Generational Alcoholism: How Anthony Torres Broke His Family's Cycle
Anthony Torres was seven or eight when his grandparents were suddenly gone. He was their first grandchild. He remembers them taking him to Dunkin' Donuts and spending a lot of time with them. Only later did he learn they had been killed by a drunk driver.
"Who would've known that their grandson would be following the footsteps of alcoholism?"
Generational alcoholism is a pattern of heavy drinking and addiction that repeats from one generation of a family to the next, passed down through what kids see, what they're handed, and what everyone treats as normal. Anthony grew up inside that pattern, and for years it looked like he would be its next casualty.
Today he is 17 years sober and coming up on 18. He's a lead pastor in Alamogordo, New Mexico, an author, and a filmmaker. On the Sober Motivation Podcast, he talked about how the cycle got handed to him, why his wife and kids weren't enough to make him stop, and what it actually took to break it.
Growing Up Around Drinking: "Seeds Were Being Planted"
Anthony's mom was 16 when she had him. After a very bad divorce, she moved the family from Oklahoma to Las Cruces, New Mexico, when he was about eight. He describes his childhood as seasons of confusion, anger, and insecurity. "I felt like I had to grow up really quick," he said.
Drinking was everywhere. Anthony says that in his Hispanic family, people drank for everything: quinceañeras, parties, washing the car, a long day.
When he was about 11 or 12, his uncles would send him to grab a beer. Then they'd tell him to open it. Then they'd tell him to take a drink, and everyone would laugh.
"It was like it was funny, but little did we know that seeds were being planted."
There's even a photo of a young Anthony sitting on a table while his uncles rolled joints around him. The history went back further than that. His great-great-grandmother drank herself to death. His great-great-grandfather was shot in a bar. His mom went through her own drinking, stopped when she saw what it was doing to the family, started again, and stopped again.
That's how generational drinking keeps going. Nobody sits a kid down and teaches it. It just becomes part of who the family is. As Anthony put it, people end up thinking, "This is just who I am. I'm a drinker."
Takeaway: If drinking has been normal in your family for generations, that isn't proof it's fine for you. It may be exactly why it's so hard to see.
Why He Started Drinking: Fitting In and Filling a Void
Anthony started drinking at 14. Las Cruces sits close to the Mexican border, and back then, he says, it cost 20 cents to walk across and nobody cared how old you were. Weed came next, then other drugs.
Home was complicated. His mom remarried, and he pushed back against his stepdad. He also carried a lot of hurt and anger toward his biological father, who he felt put women and money ahead of his kids. (The two of them have a great relationship today.)
Asked what alcohol gave him back then, Anthony named two things: belonging and relief. Drinking was social. Everybody was doing it. But it was also filling something. "I felt good when I drank, even at a young age," he said.
He was also sure he was in control.
"A lot of the times, we lose control when we think we're really in control, and we're really not."
The Warning Signs He Called Normal
At 17, Anthony found out he was going to be a father. His oldest daughter, Angelina, was born two days after he graduated high school. He could see history repeating itself: his mom had been young when she had him, and now he was too.
The warning signs were stacking up. He believes he got arrested for a DWI at around 16. He considered himself a very good football player, but he didn't play his senior year because of drinking. At the time, none of it registered.
"You just see it as normal. In that moment you're just like, 'Ah, it's just normal. It's just what people do.'"
He had built a party identity, and he didn't want the party to stop. It wasn't until he was about 25 or 26 that he realized how out of control things were. By then, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts were piled on top of the drinking and drugs.
"This is the way Anthony Torres is gonna die, an alcoholic lost in his addictions."
If you're having thoughts of suicide, you don't have to wait for things to get worse to reach out. In the US and Canada, you can call or text 988 any time.
Life as a Functioning Alcoholic and Father of Three
A functioning alcoholic is someone who keeps up with work, bills, and family while drinking heavily, which makes the problem easy to hide from others and even easier to deny to yourself. That was Anthony for years.
He landed a state job. At 20, he met Sasha, now his wife, who helped him settle down and pick up the pieces with his oldest daughter. By 21, he had three kids: Angelina, Sasha's daughter from a previous relationship, and their daughter Ileana.
He made sure the bills were paid and his family was taken care of. But any free time went to drinking and drugs.
Tuesday was boxing night, which meant buying Corona and drinking with his kids around.
When he got an itch, he'd text someone for drugs.
Mornings meant going to work hungover, with a headache, sometimes throwing up.
Binges started stretching to two or three days without sleep.
He thought having a family would calm him down.
"I thought that maybe my family would settle me down, and they didn't. I just dragged them into my mess."
Now 45, Anthony mentors men and women stuck in the same loop, and he hears the same belief all the time: once I get married, once I get the career, I'll get better. "That's not the case," he said. If that sounds familiar, read Can You Be a High Functioning Alcoholic? The Quiet Trap of Looking Fine on the Outside.
Why Wasn't Family Enough to Make Him Quit?
This is the question people who have never struggled with addiction ask the most. Sasha lived with it for nine years: nine years of drinking, drug use, broken promises, and lies. At one point she left him for four months. Anthony says it was probably the best thing she could have done.
When they got back together, he asked her why she ever stayed. Her answer has stayed with him.
"I thought that having your kids would be enough. I thought that I would be enough. I thought that your family would be enough, and the reality, it wasn't. Your alcohol and your drugs, that was your family."
Anthony calls it brick wall thinking. After drinking and using for so long, you can't picture what life would even look like without it. It becomes your identity. He pointed to an old episode of the TV show Intervention, where a man lost his sister to an overdose and still went right back to heroin. Money, career, family: addiction doesn't care what's around you.
Takeaway: If you love someone who keeps choosing alcohol over the people in front of them, it doesn't mean you aren't enough. Love matters, but it doesn't cure addiction on its own. Mike and Kristen's story, Married to a Functioning Alcoholic: The Ultimatum That Saved Mike and Kristen's Family, shows what it can look like from the partner's side.
Faith-Based Recovery: How Anthony Finally Got Sober
Anthony's turning point didn't happen in one clean moment. He went to rehab, a detox program in El Paso, Texas, and remembers sitting on a cold floor in shakes and scrubs.
"I already lost my family, I lost my job, I lost everything. Like, how did I get here?"
He left the program early and went right back to drinking and drugs. He ended up wandering the streets. Then someone invited him to church, and he had what he describes as a powerful spiritual experience. He gave his life to Christ that day, and that's where his sobriety began.
Even then, it wasn't overnight. He went back and forth between church and the bar, and he admits to snorting coke in the church parking lot. But he kept reading the Bible, kept praying, and kept showing up. Slowly he realized it wasn't some things in his life that needed to change. Everything did.
He went to meetings for a while, then made his faith the center of his recovery. In his words, he made Christ his rehab.
People often ask him what he says to those who don't believe in God. His answer: absolutely there's hope, and he knows people who aren't believers who have gotten sober. But he draws a line between being sober and being healed.
"I have known people that are sober but still broken. Why not get to a place and be sober and be healed?"
Faith was Anthony's path, and it isn't the only one. If you're still figuring out yours, Wanting to Quit Drinking? 9 Support Options (And How to Pick One) lays out the options.
The Lonely Chapter of Early Sobriety
Anthony is honest that the first stretch was brutal. It took him a full year to get back on his feet and provide for his family, and he calls it the hardest year of his life. More than once he found himself standing outside a liquor store, fighting with himself about going in.
"You think life is tough? Try doing it sober."
The hardest part, though, was people. Family members teased him: "Here comes John the Baptist. Here comes the preacher." His uncles would hold a beer up to his mouth and ask if he missed it. Old friends drifted away, and he was surprised by how alone he became.
Brad called this the lonely chapter: you've left your old connections behind, but you haven't found your new ones yet. Anthony agreed, and said that's exactly why sober community matters. He noticed the same people who once told him he drank too much were now telling him he talked about God too much.
"Which version of Anthony do you want?"
Sasha made a huge difference. She never struggled with alcohol herself, but she told him, "You don't drink, I don't drink." He also had to start making amends with his oldest daughter, who was old enough to remember. If you're in that stretch now, How to Make Sober Friends When Everyone You Know Drinks and Rebuilding Trust After Drinking can help.
How to Break the Cycle of Alcoholism in Your Family
Anthony believes that if he had kept going, he would either be dead or his kids would have picked up the drinking. Here's what he tells people trying to be the one who breaks the pattern:
Be patient with the process. "You did 15, 20 years of drinking and doing drugs. Don't expect that when you stop, everything's gonna come together in five months." It took him about three years to find a direction, which included going to school to become a counselor.
Change everything, not one thing. Old thinking, old habits, old places, and old friends all have to go.
Get disciplined. Drinking made him undisciplined. Recovery asked him to become "the most disciplined person on the planet."
Do it for you. Not for your family, not for your friends. He starts every day by putting God first, then working on himself, then loving his wife and family.
Don't quit when it gets harder. He says it gets harder before it gets better, and the people he sees struggle most are the ones who give up in the middle of the process.
Life 17 Years Sober: The Gifts Alcohol Was Hiding
Anthony once prayed what he calls a very dangerous prayer: if God would sober him up and take away the cravings and suicidal thoughts, he'd do whatever was asked. The answer was to preach and teach. "That's not what I meant," he joked. He's been on that path for about 12 years.
Today he's the lead pastor of a church in Alamogordo. He has spoken in Pakistan, India, and Africa, and he's heading back to Pakistan next year, because alcoholism is everywhere. He speaks at rehabs, and he spoke at four prisons this year. Many of the people on his church staff come from alcoholism, prison, or fentanyl addiction, including an associate who is five years clean off fentanyl. When inmates meet them, Anthony says, they think, "If they can change, I can change."
He never served prison time himself. "I did time inside," he said, pointing to the depression and overdoses.
He also wrote a film, told through Sasha's eyes, about what alcoholism does to a whole family. It's available in prisons across the United States through an app called Pendo, and after its release he was getting 50 to 60 letters a week from inmates. His book, Letters to My People: Thoughts of a Recovering Addict, has been on Amazon for about five years.
He's the first pastor, author, scriptwriter, and movie director in his family. He once asked God why he couldn't see any of it in his early 20s.
"It was always there, but it was buried in alcoholism."
Breaking Generational Alcoholism Starts With One Person
Anthony's grandparents were killed by a drunk driver. Alcohol ran through his family for generations, and for years it looked like he would be next. Instead, he's the one who stopped it.
Generational alcoholism is real, but it isn't destiny. It's a pattern, and a pattern can be broken by one person who decides they want something different for their life and their kids.
"Once you get rid of the alcohol, you truly find yourself and what you were designed to do in this life."
Listen to Anthony's full conversation on the Sober Motivation Podcast. And if you want people around you who understand the lonely chapter, the Sober Motivation app has a community that shows up every day.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is generational alcoholism?
Generational alcoholism is when heavy drinking and addiction repeat across generations of the same family. Kids learn drinking as normal, are sometimes handed alcohol young, and grow up without other ways to cope. Family history also raises genetic risk (general information). Anthony's family drinking went back at least to his great-great-grandparents.
Can you break the cycle of alcoholism in your family?
Yes. Anthony Torres grew up with alcoholism going back generations and has been sober for 17 years. His advice is to be patient with the process, change everything rather than one thing, build discipline, and do it for yourself. He believes that without changing, his kids would likely have picked up drinking too.
Why isn't having kids enough to make someone quit drinking?
Addiction becomes part of a person's identity, and it gets very hard to picture life without it. Anthony's wife, Sasha, told him she thought the kids, and she herself, would be enough. They weren't. He calls it brick wall thinking. Love matters, but it doesn't cure addiction on its own.
Can faith help you get sober?
For Anthony Torres, faith was the center of his recovery. He gave his life to Christ after leaving detox early, went to meetings for a while, and calls Christ his rehab. He also says people who aren't religious absolutely can get sober. His goal is to be both sober and healed.
How long does it take to rebuild your life after getting sober?
It varies from person to person. Anthony says it took him a full year to get back on his feet and provide for his family, and about three years to find a real direction for his life. His advice is to be patient, because years of drinking don't get undone in five months.
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