Blog Entries tagged 'Men'

Have A Nice Day Comma Marge

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Codependent men are lonely creatures. They live in a state of isolation from the world, because constant contact with an addicted or alcoholic loved-one has for great blocks of their lifetime resulted in pain. So real contact with another person has become synonymous with pain. In fact, any contact withanother person brings with it the risk of truth, and truth is painful, so codependent men avoid truth and contact altogether... even with t [...]

Alone With You Sittin' Right Next To Me

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

My sponsor is working hard to expand me beyond the life I live now, which is almost exclusively "in my head." He tells me that I must transcend the barriers erected within me by decades of faulty programming for an American male and access the feeling part of me. In his words, "Ken, you can do all of the thinking you want, but until you start doing some feeling, you are limited. This is because it is the feeling part of you that 'drives your bus.'" [...]

We Codependent Men, We Mute Coyotes

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 alle [...]

Pregnant Women; PLEASE DON'T SWALLOW ETHYL ALCOHOL!

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 retardati [...]

Why Grandma Doesn't Get A DUI

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

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 of denial for clients and their families.

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:49:15 +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 your clients, their families, your alumni, or any program community people 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 AAthat says..."everything after the word but is a lie."

&nbs [...]

"Doctor Shopping" by Alcoholics.

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:26:47 +0100

Many of the men I have sponsored in Al-Anon have funny "war stories" about bungling attempts made by the medical profession while trying to deal with the lady alcoholics in our lives. The trick, from the gentleman physician's point of view, is how to treat the related health problems, keep her alive and coming back as a customer, and never actually identifythe problem as alcoholism.

My wife, (we'll call her Katy here) wrote her master's thesis [...]

Should I Drink with Her?

kenandjody@comcast.net — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:13:08 +0100

Should I Drink With Her?

Part of the denial system for most alcoholics involves others drinking with them.

As a non-drinker, I have so many stories about heavy drinkers' maneuvers trying to get me to drink with them... like the boss who stood up in a public restaurant with our sales team, pointedhis finger over the top of my head, and announced loudly "this man is a wimp." Everybody who was a little drunk laughed hyst [...]

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 [...]

God Don't Make No Junk

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:29:31 +0100

We are three men with over 40 years of al-anon between us. Please help us help others...men or women, addict or codependent, who might have these diseases in their lives. One of the most common symptoms of our diseases is this problem with realizing that we have HUGE WORTH!

Here are seven points to ponder before you start ripping yourself up from the inside!

Please read on and forward to everybody you possible can!

A Special Christmas Letter from Dad to our whole family

When I received the usual Christmas note this year from Betty, my daughter-in-law, about how "perfect&qu [...]

Enablers for alcoholic women

kenandjody@comcast.net — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:22:47 +0100

For alcoholic women there is usually one primary enabler. This is typically a high functioning husband, a wealthy father, or a boss who spreads the work the alcoholic doesn't do among many other workers. In time these dysfunctional enablers are sucked into the alcoholism vortex because alcoholism is a disease that is progressive. It creeps into systems slowly overmany years. As the alcoholic gradually declines in functional capacity others, in terribly subtle ways, take [...]

Alcoholism; the effects on masculinity

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:06:57 +0100

As part of my continuing education as a pharmaceutical salesman covering the hospitals in a major medical center, my company had arranged for a kind of preceptor ship at a teaching hospital in downtown Chicago. I was to "shadow" a third year internal medicine resident for two solid weeks. We had three reps assigned to each resident, and that little group of four worked together day and night. We were in the ER overnight, in the clinics seeing patients all day across the stree [...]

Healthy relationships, how to.

kenandjody@comcast.net — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 06:52:10 +0100

One key measure used by health professionals to determine how well a person "works" as a human being is to determine how well that person has succeeded in forming and maintaining long-term healthy loving relationships with other people.

The primary determinant for this ability lies in the quality of the relationships formed and maintained by your parents in your family of origin, so if you were raised in a dysfunctional family rife with addictions, then you are starting this p [...]

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 [...]

Boundaries; why they become walls to men

kenandjody@comcast.net — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:54:48 +0100

For women in Al Anon there is often a need to set boundaries and to learn how to maintain them. For MEN in Al-Anon there is more often a need to lower walls.

Walls are safe places for a man who has been around alcoholics or has been married to an alcoholic wife. The reason why silence is so preferable to opening up and exchanging words is because words are how alcoholics most often inflict pain.

The wall that builds in time around the inner parts of a man make him more and [...]

Isolation and fear, wolves and coyotes

kenandjody@comcast.net — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:41:56 +0100

An Al-Anon man lives 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 disease of alcoholism has isolated him. He has no pack for protection. His preoccupation with an alcoholic wife has robbed him of the time and [...]