Adult Child of an Alcoholic: 8 Arrests, Blackouts, and How Jen Finally Got Sober
Jen was seven years old when she watched her mother get arrested for a DUI. It was the night before second grade. They had been out buying school supplies, the car hit a mailbox, and by the end of the night Jen and her brother were separated and sent to different homes.
By the time she was 44, Jen had eight alcohol and drug related arrests of her own.
An adult child of an alcoholic is someone who grew up with a parent who struggled with alcohol and carried the survival habits from that home, like secrecy, people pleasing, and the need to control, into adult life. Jen is one of them. On the Sober Motivation podcast, she shared how she became the person she swore she'd never be, why none of her arrests felt like rock bottom, and how forgiving her mother became the biggest gift of her recovery.
Growing Up With an Alcoholic Mother
Jen grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother's drinking shaped everything at home. After the DUI arrest, Jen spent time in foster homes. Between the ages of seven and nine, she was the victim of child sexual abuse. She didn't tell anyone until she was 44.
Her father eventually won full custody. From the outside, life looked normal. But nobody talked about what had happened.
School became her safe place. Even as a kid, she was drawn to structure, something she now calls good orderly direction.
"I really wanted direction, and I wanted security, routine, stability."
At home, she was already trying to control her mother's drinking. She hid it, poured it out, and tasted what was in her mother's cups. She was so embarrassed by her mom that she wanted everyone to believe her stepmother was her biological mother.
"In hindsight, my first drug was lie, fantasy."
At 12, her older brother introduced her to alcohol. She was a blackout drinker almost immediately. And it worked. When the lies stopped making her feel different, drinking did.
If you grew up in a home like Jen's, the skills that kept you safe as a kid (hiding, pretending, keeping everyone happy) often follow you into adulthood. Ian's story of growing up with an alcoholic mother follows a similar thread.
The Promise Children of Alcoholics Make
Through her teens, Jen was a perfectionist. Grades, sports, dance team. She graduated from Auburn at 22 with two degrees. She also had no boundaries, and she always needed a boyfriend to act as her babysitter, protector, driver, and bodyguard.
She stopped visiting her mother in high school. Looking back, she says it came from inconvenience, embarrassment, and frustration.
"I had no compassion. I had a lot of judgment, and I didn't see any parallels."
Years later, in the middle of an argument, her second husband told her she had turned into her mom. She defended herself. But the words stuck.
"I didn't want it to be true. So I defended myself. But I think that was the beginning of some sort of awareness."
It took at least another ten years for that seed to grow. Many people who grow up around drinking make a quiet promise that it will never be them. Jen's story shows how hard it is to learn from someone else's wreckage, even when you've seen it up close.
Is a Functioning Alcoholic Really Functioning?
After college, Jen moved to Destin, Florida. She worked in advertising, and her days filled up with networking, happy hours, and client lunches. Lunch often meant sweet tea and vodka. It was normal.
On paper, she was a functioning alcoholic. Jen laughs at that label.
"I was blacking out, so that's not functioning. I was driving completely blacked out. I was getting up, throwing up, then going about my day. That's not functioning. I had a successful career, but I was a shell of a human being."
She married and had her first child at 25, hoping a family would fill the hole her mother left. She drank through the pregnancy, hiding the second glass of wine. Soon after her daughter was born, she was pumping and dumping so she could keep drinking.
Later she ran a photography business from home, left her first husband, married an ex-boyfriend who was a rock star, and had another child. Weekends meant partying in New Orleans. Some mornings she picked her kids up from daycare without having slept.
"I chose men, drinks, everything over them."
A functioning alcoholic keeps up appearances while alcohol quietly runs their life. Jen's point is that paying the bills and holding a job is not the same thing as functioning. If you're leaning on that label as proof you're okay, read Can You Be a High Functioning Alcoholic? and be honest about what happens when nobody is watching.
Losing Her Mother Before They Could Make Amends
Jen and her mother were estranged for about six years. Her mom met Jen's daughter but never met her sons.
Then a call came while Jen was at work. Her mother had been found dead in her home, days after she passed. Jen told her boyfriend, and they went straight to the bar.
She didn't know how to grieve someone she barely knew. So she told people a story about losing a perfect mom, because it got her attention and drinks. Underneath, the truth was crushing.
"I was, of course, heartbroken because we were never going to make amends, and that reality was just unbearable."
She drank over it, and wasn't honest about it for years.
Do You Have to Hit Rock Bottom to Get Sober?
Whiskey was her drink, but she drank anything. Her first DUI came at 40, during a fight with a boyfriend. By 44, she had eight arrests. Her last job in active addiction was managing a water sports company on the Destin Harbor, between two bars. She started drinking when they opened at 11.
Near the end, she added opiates and cocaine. The opiates got her through the mornings. The cocaine kept the drinking going. It was costing her $1,000 a week.
Her father turned his back on her at one point. So did her daughter. Any of it could have been a rock bottom. None of it was.
"None of those were rock bottom. None of them. Not one time."
After the first arrest, she hired the best attorney she could find and got off. Her ego got bigger, not smaller. She says the first mugshot was far more humiliating than the eighth. She lowered her standards until the arrests stopped feeling like a big deal.
What finally shifted was self-awareness. She couldn't afford a $1,000 a week habit, and she had seen where that road led for other people. For the first time, she was scared.
"I think that rock bottom is when you're self-aware."
On June 14, she woke up with a black eye and no idea how she got it. She called her best friend, who had 14 years of sobriety, and told her everything. How much she was using. How dark it had gotten. That she wanted help, and meant it. That day, she went to an AA meeting with a black eye.
"I had the gift of desperation."
She white-knuckled it for 41 days while she signed up for insurance, quit her job, and arranged treatment. Her sober date is August 10, 2022.
You don't need to wait for a disaster to change. Elisa shared a similar lesson in Does Hitting Rock Bottom Make You Quit Drinking? Rock bottom is the moment you finally see your life clearly.
What Recovery Looked Like for Jen
In treatment, her first counselor was a woman in recovery who shared her own story. It was the first time Jen actually wanted to hear one.
"From that moment, I have followed what another woman that has more recovery has told me would she do, and I've done it, and it's just that simple. And it's not been easy."
Here is what her recovery has looked like, in her words:
Ask someone who has what you want. She asks women with more recovery how they stayed sober, then does what they did.
Talk to someone every day. She still talks to another person in recovery every morning.
Make the bed. She didn't before. She does now, every day.
Go to meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous has been central to her recovery.
Pause. She says her higher power is in the pause, first with substances and now with everything.
Change everything at first. Fishing and live music came back later. In the beginning, they weren't on the table.
"The same woman will drink again. A different woman won't."
That approach got tested fast. Her father was married to an active alcoholic, and Jen didn't have her driver's license for her first two years of recovery. So other women in recovery drove her to visit him. They set a boundary: visits only before noon, before the drinking picked up.
Jen made amends to her father that year. He told her he was proud of her, and he forgave her. He died 10 days before her first sober anniversary. That morning, she called a woman in recovery and asked how to stay sober. The answer: go to a meeting, and don't drink no matter what. She did.
She says she is the only person she knows from her treatment program who is still sober today.
What Is Emotional Sobriety?
Emotional sobriety is the ability to sit with your feelings without needing to change them. For Jen, staying away from substances was the start. Feeling okay without escaping is the goal now.
"I wanna be okay. Like, just okay. I'm not trying to change the way I feel, just being okay, content."
She doesn't claim to be there yet. But she's a lot further than she was.
How Jen Learned to Forgive Her Alcoholic Mother
"I do believe that the biggest gift in my recovery is the forgiveness of my mom."
She can't make amends to her mother. But she often works with women in active addiction who are close to her mother's age. Each time, she gets to offer the love and compassion she couldn't give her mom while she was alive. She calls it a healing for her and the universe.
Birthdays are still hard. Some days she feels like an orphan. Instead of drinking over it, she leans on the people she has met in recovery, including a couple of guys who could pass as uncles.
Today she has a great relationship with her sons. She and her daughter are working on theirs. Either way, she has made peace with not controlling the outcome.
The Cycle Doesn't Have to Continue
The girl who was embarrassed to be seen in public with her mother spent decades becoming her. Today, Jen is proof that being an adult child of an alcoholic doesn't decide how your story ends.
"I've never had it so good. It's not luck."
Listen to Jen's full episode on the Sober Motivation podcast. And if you're ready to stop doing this alone, join the community in the Sober Motivation app.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an adult child of an alcoholic?
An adult child of an alcoholic is a grown person who was raised by a parent with an alcohol problem. Many carry patterns from childhood into adulthood, such as hiding feelings, people pleasing, needing control, or struggling with trust. Jen recognized several of these in herself, including lying to cover up what was happening at home.
Are children of alcoholics more likely to become alcoholics?
Yes, research consistently finds that children of alcoholics face a higher risk of developing an alcohol use disorder, with studies estimating the risk at several times that of other people. It is not inevitable, though. This is general information, not something discussed in the episode. Jen's story shows the cycle can be broken.
Is a functioning alcoholic really functioning?
Not according to Jen. She held a successful career and paid her bills while blacking out, driving blacked out, and throwing up before work. From the outside she looked fine. Inside, she called herself a shell of a human being. Keeping up appearances is not the same as being okay.
Do you have to hit rock bottom to get sober?
No. Jen had eight arrests, lost relationships, and was spending $1,000 a week on her addiction, and none of it felt like rock bottom. What changed things was self-awareness. In her view, rock bottom is simply the moment you see your situation clearly and decide you want help.
What is emotional sobriety?
Emotional sobriety means being able to feel your emotions without trying to escape or change them. For Jen, it means being okay and content, even when life is hard. She describes it as her goal today, beyond simply staying away from alcohol and drugs, and she works toward it every day.
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