{"id":3844,"date":"2024-01-17T09:48:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T22:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/feeling-nothing-craving-everything-acoa-adult-children-of-alcoholics-syndrome\/"},"modified":"2024-01-17T09:48:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T22:48:46","slug":"feeling-nothing-craving-everything-acoa-adult-children-of-alcoholics-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/feeling-nothing-craving-everything-acoa-adult-children-of-alcoholics-syndrome\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Nothing, Craving Everything: ACOA (Adult Children Of Alcoholics Syndrome)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Behind every alcoholic parent, there is a child of an alcoholic and, with over&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ukat.co.uk\/addiction\/alcohol\/#:~:text=Alcohol%20addiction%20in%20the%20UK,-Alcoholism%20has%20been&amp;text=In%20fact%2C%20according%20to%20NHS,smoking%20and%20obesity%2Drelated%20diseases.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">7.5 million<\/a>&nbsp;people in the UK showing signs of alcohol dependence, that\u2019s an awful lot of children who will be affected by their parents drinking (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lifeworkscommunity.com\/blog\/helping-children-with-alcoholic-parents#:~:text=Statistics%20show%20that%20one%20in,problems%20remains%20a%20hidden%20topic.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one in five<\/a>&nbsp;children, to be exact.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When you grow up in the house of an addict,&nbsp;forced to take on the role of adult as you \u2018parent the parent\u2019, your childhood is characterised by chaos, unpredictability, and (lack of) control.<\/p>\n<p>When you know that what is happening at home is wrong, that a child should not be in that environment (when your mother herself has told you so, yet continues to do it anyway), somewhere along the way you have to pretend that you don\u2019t care, pushing the emotions away as far down as they will go. Because, as hard as home life is, you\u2019re told that being in care will be harder, \u2018and if social services get involved, that\u2019s exactly what will happen\u2026\u2019, as she would remind you every time you\u2019d shout, in between cries, that \u2018it\u2019s not fair.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Having essentially been forced to remain silent for 18 years, left with no choice but to make numbness my default so as not to \u2018slip up\u2019, and the years after that forgetting that there was an alternative, it is only now, aged 22, that I am, slowly, opening myself up to emotion and it is&nbsp;<strong><em>interesting<\/em><\/strong>, in a word.<\/p>\n<p>To be able to feel things that I have spent a lifetime not feeling.<br \/>To be able to feel something other than\u2026nothing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/counterarts\/feeling-nothing-craving-everything-acoa-adult-children-of-alcoholics-syndrome-5a7a059a2848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"button\">For complete story<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Behind every alcoholic parent, there is a child of an alcoholic and, with over&nbsp;7.5 million&nbsp;people in the UK showing signs of alcohol dependence, that\u2019s an awful lot of children who will be affected by their parents drinking (one in five&nbsp;children, to be exact.) When you grow up in the house of an addict,&nbsp;forced to take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-need-counselling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}