Every addict and/or alcoholic wakes up every morning with this bag of pain hanging over his or her heart by a rope that is so tight that it only allows the sufferrer to take short shallow breaths. This pain is a 'mixed bag of goodies, but unlike a pinata that yields treats when it is broken, this one just sort of exudes misery like a foul vapor up into the nostrils. 

Through the years the addict has, through trial and error, found ways to loosen the rope, and sometimes to even take the bag off and hang it around the neck of anybody nearby. This is why it is so hard to be around addicts...they are constantly trying to shift their pain to you, and they have evolved amazingly clever and subtle ways to make this sick transfer.

 If you are in any level of proximity to an addict, keeping that bag of pain off of your own neck is impossible...at least without  help from others who have 'been there and understand. We Al-Anons, Nar-Anons, and Adult Children of Alcoholics are the others. We meet regularly and share our experience, strength, and hope. We spend hours discussing this subject, which we call DETACHMENT.

After many years of attending meetings, we have come to identify three distinct phases of detachment which are as follows: detachment with hatred, detachment with indifference, and detachment with love.

There is no shortcut through this process for somebody who has spent decades having the bag hung around their neck by another's disease. However, an important point that needs to be made here is this; even detachment with hatred is healthier for both the addict and the codependent than no detachment at all.

What am I saying here? I'm saying please;  reach out and ask for help from the rest of us. We are meeting every week in community centers, churches, coffee shops, libraries, homes, and sometimes just in a circle out under a big oak tree in the sun to help each other. Call 1-888-4AL-ANON or click on www.al-anon.alateen.org to find out when and where there is a meeting just for you!

 Ken P.

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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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Ken P. and Bob T writing on The Codependent Man.

C:\Documents and Settings\Ken & Jody\My Documents\My Music\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album (10-15-2007 2-06-22 PM)

Men today represent only 15% of Al-Anons, that is, only 15% of the people attending Al-Anon meetings nationwide trying to get help for themselves with their enabling behaviors with various alcoholic people are men! And yet within the current generation of alcohol and drug users (14-22), the ladies are matching their male counterparts in addiction rates. Why this huge discrepancy? 

Here is what Ken P. says;

"When I came into Al-Anon in 1976 I was one of only about four men in all of the city of Houston who attended meetings regularly. Why?

Well, first, admitting I was powerless over anything was not even thinkable for me, given who I was and how I was raised. A real man does not just "accept" a bad situation...he DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Second, when I actually did attend a meeting (after my sponsor...one of the four guys) just hounded me until I did, I found what looked to me at that time like a secretive little meeting room full of women...most of them much older than I was. Besides, all of the "real men" were across the hall in AA laughing boisterously. Hey, I didn't want to BE an Al-Anon anyway, and after that first experience...well, thank God for my sponsor, who just refused to give up on my recovery!

Another major block to my attending meetings was that Al-Anon was definitely the territory of the woman...even more so in 1976 than today. Most men come to their first Al Anon 12 step recovery meeting filled with fear but also with hope that they will find a step wise, logical solution to the problem of addiction. Instead what they find is room full of women who are talking about their feelings. Very few men return after such an encounter. Al Anon was formed in the early days of AA when women decided to get together while their men were at AA meetings and was almost exclusively for women until the mid 1970's."

Here is Bob T on the subject;

 "Men are different from women in many respects beyond their use of language and this is especially true in how they react when faced with someone else's addiction. This entire blog is intended to provide help specifically for men and to fill a gap in recovery literature which is for the most part written by and for women. For example, Scott B., Ken P., and I have all three experienced frustration when attempting to find recovery literature and meetings that focus on how men think, feel and react to the disease of addiction. We have also heard many other men, both new and experienced in the recovery process, express this same frustration.

   Most men do not know what they are feeling and when they do, anger is usually the only feeling that is expressed. In addition, unlike women, they are not willing to share feelings in any setting much less in front of a group of Al-Anon women. 

   Men just think and act differently when confronted with addiction. They are driven to take action immediately rather than to talk about the problem with others as women generally do first. When repeated attempts to fix the problem fail, men become angry and frustrated thinking they are a failure. They also become confused because what has worked in the past to solve problems does not work when dealing with addiction. Men are consummate problem solvers at their workplace...they have to be in order to succeed. After repeated failures to "solve" the "problem" of addiction, guilt sets in and they become even more motivated to "solve the problem." I once heard this cycle described as what happens when a big bear picks up a burning hot garbage can, gets burned, gets madder, and therefore squeezes harder!

   While men react by controlling, raging and taking action, women tend to try to be better wives or mothers, do more for the addict and redouble their efforts to use nurturing to solve the problem. Given these differences in how men and women feel, think and react when confronted with addiction, it follows that men also approach recovery differently than women.

   In addition, almost all the literature available on recovery for people living with addiction is written by women. As a result, men usually do not connect with the principles of the Al Anon 12 step program when they first encounter them at a meeting or in reading the available literature. They first need to be able to relate to a man who is or has been in their situation and learn they are not alone in how they feel and react to the disease of addiction.

   Every Monday night now we attend a Men's Al-Anon meeting in our hometown of about 80,000 people, and we are three of 20-25 men...laughing boisterously! We are in all levels of recovery, we have many different "qualifiers" (wives, sons, mothers, brothers, even bosses), but we are all there participating in our own recovery process. Yes, the flavor of the meeting is distinctively different from most meetings, but we have learned that resentful is resentful, and that it hurts the one doing the resenting regardless of sex...the same with fear, embarrassment, disgust and bankruptcy, none of which are any fun whether you call yourself John or Carol.

   We all three urge you. If you are a man reading this who suspects that you have a person addicted to anything...alcohol, drugs (hallucinogens, opiates, marijuana, or prescription drugs) food, sex, work...or shopping, please get some help. It's out there.

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   Denial is the favorite device for self-protection for everybody in an addicted household...the addict, the codependent spouse, the sick reactive children, even the enabling figures around the family like bosses and neighbors.

This is a special form of insanity. How can there be a problem, if we simply refuse to admit it? We enablers of addicts are just as self-deluding as our counterparts in the addiction dance. We know that "we are special", and that the laws of physics somehow do not apply to us.

   But here is the rub. Reality keeps intruding into our delusion. The cops show up. There are DUI's. We end up in the ER bleeding through our guts from perforated ulcers just like the addict. It isn't always as dramatic as this. More commonly there are many days of work lost. How many cases of "liquid flu" have been reported by anxious spouses to bosses who want to believe them when everybody knows somewhere deep inside that somebody who is not in this conversation got loaded last night!

As the enabler, on the surface you feel confused. "So what's the deal? I always tried to do my best, I was always the good kid, I kept my nose clean, I always kept a job and payed my taxes. Why is my life such a mess?"

 The second step used by the millions living by the 12-step programs so popular throughout the world today says;

"We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

   Until insanity is acknowledged, recovery is impossible. At meetings we admit our insane behavior and thinking out loud in a safe place. Other recovering people nod their heads as we describe raging at a person who isn't even mentally present. Other Al-Anons smile as we tell of sleeping fully clothed so that we can be ready to bound out of bed and head for the emergency that we just know is going to happen tonight while our addicted son is "out there" in harm's way.  

   Until you "suit up and show up" at a meeting, you will be doomed to living in your own head. That marble keeps rolling anround and around through the same insane groove until you ask for help. You may someday accept the fact that the only sane approach to living with an addict is to admit that you cannot handle it alone, then go out and ask for help from people who have been there.

 Anything else...anything after "yes but," is insanity!

If you are honestly searching for a better life in the face of these realities, PLEASE...contact Al-Anon and find a meeting. There is probably one within walking distance of your house as you read this that meets every week! 

Al-Anon QWorld Service Office, 1-888-4-AL-ANON, or see their web site at www.al-anon.alateen.org.

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My wife, (we'll call her Katy here) wrote her master's thesis on the subject of alcoholism among the elderly, and she identified this problem, especially for older women. For example, when an older woman "presents" to the physician with shaking hands, he diagnoses her with Parkinsonism. He is correct. Parkinsonism happens when the brain literally uses up all of the pleasure chemical, dopamine. Dopamine is nature's built-in morphine for pain relief, and we all need it occasionally. But decades of replacing dopamine with the other pain reliever (alcohol) can render a brain incapable of making its own pain reliever. From the physician's point of view, Parkinsonism is a lot more respectable as a diagnosis than "...sorry, looks like you are an old drunk."

To be fair to the physicians, the lady alcoholic is an expert at doctor shopping. She will haunt one physician's office after another until she receives an answer to her current medical problem, as long as that answer does not relate to her drinking.

One man I sponsored began laughing hysterically when I asked him how his alcoholic wife dealt with all of the medical problems she was experiencing while maintaining her denial about her alcoholism.

"Are you kidding, he said?" She has this favorite doctor now who tells her she has GAD."

When I asked him what that was, he said it meant "General Anxiety Disorder."

Wow! That is the perfect diagnosis for any alcoholic. Every one of them I ever met had general anxiety!

If you can relate to any of this, you probably need help. PLEASE!!! Call Al-Anon World Service Office to find a meeting near you at 1-888-4-AL-ANON or access www.al-anon.alateen.org

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4. Don't make the session about you. This is not the place for your current situation or your past, except for an occasional example.

5. Don't ever reveal confidential information about another person you are sponsoring, even when asked a question like "...how is Joe doing?"

6. Don't allow anybody on "borrow your program." Your time together is no substitute for attending meetings, working the steps, etc.

7. Don't be afraid of long periods of silence.

1. Do set up guidelines about frequency of meetings, each of your availability for phone calls.

2. Do encourage calls to others within the program, especially when you are not available.

3. Do your homework. Read, think, and ask for help with this person's issue elsewhere.

4. Occasionally show up with a reading source. This isn't for every meeting, you are not a teacher or a lecturer, but an occasional "handout" is helpful.

5. Suggest sources outside the program. Counseling, the church, exercise, healthy eating habits, all of these changes in behavior are part of the recovery process.

6. Encourage every person sponsored to become a sponsor!

7. Work yourself out of a job. The friendship can last forever, but it is good to define an ending. The sponsor-sponsored relationship continues only as long as both mutually agree it is working.

Ken P.

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   God showed me this principle one Tuesday when I attended two Al-Anon meetings in one day. I slipped out of the Medical Center where I was working and attended a noon meeting at an Episcopal Church. It was a typical meeting for that day (the late 70's)...about 25 women and me.

   I shared during the meeting, and as we all walked across the parking lot to the Luby's cafeteria for lunch a woman made it a point to walk up beside me. She just sort of "lit into me" in an accusatory tone, but what she said was "...You're the only man I ever heard who made any sense. All other men just want one thing, and they are not even capable of thinking about anybody else."

   That night I met a man I was sponsoring, and he began right away unloading his own brand of disgust for the opposite sex. "Women only want two things from a man...a d&$%*@ and a meal ticket!"

   Since that Tuesday I have viewed alcoholism as a disease. It is a disease of all human beings, and neither sex has a monopoly on the misery.

Quote from Winston Churchill; "The battle between the sexes would be over and done-with, there would be a clear-cut winner and a clear-cut loser...if there were not so much fraternization between the enemies!"

If you need help with your "stinkin' thinkin' " of ANY kind, find the nearest Al-Anon support group to your home. You can get details easily by checking out www.al-anonalateen.org or calling 1-888-4AL-ANON.

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1 Samuel 18:1, 3-4

Question; is it possible for men to have real friendships with other men in today's culture? The answer we have learned through years of attending men's Al-Anon meetings is YES! It is not only possible, it is terribly important that we do so.

Why? Because there are issues, conflicts, struggles, and worries that men share. These are issues many women have a great deal of difficulty understanding. It is important that men come together in groups...twos, threes, fours, or 25's. In these groups they learn, working within the structure of the 12-steps and the principles of the Al-Anon recovery program, that there are other men who are comfortable enough within themselves to speak openly about topics that the newcomer has not even been able to dredge up into his own consciousness!

First, in the example above taken from the Old Testament, the distinction was made that Jonathan was the king's son. That implies that Jonathan was much younger, and therefore probably one of David's contemporaries. They immediately had that in common. Our studies of our own Monday Night Men's Group, which has a roster of over 60 men who have attended meetings regularly over the past 12 months, indicate that there is some validity to this commonality among men within similar age groups. The youngest of our group are always in their early 30's, and usually have fathers who are their "qualifiers." The oldest, in their 70's, usually have son's who are their qualifiers. In the middle, the men from 35-55, usually have a wife who is their qualifier. But the disease of addiction transcends the boundaries created by the classic "generation gap." Regardless of age, we watch in awe as the 70 year-old retired coach with the addicted son relates to the 32-year old sociology teacher with the addicted father!

Next, notice what Jonathan willingly gave to David to seal their friendship. First, he gave his robe...his outermost covering. Then he even gave his tunic! Jonathan physically and metaphorically made himself naked in front of David. He said in effect, "I trust you enough to expose myself without modesty to you."

I can tell you that witnessing a CEO trying in an open meeting among over 20 men through halting sentences to describe how he felt when he had to go through the sadness, embarrassment and shame of visiting his only son at the county jail last Saturday night was just like that. It was dead quiet in that Community Center meeting room with the shades closed (our group years ago bought the shades and donated them to the center to protect our anonymity). The man finally surrendered to his feelings and wept. The acceptance, caring, and just pure agape love that poured forth from the men who spoke after this scion of industry showed how devastating his son's alcoholism had been to him was palpable.

Next, Jonathan handed over his sword, bow, and belt. That meant to me that Jonathan gave up his offense. He handed over all of his protection. He stripped himself of both his means of offense and defense. For a Jewish man of Old Testament times, to surrender these items was the ultimate trust. When our CEO friend wept he removed his front. His pride, his bluster, his manliness, all of that which was so important, to anyone, but especially to a successful corporate man, was surrendered...publicly.

There is another quote I want to use now, this one from Proverbs, 27:17.

"As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend."

Reduced by this disease to your core, you are now "teachable." Letting go of the feelings after genuinely feeling them is only the beginning. Our dear CEO can now attend our meeting for as long as he wishes, trusting and exposing him every week while witnessing other men doing the same thing. Some day he can develop enough trust to approach a man to whom he can relate, and ask him to be his sponsor. The man he approaches may be an auto mechanic, a janitor, or an airline pilot. It makes no difference to either one of them. They are men who have learned to trust other men, and now the mechanic will serve as the iron that sharpens the CEO.

If you can use this kind of support every week, PLEASE...contact Al-Anon and find out where there is a meeting near you. You can locate a meeting at www.al-anon.alateen.org or by calling 1-888-4AL-ANON

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2. I need to stop viewing myself as a bad person trying to be good, and recognize that I am in reality a sick person trying to get well.

3. Fear is projecting within my own mind the bad things that I think may happen. This is not necessarily the truth. This is very probably NOT the way things really are!

4. I need to especially be on guard for the old sick methods so deeply engrained in me by other not-well people that allow me to continue self destructive ways. Rationalizations such as "...everybody does that," or "...I was just trying to be helpful," or "but I always had only the best of intentions" are no longer valid.

5. Our flaws did not come because of the addict. We already had those flaws long before we even met the addict.

6. We must discard the position that how we look when we suit up has any importance. What is important is that we suit up and show up...physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. This is a private process. It is between you, a single trusted other human being, and God.

7. Your personal inventory absolutely must be balanced between your weaknesses and you strengths. When you have been hurt a lot because you have gone too far in tolerating unacceptable behavior, you can pass an invisible line where you no longer have self respect. When businesses do inventories, the debts and liabilities portion is not the major focus. You have stock, credits receivable, reputation, and worth beyond what you know at this moment. In AA parlance,

"God don't make no junk!"

Find an Al-Anon meeting at 1-888-4-AL-ANON or www.al-anon.alateen.org

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