(Note: ACOA - Adult Children of Alcoholics, has changed its name to 
  ACA - Adult Children Anonymous. The reason being that we have found
  many people sharing similar thoughts and feelings who were not 
  neccessarily raised in an alcoholic environment. By changing our name
  we hope to include all who have been raised in a dysfunctional family
  environment.)
 
 PREAMBLE
 Adult Children Anonymous is a support group for people 18 years and older.
 This group focuses on the specific behavior patterns established while living in an alcoholic,
 addictive, or otherwise compulsive family environment.
 Although many children of alcoholics themselves become alcoholics,
 their unique behavior characteristics have been misunderstood or ignored for far too long
 by the alcohol treatment and mental health fields.
 Adult Children seem to share these behavior characteristics
 and there upon shall this group focus its efforts.
 ACA meetings follow a format similar to the AA Twelve Step concept,
 but the two groups have somewhat different purposes.
 Those who attend AA do so because of their desire to stop drinking.
 ACA works well as an extension program for AA members who are trying to
 "pick up the pieces of their lives" after they stop drinking - 
 but is in no way solely for AA members.
 ACA is not meant to be a substitute for AA attendance 
 (or for AlAnon, NA, OA, or other specific purpose Twelve Step programs).
 ACA is a program for those who were raised in an alcoholic, 
 or otherwise dysfunctional family environment.
 ACA members desire, through attending these meetings, 
 to improve the quality of their lives through a better understanding of their past.
 
 

 
 WHAT WE FOUND OUT
 Here are some of the things we found out about ourselves
 and are now beginning to change:
 
  1. We guess at what normal behavior is
  2. We have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end
  3. We lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth
  4. We judge ourselves without mercy
  5. We have difficulty having fun
  6. We take ourselves very seriously
  7. We have difficulty with intimate relationships
  8. We overreact to changes over which we have no control
  9. We constantly seek approval and affirmation
 10. We usually feel that we are different from other people
 11. We are super responsible or super irresponsible
 12. We are extremely loyal even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved
 13. We are impulsive. We tend to lock ourselves into a course of action without giving
     serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.
     This impulsivity leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over our environment.
     In addition, we spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.
 
 THE PROBLEM
  1. We become ilsated and afraid of authority figures
  2. We become approval seekers and lose our identity in the process
  3. We are frightened by angry people and personal criticism
  4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another
     compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fullfill our sick
     need for abandonment
  5. We live life from the view-point of victims and are attracted by 
     that weakness in our love, friendship, and career relationships
  6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and it is 
     easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves.
     This enables us not to look too closely at our faults or our
     responsibility to ourselves
  7. We get guilt feelings if we stand up for ourselves instead of 
     giving into others
  8. We become addicted to excitement
  9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity"
     and "rescue"
 10. We have suppressed our feelings about our traumatic childhoods
     and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings, such
     as joy and happiness. Being out of touch with our feelings is 
     one of our basic denials
 11. We judge ourselves harshly and have very low self-esteem
 12. We are dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, and 
     will do anything to hold onto a relationship in order not to 
     experience these painful feelings. All this results from living
     with sick people who were never there for us emotionally.
 13. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and
     took on the characteristics of the disease, even if we did not
     pick up a drink
 14. Para-alcoholics are reactors, rather than actors
 
 THE SOLUTION
  1. Alcoholism is a threefold disease: mental, physical, and spiritual.
     Our parents were victims of this disease which ends in insanity 
     and/or death or hopefully recovery. Learning about and understanding
     the disease is the beginning of forgiveness.
  2. We learn the three C's - we didnt cause it, we cant control it, 
     and we cant cure it
  3. We learn to put the focus on ourselves and to be good to ourselves
  4. We learn to detach with love and give ourselves and others "tough"
     love
  5. We use the recovery slogans "Let Go and Let God", "Easy Does It",
     "One Day At a Time", "Keep It Simple", and "Live and Let Live".
     Using these slogans helps us to lead our day-to-day lives in a 
     new way.
  6. We learn to acknowledge our feelings, to accept them, to express
     them and to build our self-esteem
  7. By working the 12 steps, we learn to accept the disease, realize
     that our lives had become unmanageable, and that we are powerless
     over the disease and the alcoholic. As we become willing to admit
     our defects of character and our sick thinking, we are able to 
     change our attitudes and to turn our reactions into positive actions.
     By working the program and admitting we are powerless we eventually
     come to believe in the spirituality of the program - that there is
     a solution other than ourselves: the group and a Higher Power - God,
     as we understand him. By sharing our experience, relating to others,
     welcoming newcomers and serving our group we build self-esteem
  8. We learn to love ourselves. Then we are able to love others in a 
     healthy way
  9. We have telephone therapy with people we relate to, which is very
     helpful at all times, not just when problems arise.
 10. By applying the Serenity Prayer to our daily lives, we begin to 
     change the sick attitudes we acquired in childhood
 11. We suggest regular attendance at AA or Alanon meetings
 
 THE TWELVE STEPS
  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol in our past, that our 
     lives had become unmanageable
  2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore
     us to sanity
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
     God, as we understood God
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the 
     exact nature of our wrongs
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character
  7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to 
     make amends to them all
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to
     do so would injure them or others
 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly
     admitted it
 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
     with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's 
     will for us and the power to carry that out
 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we 
     tried to carry this message and to practice these principles in 
     all our affairs
 
 THE TWELVE TRADITIONS OF ACOA
  1. Our common welfare should come first, personal recovery depends on
     ACOA unity
  2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a 
     loving God as expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders 
     are but trusted servants; they do not govern
  3. The only requirement for ACOA membership is a desire for happy
     and effective living
  4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting 
     ACOA as a whole
  5. Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry this message to
     those who still suffer
  6. An ACOA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the ACOA name
     to any related facility lest problems of money, property, and prestige
     divert us from our primary spiritual aim
  7. Every ACOA group is fully self supporting through member donations,
     declining outside contributions
  8. ACOA should remain forever non-professional but our service centers
     may employ special workers
  9. ACOA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service
     boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve
 10. ACOA has no opinion on outside issues, hence the ACOA name 
     ought never be drawn into public controversy
 11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction, rather than 
     promotion, we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level
     of press, radio and films
 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions
     ever reminding us to place principles before personalities
 
 

 CROSSTALK
 
 In ACOA meetings we do not crosstalk or interrupt when someone else is speaking.
 We do this for two reasons.
 First, when we were growing up no one listened to us,
 they told us our feelings were wrong.
 Second, as adults, we are accustomed to not taking responsibility for our own lives.
 So, in these meetings, we speak about our own experiences and feelings.
 We accept with comment what others have to say because it is true for them
 and we work toward taking more responsibility for our own lives
 rather than giving advice to others.
 
 CLOSING
 
 In closing I would like to say that the opinions expressed here 
 were strictly those of the person who gave them.
 TAKE WHAT YOU LIKED, AND LEAVE THE REST.
 The things you heard were spoken in confidence and should be treated as confidential.
 Keep them within the walls of this room,
 and the confines of your mind.
 A few special words to those of you who havent been with us long;
 whatever your problems, there are those among us who have had them too.
 If you try and keep an open mind you will find help.
 You will come to realize that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered
 and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.
 Talk to each other, reason things out with someone you trust,
 but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another.
 Instead, let the understanding, love and peace of the program,
 grow in you one day at a time.
 
 

 I put my hand in yours,
 and together we can do,
 what we could never do alone.
 No longer is there a sense of hopelessness.
 No longer must we depend upon our own unsteady willpower.
 We are all together now,
 reaching out for power and strength greater than ours.
 And as we join together,
 we find love and understanding,
 beyond our wildest dreams.