We have all heard that liars figure and figures lie, but when we started delving deeply into the data about women and alcoholism we found many figures that just didn't...well...figure!

   For example, when it comes to DUI's (or DWI's) the number of arrests never matches any data on the incidence of alcoholism among women as compared to men. The trends are certainly there;  in 1977 only 8% of DUI's were for women, and by 2007 that percentage had doubled to 15%.  But that still means that there are 85 DUI arrests for men for every 15 for women in a culture whose youngest generation (the ones proven to do most of the drinking) have a higher usage rate for alcohol among females than among males! We started digging to find out how this could happen.

   Here is what we found. The difference is not truly in the number of women who are stopped who could be arrested for DUI. The difference lies in factors involving the policeman making the decision about whether to arrest or not, and his personal biases!

   A study by the National Highway and Safety Administration (US DOT Report H5-801-230) shows clearly the real factors involved in Officer O'malley's decisions. Decisions like, does he put the cuffs on Grandma? How about that cute YUPPY on her way back from Happy Hour to her condo?

Here's the first quote from the DOT study.

   "The officer's personal use of alcohol is inversely related to his level of alcohol-related enforcement. Patrolmen who drink make significantly fewer arrests than those who do not, and those who drink frequently make significantly fewer arrests than those who use alcohol only occasionally."

 This says that all of us have a better chance of "skating" when stopped drunk if the officer himself is a drinker!

The study elaborates concerning women. It points out that most officers are male, and that they tend to decide not to arrest anybody who is less aggressive, also anybody who looks, acts, sounds, and smells like their wife, mother, grandmother, sister, or the girl next door!

Looking deeper into the stone, what is the most dangerous result of women not receiving the DUI's they clearly earn? It is this; dui's are red flags that alcoholism is a problem. Women, because they donnot receive them, are allowed to progress deeper into the disease of alcoholism before they show up on society's radar screen.

In future posts we will show the same denial among other professionals such as physicians, clergymen, judges and attorneys. When are we all going to stop denying and admit that our women are right now...in this generation...more often alcoholics and addicts than in any other gereration in the past? Put another way, do you really believe that the latest starlet with this problem is an exception?

 If you are a man living in denial about the alcoholism and/or addiction in a woman in your life, please get help. Call Al-Anon, a support group for family members of alcoholics at 1-888-4AL-ANON or visit www.al-anon.alateen.org right now!

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What, me addicted?

   Addictive behaviors work. They provide temporary relief for intense physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual agony. We co-dependents have our own favorite addictions.

   To most of us, the word addiction brings to mind images of down and out souls whose lives are lost to drugs and alcohol. But that group actually represents only a fraction of the population whose lives are hampered by addiction. If we must do the numbers, it is generally accepted that about 10% of the U.S. population is addicted to alcohol alone, throw in other substances, and you get to about 15%.

Please consider this startling figure, however.

   Beyond the 10%, for every individual addicted to alcohol alone, there are four others who are intimately close to that person who are addicted to them!

   Because of the sick payoffs from rescuing alcoholics (see addictive agents #2, #4, #7, #8, #9, #11, #14, #15, #16, and #17 listed below), and because an alcoholic cannot survive without being propped up by those four other people (some call them co-dependents, some call them co-alcoholics), alcohol being swallowed by only one person soon creates a sick system where everybody pays a monumental personal price. Everybody in this system has to live in a state of powerful denial. In other words, as I write this, I am describing over half of the U. S. population!

The following excellent definition and listing of addictive agents is taken from Serenity, A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery. 

"Addictive agents are those persons or things on which we form an excessive dependency."

    1. Alcohol or drugs

    2. Work, achievement, and success

    3. Money addictions, such as overspending, gambling, hoarding.

    4. Control addictions, especially if they surface in personal, family, and business relationships

    5. Food addictions

    6. Sexual addictions

    7. Approval dependency (the need to please people)

    8. Rescuing patterns toward other persons

    9. Dependency on toxic relationships (relationships that are damaging and hurtful).

   10. Physical illness (hypochondria)

   11. Exercise and physical conditioning

   12. Cosmetics, clothes, cosmetic surgery, trying to look good on the outside

   13. Academic pursuits and excessive intellectualizing

   14. Religiosity or religious legalism (preoccupation with the form and the rules and regulations of religion, rather than benefiting from the real spiritual message).

   15. General perfectionism

   16. Cleaning and avoiding contamination and other obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

   17. Organizing, structuring (the need to always have everything in its place).

   18. Materialism.

    How did you do? If you are a relatively healthy person, physically, emotionally, and mentally, you will list about eight of these. If you are a co-dependent, you might suffer from some or all of them!

If you read something here that gave you one of those life-changing awarenesses, PLEASE...go for help. It it readily available right near you in your community. Just call 1-888-4-AL-ANON to learn about finding a meeting, or visit www.al-anon.alateen.org

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But still, there has to be another, successful way to be in recovery without the religion or the 12-step.  There are addiction treatment centers that offer treatment methods as an alternative to the 12-step, so there's got to be aftercare adopting a similar philosophy.  I think any way that paves the path to recovery is awsome and should be embraced, but it's curious to me why I never hear about any alternative measures to recovery.

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   Scott Peck's first sentence in his seminal work , The Road Less Traveled was "Life is difficult." Program people understand this. Only those of us who have finally been reduced to desperation understand the internal forces that have to work  against a codependent man that finally drive him to surrender and seek help.

   I  must have really looked like the "deer in the headlights" as I sneaked into my first Al-Anon meeting in the little upstairs room at an AA club one night in Dallas, 300 miles from my home. I was there, not so much because I was seeking growth or recovery...I didn't even have those notions available at that point in my mind. I was there because, after one horrible night in my livingroom I had surrendered and found the Al-Anon office in Houston. There God arranged for my first sponsor, Scotty L., to walk into the room. It was Scotty who just stayed after me to attend a meeting. I owe him so much today.

   It was upstairs. It seems like it  always is the first time. Looking back I see the symmetrical juxtaposition of God's universal plan. I had to take those old rickety wooden steps one at a time just like I had to take the 12-steps  over the next two years.

   The upper floor was poorly lit. The room was overcrowded and too loud with what I thought as pure banter. They were all women, they were all older than I, and I knew none of them. All of these cheesy posters were stuck with thumbtacks high on the walls around the room. When they read the 12-steps I realized someplace inside that this was a terribly serious undertaking, this taking of these steps. In fact, I remember thinking to myself something like "...how could I possibly really do all of that...how could I admit even a fraction of my own faults to somebody else?"

   About this moment there was a burst of laughter from across the hall. This was where the real action was happening. The big room across the hall was where the AA's met, and they sounded like they were having a great time over there. As I sat there in this little room that felt oppressively serious I was thinking something like this; what the Hell am I doing here? I've done all of the right stuff to prove my manhood. I've worked myself through college, sired three sons, and coached, managed and umped Little League games. I have carved out a career in a gut-wrenchingly competetive profession. I once carried a drunk engineer up some rickety wooden stairs out of a dark underground bar on K street in Sacramento while drunk myself. More steps. What am I doing here?

   When it was finally over I was out the back door without a word to anybody that night. I remember nothing eccept the feeling of being overwhelmed and guilty at furtively going to this meeting while away from home. I worried about betraying my wife, and, most of all, I feared the emotional pain I knew that she would cause me if she ever found out that I had told myself  about her drinking, and then those ladies at the Al-anon office, and even Scotty!

   Thank God, the years and the program have been kind. I no longer have to live with active alcohol consumption in my home, and, because of the Al-Anon program, I am surrounded by love every day! I will never know all of the miracles that led me here, but I do know that there are other men right this moment  who are where I was then.

    If you have not yet climbed those rickity dark steps, please seriously consider doing so. You have nothing to lose but your agony. 

   Call Al-Anon World Service office at 1-888-4AL-ANON, or access their excellent web site at www.al-anonalateen.org to learn where there is a weekly meeting near you.

Ken P.

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