We Codependent Men, We Mute Coyotes

By Ken P.

The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.

                                                              Taken from Mark Twain's Roughing It

   A codependent man is a man who is often a high functioning husband with a wife who has a physical, mental, and spiritual need for a mind-altering substance, such as alcohol or drugs. His wife's extreme need for her substance has caused her for years to manipulate this man by every means known to a woman who has stood up before institutions full of relatives, a respected preacher, and God pledging his total allegiance to her for life "...till death do them part."

  Almost all of the literature on codependency is written by women for women, leaving the codependent man basically unstudied. This is for a very simple reason. He is under everybody's radar screen because he has to be! Read on and learn a few of the reasons why such a man suffers like the retched coyote described by Mark Twain above...only he can't even howl; because of his disease, he is mute!

   Like the coyote, this man survives in a state of heightened diligence. He sees the other men as wolves running in their chosen packs. He sees the jocks, the golfers, the professional organizations, the fraternal clubs, the Little League Dads, and the men in his suburban neighborhood dressed in their crisp shorts.

   But the twin diseases of alcoholism and codependency have isolated him. He has no pack for protection. His preoccupation with an alcoholic wife has robbed him of the time and energy to form trusting relationships with other men, and he pays a tremendous internal price for that missing element. Here is why; because of hundreds of thousands of years surviving as the hunting half of "hunters and gatherers," somewhere down in his bones every man knows that isolation from the pack means death.

   It is not only his lack of time to develop relationships with other men that isolates this codependent man. His various defense mechanisms such as perfectionism and over-achievement serve to make other men shun him. There is also his underlying anger, mostly born of fear. Other men sense this. He is so obviously not at ease in his own skin. He over-reacts, especially to any slight criticism. Other men soon learn the basic truth summed up by a very wise counselor, who once told me, "It's hard to hug a porcupine!"

   So his ears are either perked in constant high alert, or flattened with anger and frustration. His frustration, though constant, cannot be voiced for an important reason; he cannot identify it!

   It is called denial. Denial is his most immediate and user-friendly shock absorber against the painful emotional shocks delivered at random from his first family during childhood. Studies show that most codependent men came from highly dysfunctional families that included at least one alcoholic or addicted parent.  All he ever knew was this existence, so that feels normal. He just went out and found a wife who would treat him the way the people who were supposed to love him unconditionally always did. A little boy can't win against big parents, and a beaten-down man can't win against an abusive addicted wife.

   So he becomes a mute coyote.

   He must remain silent like a mute coyote. Coyotes remain silent lest they draw attention to themselves. Attention, to a man married to an alcoholic wife is synonymous with pain, and avoidance of pain has gradually become his sole moment to moment purpose. His tail "that forever sags down" stays there between his legs because he is trying to make himself smaller. The wagging tail of his puppy hood...the spiked tail of high expectation, has been replaced. A wagging or spiked tail would destroy his "cover."

   If you can relate to this description, you may be another Codependent man. There is help.

   I am a man who has worked with codependent men for over thirty years as their "sponsor," helping them through the 12-step program called Al-Anon.  I am working with two other such men to reach out and help other men with this pitiful disease.  We are working through various means to establish men's Al-Anon meetings all over this nation, because they are so badly needed. As I write this, only 15% of those attending Al-Anon meetings are men, even though the current generation of women aged 14-22 are using alcohol, drugs, and tobacco at a rate that is higher than their male counterparts. Given this situation, along with the highest rate of alcoholism and addiction among the parents in our country's history, we see a future absolutely rife with codependency among its men.

   If you catch even a glimpse of yourself in this missive or if you suspect that you are enabling somebody close to you who has the disease of addiction, please...Call Al-Anon World Service Office to learn where the nearest men's Al-Anon meeting is in your area, or for information about how to start one!

Call 1-888-4AL-ANON.

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hello,

I was at Christian Recovery Solutions Fort lauderdale Florida Jan. and Feb 08.

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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 a very active blog regarding addiction, recovery and relationships at: http://www.relationshipvision.com/bulletin-board/index.html

Please visit us!

Best regards,

Taye B. Corby, Co-founder

RelationshipVision, the online relationship training resource...

http://www.RelationshipVision.com

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Hello,

My name is Melody. I am from nw pa. I went to Christian Recovery in Fort Lauderdale Florida. I have depression and anxiety and am no longer taking xanax. I have been doing pretty good with that, but coming home even to a loving husband and family seems to have brought me down again. I am not sure why.

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     We have been screaming at the world through this blog that women are using more alcohol, drugs, and tobacco in the current generation than are men. This is a profound shift in social habit. Now, in an incredibly short period of time, that drinking is showing up in our culture in our most vulnerable age group...our newborns.

     Today, as you read this, for the first time ever, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the number one cause of retardation in America...and probably elsewhere in the world as well. The cost of FAS in human terms is incalculable. The spirits of women destroyed from guilt because " ...just a few drinks" were consumed have been crushed, their marriages have been destroyed, and many have had to drive away after leaving their child in some brick building surrounded by green tiled walls. Economically? Well, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome costs more private and government dollars than any other mental defect.

   This has gotten so serious, so quickly, that the American Academy of Pediatrics last year made raising the awareness of the problem among high school and college age women their top priority. The AAP is one of the most respected of medical specialties. These professionals work long hard hours on behalf of children with less pay than most medical specialties because they, like the authors, just love kids. This is why, within the last year, the AAP has focused its efforts on identifying and preventing fetal alcohol syndrome. They have made it a major purpose to increase awareness of this tragic condition to women in the nation's high schools and colleges.

• Four times as many pregnant women drank frequently (7 or more drinks per week or 5 or more drinks on at least one occasion) in 1995 (3.5%) as in 1991 (0.8%) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Alcohol Consumption Among Pregnant and Childbearing-Aged Women--United States, 1991 and 1995," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 4/25/97, p. 345).

   Do you want one last mind numbing fact to ponder tonight before you go to sleep? Guess what the number one symptom of fetal alcohol syndrome is in children whose mothers drank during pregnancy; give up? It is ADD, ADHD, or whatever you want to call that 'ants in the pants' behavior that causes our grammar school kids to line up every morning at school. One by one they march through the school nurse's office, eyes glazed, minds bouncing like ping pong balls, to receive their Ritalin!

   How can we stop this insanity? Please, stop enabling alcoholic women, people. Get yourself to a meeting of Al-Anon, Nar-A-Non, or Adult Children of Alcoholics tonight! There is a meeting probably less than five miles from your front door, it is free, and there is plenty of help there.

Call 1-888-4AL-ANON or access www.al-anon.alateen.org to learn when and where that meeting is held.

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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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