Blog Entries tagged 'Meetings'

Alcoholism and Cancer. Why is One More Respectable Than the Other?

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Here are some thoughts I had relative to a recent announcement that our church was putting together programs to help families with cancer in the family. Yes, cancer is a devastating set of ailments, but in total they pale by comparison with another cluster of diseases centered on alcoholism. Before I go any further, I must point out that the two diseases are directly related in that alcoholism leads to cancer.

There are eight cancers directly caus [...]

The Serenity Prayer

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

We 12-step people say the Serenity Prayer's first few lines thousands of times, before most meetings, and in our hearts so often when faced with one of those inevitable difficult situations life hands us.

But how many times have we heard the entire work, as written by Reinhold Neibuhr in 1926?

When you hear the prayer in its entirety you see even greater depth, and you see where it is at heart a Christian poem. So [...]

Sick And Tired (A Song for AA Members)

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I wrote this song for all of my AA friends after attending "open AA" meetings for about twelve years. By the grace of God I don't have the disease of alcoholism, at least the part that destroys my various body systems after I ingest alcohol. I have codependency, which is itself a recognized disease.

However, I had heard quite a few AA stories by the time I wrote this, and I felt like I knew how people in AA sometim [...]

The Codependent Man

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 dru [...]

"The Affair," or How an alcoholic wife shifted her guilt

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:35:23 +0100

"The Affair"

Alcoholic wives resist every effort by an enablibng husband to escape the bondage of her extreme need for alcohol. One disturbing trend starts when he starts atending 12-step meetings for codependents, such as Al-Anon or Nar-A-Non. To her frustration, he seems to come home from these meetings whistling like he used to do. About thistime, she suddenly comes to the perfect solution to this conundrum; he is having an affair!

Yes, it all fits [...]

"Yes But..." Notes on Denial By Codependents of Alcoholics.

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

We are three men with over 40 years of recovery in Al-Anon, a 12-step recovery program for the families of alcoholics. Please read this and forward it to anybody in your program community it may help. So many are so deeply damaged by years of living with addicts and/or alcoholics.

Yes But....

We love the oral tradition from AA that says..."everything after the word but is a lie."

Denial is the fa [...]

What it is like to live after recovery.

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:52:43 +0100

I will illustrate the cumulative effect of the Al-Anon way of living by putting into words the way I live my life on a typical day.

A good night of sleep that repairs the cells in your body and integrates the memories in your brain from yesterday's experience leads to a high energy morning. But first you enjoy slowly awakening withthat delicious fuzzy warm feeling you remember when awakening as a child. You share some time with your beautiful, caring, sensi [...]

The Battle of the Sexes Al Anon Style

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:24:20 +0100

The Battle of the Sexes, Al Anon Style

Love is what happens to a man and a woman who don't know each other.

W. Somerset Maugham

The constant state of fear, if it is associatedwith the women in his life from the beginning, sometimes leads to men who turn anger toward all women. In exactly the same way that the woman in Al-Anon sometimes enjoys engaging in "man-bashing" sessions, the male Al-Ano [...]

12 Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:06:30 +0100

12 SYMPTOMS OF A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

When hurting people first come into a 12-step program, they are seldom walking into the meeting for the purpose of having a spiritual awakening. Most, men and women alike, come to programs such as AA, Al-Anon, Nar-A-Non, or Adult Children of Alcoholics searching for relief from the pain and chaos visited upon them and theirloved ones by the co-diseases of addiction and codependency. But these diseases are diseases of the spirit first, an [...]

Flavors of Codependency, I

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:03:29 +0100

Flavors of codependency

The super-denier codependent

The basic distinguishing characteristic of all the members in the addicted household is denial. Therefore, the first type of codependent is the type who has simply perfected denial. These people adoptevery excuse made by the alcoholic. They blame anybody else for the consequences inevitably suffered by the drinker. They even make up their own excuses. This [...]

12 Rationalizations for a Typical High Functioning Alcoholic

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:19:23 +0100

My first post about high functioning alcoholics dated November 1 was so popular that I decided to follow-through with my promise to write others. The following is taken from literature provided by Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church, Inc., and was written by Janee S. Parnegg, CAC.

You can access more information at the following:<strong>

info@episcopalrecovery.org

and/or

http://www.episcopalrecovery.org [...]

How Much Does Alcoholism Cost Society?

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Nobody escapes paying the price for alcoholism, drug addiction, and codependency in society. Even if you are fortunate enough not to be a drinker at a level that is diseased (about 10% of our population drinks enough to hamper their daily performance) or one of the four adults who are in line daily enabling one who is (i.e., 48% of all adults over the age of 18 were either directly impacted by a diseased drinker as they grew up, or are being effected at the moment), then you are paying fo [...]

How Alcoholic Wives Train Codependent Husbands

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

When drug researchers want to induce stress ulcers in mice, the most efficient test model involves using a cage constructed so that the mice cannot avoid putting their feet on the bottom of the cage. The bottom, however, delivers a painful electric shock. The mouse has to touch the bottom, and he knows he will be shocked, but there is absolutely no way that the mouse can anticipate when the shock will occur, because the shock is initiated by a computer set for random delivery. It is [...]

Why Do "Big Boys" Have Trouble Admitting Powerlessness?

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0100

We are three men from Texas with over 40 years in Al-Anon (which is pretty unique), and we wrote this post the day before Halloween last year without the slightest thought that so many would read it. It is accounting for about 1/4 of the "hits" on our blog now, which has more than 60 posts, so it is obvious that men REALLY DO have trouble admitting powerlessness!

Please help us fuel this fire and help many other men by forwarding this post to any [...]

Men are different from women!

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:40:10 +0100

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 workwhen dealing with addiction. Men are consummate problem solvers at their workplace...they have to b [...]

Shutting down

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:26:06 +0100

Some men, myself included, resort to their own kind of offense-defense. Whether you call it shutting down, "the silent treatment," withholding of yourself, or, to use the jargon of the book Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars "going into your cave," it is the same process. It is sick behavior designed to control if done in a healthy relationship, but withinthe walls of a household hiding an addict, it is perfectly normal. That is because the environm [...]

Questionaire; do you need Al-Anon or Nar-Anon?

kenandjody@comcast.net — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:24:26 +0100

This questionnaire is courtesy of the Al-Anon World Service Office pamphlet "Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism 2008."

1. Do you worry about how much someone else drinks?

2. Do you have money problems because of someone else's drinking?

3. Do you tell lies to cover up for someone else's drinking?

4. Do you feel that if the drinker cared about you, he or she would stop drinking to please you?

5. Do you blame the drinker's behavior o [...]

My First Meeting

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0100

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 meet [...]