Ean

Ean

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol-fuelled dysfunction and emotional chaos? Ean’s share on ACA Tuesday Zoombox traces how childhood wounds can echo through careers, marriages, and mental health, and how ACA has helped him start to change that pattern. Speaking from New York and recovering from a cold, he jokes about his “frog in my throat”, but the story is anything but light.

In just three years, he’s gone through major surgery, the loss of a 25-year business, a nervous breakdown, the end of a marriage marked by “lying and betrayal”, the death of his dog, selling his house, and relocating across the country. He says plainly he “can’t imagine” coping with any of it without Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (ACA).

A turning point came on a family holiday where a 17-year-old cousin, fresh from a suicide attempt, was still given hard alcohol while the adults focused on having a “good time”. Ean’s reaction – “I feel like being 17 and suicidal is contraindicated for alcohol” – pushed him straight into ACA rooms. You’ll hear how ACA meetings, daily readers, and structured routines of gratitude and self-care became lifelines when he checked himself into a psychiatric facility during his divorce.

He talks about recognising patterns like always asking, “What part of myself do I have to cut off in order to fit into this relationship?” and how ACA step work and the Loving Parent Guidebook are helping him finally put himself first. Some ACA language still makes him cringe, yet he’s “willing to do whatever it takes to be the one that I’m waiting for” and to stop looking outside himself for rescue.

If you grew up in a home where feelings weren’t allowed and chaos felt normal, could Ean’s story be the nudge that helps you seek your own support?