By George Uri K.

My mother was a bipolar, and was hospitalized right after I was born, so I was given to my workaholic aunt and my uncle, who was an alcoholic. After three month she had not enough milk for me and my cousin, so I was given to a friendly orphanage.

And after three month my mother came home and took me. I lost my father and my cousin, and then my siblings, but I probably never grieved for them. In elementary school I remember idolizing my best friends, and this went on through middle school and university and even after. My so called best friends where always much more beautiful or successful or from more famous parents. I was constantly depressed, craved extra hugs and acceptance, but not always got it.

One of my techniques was to become a famous artist, but naturally this was not so easily done - though eventually I managed to do just this. The other one was to use pot and acid. Alcohol did not work for me, cause I got epileptic fits from it and I had to take drugs against that; for twenty years I never had a simple, normal day.

After the death of my mother I found out about the existence of bishops and rabbis in the family that were not mentioned due to fears under Communism that was collapsing just then, so I drew some strength from their teachings to change certain abusive ways of mine.

Then I married for the first time developing a certain degree of trust with a woman and we have two lovely children now 2 and 5 years old almost. I arrived to AA 6 years ago, and later I discovered NA to stop my pot use and SA for arresting my gender identity chaos and CoDA and AlAnon, after which I landed at ACOA, that really hit home. I am powerless over my symptoms stemming from my parents hurts.

I begin to recover, to be able to stop yelling with the child when he/she misbehaves or at my wife when she thinks differently. I have changed so much due to these Twelve Steps and a three year Freudian analysis as sponsoring, that I could never even imagine. I am grateful for this site, the possibility to share and I wish you all the best in recovery.