Hey Quantum! Hey Raven! (Listed those in alphabetical order so you guys wouldn't think I picked one of you over the other! LOL! How's that for codependent?)
As I was reading your two posts about elephants I recalled a time in AlAnon when I'd had a particularly nasty encounter with my family over my brother M's drinking. He had just gotten out of rehab and his wife and a couple of people in my family took him out to the bar to celebrate!!
I believe I called them names you wouldn't hear in a U of M locker room after a loss to OSU.
On the verge of ripping the hair from their heads and mine I went instead to a meeting. One of my favorite sponsors was there. A little old lady with years under her belt. I remember saying to her that everyone in my family (and on the planet for that matter) should be forced at gunpoint to sit in a chair and then be tied with rope to that chair, then have their mouths sealed with duct tape. Then they should be forced to sit there for a year while a member read to them from the Big Books. I was willing of course to take the duct tape off in order to feed and water them.
My theory was that sooner or later they'd friggin have to learn something!!!!
She just laughed and said, "Yeah. They'd learn that they don't like duct tape."
My brother fell immediately off the wagon into the oblivion of alcoholism where he remains today.
The elephant in my family is pink; a pink alcoholic elephant with hiccups; the kind you see in old Looney Toon reruns.
And the sad reality is that many people would rather watch a loved one drink themselves into a 6 foot hole in the ground, than face the fact that alcoholism exists.
I think that's true of many things. My family lives in fear of what it cannot control and I live in grief knowing that.
Sigh..........