah, that's cheap on the budget, NOT!), and my sister has been drinking every day for the last 16 yrs. or so. As I used to say about my husband when asked if I drink, I said no, he drinks enough for the both of us, now my siblings do.
Wow, Tina. Prayers out for your family.
Given your family history, as you relate, that's probably a really good thing.
Here is the way I look at it. Some people shouldn't drink - they are just not wired to be able to handle it. Some of those are smart, or lucky enough to never pick it up at all. A reasonable person, upon finding out they can't handle alcohol, would not DRINK alcohol. But alcoholics aren't like that. They can't do it the easy way. They suffer from an obsession of the mind and a compulsion of the body. The compulsion means that when they drink any alcohol at all they crave more. The great obsession of every abnormal drinker is that "this time" they will be able to handle it. That's directly from the Big Book. But you can see that what it is, is a glorified, nasty form of Obsessive/Compulsive disorder.
For these people, to overcome it requires the willingness to use every tool at their disposal to get over this affliction. If that means sitting in a room for an hour every day with a bunch of sober addicts and alcoholics with an open mind and a closed mouth well... that really isn't a very big price for getting their lives back, don't you think?
For the record, I am one of "those" people. I had five years as of last March 31, and I've been trying since 1986. People go back out, but they also stay sober, often for very long periods of time. This five years has been really difficult. I have'nt been necessarily all that happy or hopeful. But I've known, down to my core, that there is nothing left for me "back there" with the drinking and the drugs. There's nothing to go back to. There's only God. I just keep trudging along following Him now, good mood or bad, happy or depressed, whether I feel like it or not. I try not to think about it too much. I just do it.