CONTENTS

About This Course

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to the Issues
2. Understanding Alcohol Abuse
3. Understanding Violence Against Women
4. Alcohol and Domestic Violence
5. Alcohol, Sexual Assault, and Rape
6. Prevention and Early Intervention
7. Screening and Assessment
8. Diagnosis and Treatment
9. Legal and Ethical Issues

Supplements
Fact Sheets
Videos
Resources

Silence Hurts
Alcohol Abuse and Violence Against Women

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA)-Teenagers and Older

The consequences for children growing up in an alcoholic household are lasting. Listed below are some of the damaging norms that children learn and then carry into adulthood. For more information about adult children of alcoholics, you can go to Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization, Inc.

• ACOAs need to guess what normal behavior is. Many ACOA have been left to their own devices as children and acquired life skills by imitating others rather than asking questions. Absent an effective parent or role model, an ACOA may have a distorted image of what "normal" or "healthy" behavior is for an adult.

• ACOAs have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end. In many alcoholic families, promises were not always kept. Some projects were never finished-a room painted, a dollhouse built. The discussions that accompany ideas, such as those that describe how to complete it and what steps were needed along the way, were nonexistent. As an adult, if you have not seen how to take a project from beginning to end, you might not know how to do it yourself.

• ACOAs lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth. Lying is basic to the family system affected by alcohol. It may play a part in denial of unpleasant realities, cover-ups, broken promises, or inconsistencies. It is not necessarily telling someone something that isn't true, but the silence and omission of the truth that becomes a lie. The first and basic lie is the family denial of the problem. Unkept promises are also lies.

• ACOAs judge themselves harshly. Alcoholics never take responsibility for their own actions. Many alcoholic parents blame the children for things they do. Some say that the children are the reason the parent drinks in the first place. The children are never good enough, never perfect enough. If a person hears something repeated often enough, he or she ends up believing it. As a result, ACOAs internalize the criticisms as negative self-feelings.

• ACOAs have difficulty having fun. They take themselves too seriously. When children grow up in an alcoholic home, they do not learn to have fun. They have to grow up much faster and take care of daily chores to keep the household running. As adults, they may see others' having fun as being silly. Most adults, however, have a place within them that wants to join in and laugh and be silly too.²²