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 And not just alcohol June 27, 2008
In her study of adults who as children were reared in homes where one or both of the parents were an alcoholic, Woititz discovered 13 characteristics of adult children of alcoholics. When I read the list, I thought: "Hey, 12 out of 13 ain't bad." Only later did I discover that had I been telling myself the truth, I'd have scored a perfect 100%. And all this with both of my parents total abstainers from alcohol. How come? In her introduction, Woititz acknowledges that after her study was completed, they discovered that the same characteristics (and solutions) also apply to children reared in homes where, for example, there was an individual with a disability, nonchemical addictions (i.e., work, sex, religion), or some other kind of obsession that demanded everyone else in the family fit in and around and aid that obsession. Although my parents have long since passed away, I still find the book helpful in understanding some of my behaviors that even I find bewildering. And in hope that it may benefit others who haven't yet come to see the forces that helped mold them into the person they are today, I've made this book a gift.
Devastatingly Beautiful June 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I can remember very clearly that day in '75 when my dad came home from the grocery store with an enormous green jug of some kind of liquid and I, being only ten years old, innocently asked him, "What's that dad?" He just kind of smiled a me and said, "Oh, that? That's joy juice, Johnny."
I just kind of laughed it off.
By the time I was fifteen years old I began to notice how quickly that "Joy Juice" seemed to disappear. My dad would buy maybe three or four of them aweek and not only were they in the refridgerator but I also found them in his closet.
By the time I was twently, I realized that that stuff my dad called "Joy Juice" did not really give him any kind of joy at all. In fact, the more of it he drank, the meaner he got...at least that was my perception. Maybe I noticed it more than my other siblings because for some reason I bore the brunt of his anger. I felt as though I was the source of all his disappointment and anger. I often felt guilty abut my dad's drinking. If only I stayed in college then my dad wouldn't have drank so much...if only I loved him more than he wouldn't need to drink...if only...if only...if only...I even thought that if I ended my own life, my dad's would be so much better.
After a botched suicide attempt, I was literally thrown into the world of healing and recovery. A lot of the books that I read at that time came to me rather than me coming to them. Such is the case with this book.
My eyes well up with tears when I think of this devastatingly beautiful book. It was the first book that told me what my condition really was; I was an adult child of an alcoholic. Those words were not a soothing balm. They sting just as much now as they did when I first read them.
I remember thinking, but my dad can't be an alcoholic. My uncle was, that was for sure. They found Uncle Ralph dead in a South Carolina gutter. He never knew how to handle his life, but my dad was a brilliant man and an incredible English teacher who had won more than his fair share of awards. He was witty and charming and people loved him but my dad had more than a few demons wandering around in his psyche and when those demons got the better of him he was dark and lonely, insecure and afraid. He was running from something but I never quite knew what it was.
This book made me so angry that I could only read a paragraph at a time at first. I often felt while reading it the urge to scream while still on other days I often found myself running to the bathroom and throwing up due to the stress I was feeling about confronting my own demons regarding my dad's alcoholism.
But even though I was learning about my dad's illness - and that is exactly what alcoholism is, I was, at age 25, going to the bars with my best friend and getting drunk at least 4 nights out of seven and one night, I guess they call this a "moment of clarity" I looked at my friend(whose mother was also an alcoholic) after drinking my third Stoli's on the rocks and I said, "Hey, do you think we're becoming alcoholics like our parents?" He looked at me and just smiled, "Well, if we're not than we are kinduv wasting our money." And I looked at him and I just remember feeling partially frozen and partially horrified and I looked at that glass of vodka and back at my friend and said, "If that's the case, then I don't want to do this anymore." And I walked out of that bar feeling alone, scared, and yet willing to have my life completely change.
I finally got through this book and then I read it again and again. I finally got the urge to attend an Al-Anon meeting and I stood up and said those words that often change lives, "My name is John and I'm the child of an alcoholic..." And the weight that came off my shoulders that evening was so incredible.
Who knew I had wings? That was all I needed to say. That was all I ever needed to say.
Last month my dad was admitted into the ER. His drinking had finally caught up with him. He had permanently damaged his central nervous system and has thrown his balance completely off. I sat with him at his bedside as he told the doctor that he only drank "a glass or two". At almost 81 years old, he's still lying. But his lies are more and more transparent. The doctor knew he was dealing with an alcoholic but I knew that this man laying in that bed was a brilliant teacher, a witty and charming man, a man who had his demons, a man who once completely terrified me and had me convinced me that I wasn't "good enough", a man suffering from the dis-ease of alcoholism and I just held his hand.
I love this book but I am more than an adult child of an alcoholic just as the alcoholic is more than an alcoholic. We are all children of Love, of Life, of Light Itself. We all have wings and if we are willing to go through the darkness, we will find light...not by analyzing the darkness...but by admitting to ourselves that we are good enough to heal our lives and bring forth who we already are within.
Peace and Blessings,
john, "the Light Coach"
Make this your first stop in the series of ACOA literature available May 26, 2008
This book is a must have for those who are in a relationship with ACOA's. Without this reading it is nearly impossible to understand the complexities experienced by your ACOA growing up and how those experiences are potrayed in adult hood. After reading this you will realise there is hope.
 The mass market platform for understanding our world and our selves February 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In it's time, and for a very -long- time, this was what we had to go on. Woititz understood the dilemmas, the lost decades of our lives, the confusion that swung us hither and yon, and the loss of grasp of ourselves and the world around us that overwhelms the child of confusing, invalidating, ignoring, abandoning and abusive parenting. Though she framed it as she did, it is clear now that the 12 Step movement that sprang from her book includes the children of such parents regardless of their drinking or other substance abuse habits... or -lack- of them.
My own mother did not drink heavily until well into my own adulthood, but she was surely one of "them" throughout her life... and mine. She had Munchausen's by Proxy, and I was her medical punk. Today, I find it wholly and entirely possible to accept her as the daughter of those who confused the h**l out of -her-.
Wotitiz's 13 generalizations have opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands. Her work opened the floodgates of self-identification for Claudia Black, Melody Beattie, Patricia Evans and Pia Mellody, all of whom picked up the torch she inherited from Bill Wilson and Jimmy Kannon... and carried it to millions in the much larger Co-Dependents Anonymous 12 Step framework, as well as to those in "ACA." In a mere 118 pages, Woititz handed down a platform for recovery, as well as self-recognition. Her other work since then has put wheels under that platform, of course.
In 2006, the first- and second-wave veterans of ACA published another book by the same title currently available on from ACA itself. Building hugely upon Woititz's work, the new ACA "big red book" not only expands upon the original thesis and identifications, it takes them into territory Woititz and the psychophilosophers of her time were as yet far from. The new book is now, as the old book was then, breaking new ground in lay language similar to what we're hearing in professional language these days from Bruce Perry, John Preston, Neil Bockian and Glen Gabbard.
The ACA "book study" meeting I attend in the Victoria-era, university town of Redlands, California, began with Woititz, and has since moved on to the new book. I'm glad we did it that way. The new book is a very, -very- stiff dose of personal reality. I recommend it, but it occurs to me that it is -such- a stiff dose of reality that working up to it with the original of this same title makes a lot of practical - and emotional - sense. Recovery, after all, is not an event so much as a -process-.
A jam-packed powerhouse of a little book February 10, 2008
I will simply say that if you are an adult from an alcoholic or a dysfunctional family, READ THIS BOOK. It's short, sweet, and to the point. Lots of books meander around wasting your time with fluff. This one doesn't. Every sentence of this short dynamo is filled with practical meaning. If you are noticing a lot of caretaking, obsessive behavior, dysfunction in relationships, etc., you may be stuck in destructive behavior patterns and dynamics rooted in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family of origin. This book quickly rips to the point. I'm a recovering alcoholic and an addictions counselor. I recommend this book to my clients who invariably love it.
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