Meetings The Promise Not Kept

Once upon a time there were thousands of ACA, ACOA and Alanon-Acoa meetings. In the Seattle area alone there were once over a hundred ACA meetings on the inter-group schedule. Now there are two and the nearest one to me is 40 miles.

We laughed and cried and learned and played together and once upon a time we promised each other that we would never again be alone. That meetings would be there and we could always find someone who understands. What happened? AA, Ala-non, NA and dozens of other 12-Step Programs survive and thrive but ACOA is pretty near dead.

Lots of things happened in no particular order. In the end we just broke a promise, not just to ourselves, those of us who benefited from the fellowship and recovery that our groups provided, but also to an entire generations yet to come. The ACOA "fad" may be over but a whole new crop of Adult Children of Alcoholic parents is created every day. Alcoholism isn't a fad and it didn't go away. The documented and well studied effects of alcoholism on the family system didn't go away just the support and recovery for those who grow up and whose lives are profoundly effected. The meetings, fellowship and recovery are all that went away.

It reminds me of one of the few jokes I can remember.

This guy dies and it turns out he didn't go to heaven so he's met at the front door of hell by the devil.

"Hello Mr. Smith," he says, "Welcome to hell let me show you around. Since your going to be here for all eternity we thought it was just fair if you get to choose what your eternal punishment will be but once you decide, that's it forever. "

So old Satan starts touring him around to various rooms. In some, people are being roasted on a barbecue pit slowly turned over and open flame and the guy doesn't think that's very good so they move on. In other rooms people are being flayed alive with whips and chains or dunked in molten lava and our lost soul, Mr. Smith, is really beginning to sweat. This he decides, is serious stuff.

Finally they come to a huge room where a group of people are standing around in a cesspool of stuff that you would normally find in a cesspool up to their waists drinking hot coffee and chatting. Not great but the best he's seen so far so he tells the devil that he'll choose this as his punishment and climbs into the tank. A thoughtful demon comes by with a scalding cup of coffee and while he's holding it and hoping it will cool off a little a whistle blows and the demons come by and begin taking everyones cups away.

"Okay everybody," the devil shouts. Coffee breaks over back on your heads."

Seems he forgot to tell the guy that coffee break happens once a millennium but that's the devil of it isn't it.

Coffee break is over for all the adult children in the making.

In retrospect ACOA grew out of and became conflated with what became a self help fad. Fads almost by definition don't last. The movement had it's roots in both the 12 Steps and in commercial for-profit counseling and therapy. That was both it's strength and in the end one weakness. Gurus arose. Hundreds became self proclaimed experts and everybody with a typewriter or computer it seemed wrote a how to recovery book and began holding workshops and retreats. Some it turned out were little more than Flem flam artists.

AA on the other is very singularly focused on the 12 Steps. Yes there are paid AA speakers but nobody makes a living at it. AA World Group publishes a few authorized books that are the only material used at meetings and the income from which helps fund the groups activities. The only AA gurus were Bill W and Dr. Bob and they are long since dead. Nobody gets rich off of AA. They don't endorse recovery programs or counselors or any other commercial venture.

On the other hand the singular focus on the 12 Steps is a weakness for ACOAs whose path to recovery is more complicated than the standard AA don't drink and work the steps approach. AA doesn't focuses on the past. On how a person became an alcoholic and they don't overly focus on the consequences. You make a personal inventory of your life and you make amends to those you harmed. Then you get on with life. The motto is: "One day at a time." You are free to go to a therapist and muck around all you want but in general they don't consider it necessary. "Don't drink, go to meetings, work the steps, learn recovery." That's the formula and it works.

ACOAs however need to learn what the hell happened to them first of all. Then they need to understand how it effected them personally.

We all have similar characteristics but they manifest themselves in diffrent ways. What was our role in the family system for instance? Are we heroes, scapegoats, lost children or family clowns. Did we become enabling co-dependent spouses who grow up to marry alcoholics? Did we become alcoholics ourselves or both? Just to name a couple of examples.

Since the symptoms vary from individual to individual so does the definition of recovery. Some even found that the very first step in ACOA recovery was to stop drinking themselves so their recovery began where it should have, in AA.

One of my worst symptoms was rescuing. Virtually every relationship I had ever had was based on a rescue mission. I grew up and married my own alcoholic and enabled her almost to death for 13 long years. She finally found sobriety and recovery after our divorce. In the end I decide that if you can't lick'em join them. I went back to school, became a chemical dependency counselor, and learned how to help people properly, and at a distance. Counselors can't have relationships with their clients. And even though I've been out of that field for several years at least so far that much of recovery is working to an extent. I have never gone on a mission to rescue another alcoholic in the past 21 years. That in part is a the equvilant of don't drink but it took a lot of soul searching and learning about myself to know that.

Toward the end of the great meeting era the only one left in my area was an Ala-non ACOA group which I attended for a couple of years but it really didn't work for me. If you live with a practicing alcoholic Ala-non is the way to go. You need 12 Step recovery as much as your family member does. They even have Ala-teen and in some areas Ala-tot for pre-teens. However they are like AA. Ala-non is very strictly focused on the 12 Steps.

When I began going to meetings I quickly learned that the word Co-dependency was a no no. The term comes from the private self help movement and they didn't like you using it in meetings. There were lots of other subtle differences. And there wasn't the depth of personal sharing that is so important in working through the grief process of ACOA recovery just wasn't there. the focus isn't on leaning about how you got there it's do the steps and live life forward, "One day at a time." They were Ala-non meetings with ACOA tacked on the end.

There is nothing at all wrong with Ala-non and this isn't meant as a criticism. After all, Ala-non is alive and well. They were right not to get caught up in all the hype. Ala-non has not broke faith with those in recovery. I made some good friends in Ala-non and at least one friend for life. It wasn't a bad experience but if I hadn't already gotten a lot of ACA style recovery I would probably have dropped out.

Enough for today. If you have read my previous comments I apologize for not posting sooner. One of my symptoms is depression. Depression is common both in alcoholics and their co-dependents. I sort of hit a bump in the depression meter and didn't get back for awhile. When you are experiencing a bought of hopelessness there doesn't seem much point in blogging. But I'm back. I'll write more later. Like meetings, this is after all a therapeutic experience for me.

Post your thoughts. Tell your story. It's your blog too. Keep coming back it works. (If you work it.)