America Tonight with Kate Delaney featuring G. Michael Sanborn, “Recovery from an Alcoholic’s Collateral Damage”

by ReadersMagnet | June 27, 2024 | radio interview | 0 Comments

G. Michael Sanborn recently appeared on the syndicated radio program “America Tonight with Kate Delaney,” hosted by Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Kate Delaney to talk about his book, Recovery from an Alcoholic’s Collateral Damage.

The “Author’s Corner” segment of “America Tonight with Kate Delaney” showcased author G. Michael Sanborn dissecting his book and looking back at his life as a survivor of the impacts of alcoholism in their household.

Recovery from an Alcoholic’s Collateral Damage

The book is a recounting of life experiences by author G. Michael “Mike” Sanborn in a single-parent home with a violent, alcoholic mother. Mike takes into account the struggles of living with an abusive mother, affecting his and his siblings’ lives as they grow up. The book provides a glimpse of how Mike followed a path to the military and tried to cope with the physical and emotional trauma from home.

G. Michael Sanborn’s Recovery from an Alcoholic’s Collateral Damage talks about how an alcoholic can impact the lives of people throughout their lives. It is also a guide for readers to find their way to recovery.

A Misconception Around Alcoholics

Kate Delaney asked Mike how he decided to write the book. Mike recounted his experiences growing up in a single-parent household with a violent, alcoholic mother. He shared some misconceptions about how they should protect the alcoholic.

“We’re taught from the time we were really little to lie for the alcoholic,” said Mike, who continued to share how they were taught to lie and protect the alcoholic. With this, they were forced to deny that there was any problem in the household.

“We remain in denial to protect that alcoholic and deny that there was ever any problem there. That’s not right. We need to tell people so people can heal from all that harm.”

Looking Back into Childhood

Delaney let Mike dig deeper into his childhood. As a child of a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mom, he recounted how his mother got into the grips of alcohol and changed the atmosphere at home.

“We started out as a normal everyday family. Mom had that underlying alcoholism, and she started to drink beer, and she got more and more into the beer. She just really made life impossible. She made more and more demands on my father, who couldn’t earn enough money to support her habit. He was trying to get her to drink less,” Mike shared as he looked back into the transition that also made their home a traumatic place growing up.

He also shared how the trauma becomes both physical and emotional, as his mother would physically hurt him.

“I got one eye here that doesn’t work from a traumatic brain injury when I was seven years old, and she hit me over the head with a broomstick. I got a collapsed sinus when she backhanded me one time. I was responsible for my little brother, and whenever he messed up, she punished me. We were parentified.”

Mike also described how his mother abused his father and failed to ask for help.

“She grabbed my father and picked him up and shook him and threw him onto the floor. A lot of people, especially men, are reluctant to go ask for help when they have problem like that. My mother drove them out. The last time I saw my father, I was 11 years old.”

Drinking a Six-Pack

Getting deeper into the story, Kate questioned if Mike and his siblings would have days when they didn’t have food, especially when they lived with an alcoholic mother.

“We went on to welfare. The beer was a necessity. She was drinking 16 ounces, that’s a six-pack. She got really quite drunk. But then we ran out of money. We survived on hardly anything.”

Breaking the Cycle

Kate asked Mike how he was able to find his way out of the cycle of abuse at home. Mike told his story of redemption through the hope that his math teacher gave him.

“I had some excellent math skills, and my eighth-grade math teacher, who got to be my 10th-grade math teacher, recognized those math skills. She just one day asked me where I was going to college. She brought me down to the guidance counselor, and bless her soul, that made the difference in my life. That guidance counselor convinced me to go to a college. I went to a really good college, St. Michael’s College.”

The Army Experience

Mike also shared that he initially planned on med school. However, he decided he didn’t really want to do med.

“I saw the different personalities. I decided I didn’t really want to do med. But I had promised that math teacher that someday I’d be a math teacher, but not right away.”

An army recruiter gave him the idea to join the Army, which led him to an experience of coping with the abuse he experienced when he was young.

“Some Army recruiter came by. He actually was trying to recruit the kid that was working for me. I was running an automotive repair shop. He says, ‘I can get you guaranteed slot to OCS, ‘Officer Candidate School.’ I had to go through basic training.”

Mike also added that he married his wife before he entered the Army. After he decided he wanted to have children with his wife, he took the opportunity to work with the police force. He lasted for six and a half years before he joined the city administration and ran water and sewer departments.

He took the opportunity to finally teach science as he promised his eighth-grade teacher.

Take Away

G. Michael Sanborn’s book shares how alcoholism can have negative impacts at home. This negativity can linger and drag on to adulthood as the physical and emotional trauma haunt the victims. Mike provided his way of breaking free from the grips of parental alcoholism by taking the risk of traveling through the road less traveled.

G. Michael Sanborn’s Recovery from an Alcoholic’s Collateral Damage is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and ReadersMagnet Bookstore. Visit https://authorgmichaelsanborn.com.