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.'"

    OK. I've written over 40 posts in this blog site using almost entirely my head, so it is time to step out and make a sunstantial personal gamble. I did learn one acceptable means of expressing feelings as I grew up from the members of my nuclear family, and that was through music. Yes, we had alcoholism rampant...right down the street, and for literally generations back. But we still had our music, and almost every Sunday after church we would gather at somebody's house with guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, pianos, and some of the most incredible vocal harmony among cousins I have ever heard. Hank Williams' latest hit might be attempted braketed by Amazing Grace and The Old Rugged Cross, and in truth not a one of us could read a note of music. We considered people who had to have their music handicapped!

   Through our music, in spite of everything, we showed each other that we all loved each other.

   Since those early years, I've learned that music touches me, and others, sometimes at a deeper level than words. I've studied music now formally, played it on various instruments, and written it  for years. This work has rendered me capable of expressing feelings using the combination of composed music with lyrics (i.e., a song). Hey, it's better than not expressing them at all, and you don't have to shed all of those messy tears.

   In 1989 I wrote the song that I am attaching to this post to describe the feelings I remembered as I sat in the livingroom next to my now X-wife, who had been drinking since 3:00 that afternoon. In other words, I was totally alone.  In 1989, I still had fear of being discovered as a codependent man, so, in order to remain totally anonymous, I had the song recorded by a good demo studio in Nashville as a female vocal. Since that time, I have grown to accept my codependency, and to realize that lonliness is lonliness, whether your name is Ken or Katie!

   I'll include the lyics of the song here in case you cannot play the music for technical reasons and wish to view the piece as merely a poem. Also, if you can download the digital music file and want to read the lyrics as you listen to the country musc, that might make the song even more meaningful. I hope you enjoy my work, and feel free to pass it to anybody "out there" whom it might touch.

Alone With You Sittin' Right Next To Me

Copyright 1989, Ken P.

Life was sweet, when I thought I had some-one.

We were young, and you thought I hung the sun.

But now we're home a-lone, you're on the phone,

or watchin' no-thin', on TV.

I'm Alone With You Sittin' Right Next To Me!

(musical interlude)

Ev-en when you're there, you're not there,

You sit and stare right through me.

Or you're pourin' down booze, you seem to choose,

Any-thing to set you free

Ev-en when we're lyin' face to face,

You're not here in-side my space,

I'm Alone With You Sinnin' Right Next To Me!

(musical interlude)

Ev-en when we're lyin' face to face,

You're not here in-side my space,

I'm A-lone With You Sittin' Right Next To Me!

Time's run out, it's sad for us to pre-tend.

IT'S MY LIFE! I'm sayin,'

Let's let us end.

There were no guar-an-tees, the used-to be's

Are not enough. I set you free, 'cause

I'm Alone With You Sittin Right Next To Me!

Af-ter years of pain, 'yea it's a shame,

I have to cut my losses and run.

Don't ask me to stay, each prescious day,

I could be havin' fun,

So you'll have to find you some-one else,

or just sit here by your-self.

I won't be A-lone With You Sittin' Right Next To me.

You'll have to find you some-one else,

I re-fuse to DIE HERE on your shelf,

I won't be A-lone With You Sittin Right Next To Me.

I won't be A-lone With You Sittin' Right Next To me!

If you have a second cousin who knows an artist like Dolly Parton (or maybe even Eric Clampton), please pass this music and the next 20 songs that I send through my blog. If they record the material and we make a few bucks, we'll spend them on building a decent half-way house here in our county!

Take care,

Ken P.

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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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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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But the following story illustrates how really important my drinking with her was to my now x-alcoholic wife. 

 "After about eight weeks in the program, working with my sponsor, I was wondering if my own drinking was offering a ready excuse for Deb. I discussed this with Scotty, and he said that this may be true. He remarked "...Why not just quit drinking with her and see if she responds?"

I really believed that she would not even notice. For example, I had started the process of stopping smoking earlier, and she didn't even seem to notice for weeks, so I really didn't know whether my drinking with her would be that important. So that weekend, while I did the yard work, I just left off the cold beer.

We had a fight that weekend, but I wasn't sure that the issue was whether or not I was drinking with her. We fought constantly anyway.

But to my amazement, when I started to leave early on Monday morning for a week of work in another city, I found a gift waiting for me on the kitchen counter. There, with a little note were six sparkling green bottles of Heineken beer, my favorite. The note said something like "a surprise for you!" There was even a little heart at the bottom!

I left the beer there, and when I returned the following Friday night I walked into a stinging hornet's nest. She had left the beer and the note there for five days, had looked at it every day, and had built up a rage that exploded in a well rehearsed verbal blast at me the moment I walked in the front door. We fought all weekend over whether or not I would drink with her. I guess my drinking with her was an issue after all.

Ken P.

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   Al-Anon is so absolutely the opposite of our upbringing, that it is TERRIBLY difficult for some men to unlearn their early training.

   Because of this early conditioning, after all of the "John Wayne" modeling, a man over fifty taking the first step has to have reached a bottom that has ripped all personal self esteem from him. The first step says;

"We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable."

   I have sponsored many men during the years, and I can tell you that these men tried everything imaginable to "manage" an alcoholic wife. They spent sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment centers, begged and pleaded, sought out countless counselors, called the police, and hauled their wives to the offices of one physician after another as their wives' bodies deteriorated from the inexorably slow physical and mental decline caused by swallowing alcohol.

If you are such a man, or know one, just direct them to Al-Anon. There this "john Wayne" man will learn to listen, contemplate, accept help, grow, and overcome his early conditioning. We guarantee that he will not become less manly!

Call: 1-888-4AL-ANON or access: www.al-anon.alateen.org

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