Chapter 4: The Inter-Generational Impact of Substance Use and the Path to Family Recovery: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Approach

This chapter presents an innovative perspective on alcohol addiction, using collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to examine a single case of alcohol addiction arising in the context of a paternal history of alcohol abuse. The protagonist’s narrative is examined from the perspective of the Extended Transformational Model (ETM) developed by the second author. Her story is then explored through narrative analysis (NA) and psychobiography. It focuses on one woman’s upbringing in a family dominated by her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s untimely death, and the severe mental illness of her brother. Having witnessed the effects of alcohol on her father, she too became dependent on alcohol in adulthood. The shock of her daughter admitting she was concerned about her mother’s drinking and annual reminders on social media of her failure to control her habit, eventually led her to the personal decision to give up alcohol completely. Her story is then analyzed by the second author. She is someone else whose life was almost ruined through alcoholism, yet she also made the brave decision to stop. This narrative will be helpful and offer hope to others, either contemplating abstinence or those already on a recovery journey. It is of note that the three authors of this chapter are all in recovery from alcohol addiction themselves, which adds a unique element to this account.