Our Guest Bloger today is Kelly Miller. Kelly's specialty as a counselor is helping parents who are having to deal with teenage alcohol and drug abuse.

RELAPSE AMONG TEENAGERS

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Kelly Miller will now be a regular guest blogger on our site. This first article is EXCELLENT, and adds a new dimension to our writings altogether!

Ken P.

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The Gap Between the AA and the Al-Anon Programs

          Survey data about membership in 12-step programs is available only from Al-Anon, as none of the other world service offices gather such data. Recent figures show a disturbing trend. Cooperation, based on the percentage of Al-Anons who were referred to Al-Anon by members of AA, was at an all-time high in 1996 (38%), but in the short nine-year period ending in 2006 that figure had dropped to only 08%. Some guess that this is because people on both sides seem to be regarding meetings held “over there” as “in the enemy camp.”

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In Praise of Lois and Bill Wilson’s only child 

Today's post as well as the next few will concern the cooperation between AA and Al-Anon. Figures from the past 12 years of surveys done by the Al-Anon World Service Office indicate that the percentage of new Al-Anons referred by AA's has declined steadily from a high in 1995. This is of deep concerne to me, as AA and the AA friends I made during the years of my own recovery played a HUGE role in that process!

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Plan the Event, NOT the Outcome.

What is most important is what you really WANT. If you do not know what your expectations are, then you are predisposing yourself to dissapointment and eventually resentment.

So often before recovery I found myself consumed by resentment about something said, done, or not done by another person. It was after the interaction with that other that I realized that I DID have expectations of another...I just had not consciously identified them.

OK. So if your expectations are based on what is arranged by God instead of what is arranged by another flawed human being, then you are on the track to remaining resentment free. But how do you keep that perspective? Here is a wonderful prayer given to us by the theologian Thomas Merton that helps me remain expectant for the absolute best and free of resentment;

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Men Leave Treatment Because of Their Codependency!

     I am writing to propose some level of cooperation between professionals writing about and treating codependency and the professionals staffs of treatment centers in order to improve retention and ultimately long-term recovery for clients by providing some missing pieces for families whose lives are being ravaged by the co morbid diseases of addiction and codependency. Here is a quote taken directly from the back cover of our book written by Dr. Joseph Moons, C.P., Retreat Director, Holy Name Retreat Center , Houston, Texas;

“There is a need for this book for codependent men. In my association with the many men and women who attend 12-step retreats at Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center, the codependent men have the greatest fear and the least knowledge or understanding of their relationship with the addicted person in their life.  As the man in the family, they are supposed to have the answers and they don’t. This book begins to give some answers.”

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Stop Helping Them To Death!

     Nothing changes until something changes. If one member of the family changes, that changes the whole family dynamic. As a practicing codependent you can make the changes necessary to allow the other (s) in your family suffering from addiction. The way you do this is; allow them to suffer!

     Stop the little things first. Stop picking up after them. Stop preparing lunches in advance if you are doing that and they could be doing that for themselves. Stop “taking up the slack” every time the addict does not fulfill his or her obligations to the family. Yes, you will catch some flack, and yes you will have to experience the discomfort of not having those chores completed. Everybody will. But do not allow the flack to pull you back into the helping role.

     Next, openly ask the addict for help with larger issues, such as managing the family finances, doing the “running around” to places like the laundry, the grocery store, the post office, and the bank. In my case, I picked up eight bounced checks one weekend after working out of town all week that my now X-wife had written. I then told her that I was never going to do that again, AND I DIDN’T!  Yes, it was a hard week after I opened a new checking account the following Monday morning in only my name, but she learned that I had set a boundary, and no matter how much screaming, silent treatment, dirty looks, or jawing she gave me, I would never spend another Saturday picking up her bounced checks!

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Who Am I, REALLY?

There is a great line in an old Paul Simon song ("The Boxer") that says "...a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

We codependents take that one or two steps further. We "do what we want to do and call it by what sounds best."

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Just A Little Willingness

Despair is the basic "affect" of the newcomer to recovery. Affect is what psychologists and psychiatrists call the basic emotion projected by a person. By the time we finally "hit our bottom" as a result of the ravages of addiction we have truly surrendered. We have given up on other people, on ourselves, and even on a God of any kind!

Recovery, from day one, becomes a matter of possibility. Possibility is just a glimmer of light flickering through the ink-like darkness of our soul. During our first meeting we experience other people demonstrating that they too walked through that door at some point in the past, that they stayed and began their own recovery process, and that IT WORKED!

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My Son Is Still Writing His Story.

Sometimes at a meeting words are uttered that are so simple and yet so profound that I leave the meeting going deeper into myself. That happened recently when a woman spoke about her  own codependency, and how it had trained her to focus on her son instead of herself. 

First, she made everybody laugh when she told us about how easy it was for her son, who was her "qualifier," to CON HER. She said;

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