Product Description

Ten years ago, Janet Woititz broke new ground in our understanding of what it is to be an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. Today she re-examines the movement and its inclusion of Adult Children from various dysfunctional family backgrounds who share the same characteristics. After more than ten years of working with ACoAs she shares the recovery hints that she has found to work. Read Adult Children of Alcoholics to see where the journey began and for ideas on where to go from here.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3547 in Books
• Published on: 1990-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 135 pages

About the Author
Janet Woititz was the author of Adult Children of Alcoholics, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. She wrote several other books, including Lifeskills for Adult Children; The Self-Sabotage Syndrome; The Struggle for Intimacy; Marriage on the Rocks; Healing Your Sexual Self and many others. Woititz was the director and founder of the Institute for Counseling and Training in West Caldwell, New Jersey.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from Chapter 5
Recovery Hints

It is important to be clear what recovery means for adult children. Alcoholism is a disease. People recovering from alcoholism are recovering from a disease. The medical model is accepted by all responsible folks working in alcoholism treatment.

Being the child of an alcoholic is not a disease. It is a fact of your history. Because of the nature of this illness and the family response to it, certain things occur that influence your self-feelings, attitudes and behaviors in ways that cause you pain and concern. The object of AcoA recovery is to overcome those aspects of your history that cause you difficulty today and to learn a better way.

To the degree that none of us have ideal childhoods and to the degree that even an ideal childhood may be a cause for some concern, we are all recovering to some extent or other, in some way or other. Because there are so many alcoholic families and because we have been fortunate in being able to study them, it is possible to describe in general terms what happens to children who grow up in that environment.

To the degree that other families have similar dynamics, individuals who have grown up in other ôdysfunctionalö systems identify with and recover in very much the same way.

Recovery Hints for Adult Children

All folks in AcoA recovery need to learn the Al-Anon principle of detachment regardless of whether or not they are recovering from addiction or are living with an addict. Until you do this, you can go no further. Detachment is the key. Because of the inconsistent nature of the nurture a child receives in an alcohol family system and the childÆs hunger for nurture, many of you are still joined to your parents at the emotional hip. Even if you are no longer with them, you continue to seep their approval and are strongly influenced by their attitudes and behaviors. You will need to learn to separate yourself from them in a way that will not add to your stress. This is one of the primary goals of the Al-Anon program.

àWhat you learn about yourself as you are growing up because a part of who you are and how you feel about yourself. No one can change that but you. Your parents, even if they recover and treat you differently, cannot fix what makes you feel bad about yourself. You may start a new and healthy relationship with them in the present but no amount of amends on their part will fix the past. That is why dwelling on their part in your ongoing pain will not get you through it or past it. Your present difficulties are your problem. To put the focus outside yourself is to delay your recovery.

Emotions that have been held down for years and years will come to surface. That is why it is suggested that if you are recovering from an addiction, you need to focus on that first so that you will not be tempted to relieve those feelings in destructive ways. You will go through a number of powerful emotions in your recovery. It is part of the process.

Not everyone goes through the stages of the process in the same sequence, and many of you may block some of those feelings. There is no ôrightö way. I just tell you about the process because those feelings may surface without your conscious direction and frighten you. And they will resurface many times with each new discovery. The recovery process is different for different folks. Only you can determine the way that will work best for you.

Your immediate response to reading this book may be:

Relief. The realizations that you are not alone and that you are not crazy will be freeing. It may be a life-changing event.

Pain. The awareness of the amount of your suffering and your powerlessness may overwhelm you along with the knowledge that you have been living a lie. It will be similar to the extraordinary pain you experienced as a child before you learned how to numb out.

Anger. It is not unusual for all the anger that youÆve been sitting on for all these years to surface and you may become fearful of your own rage.

Grief. The losses that you have experienced have to be grieved for, and you may feel this level of pain as well. You may believe that if you begin to cry you will never stop.

Joy. Going through the process eventually will allow you to experience a freedom that you have never felt before. When you are an adult you can be the child you were unable to be when you were a child.

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¬1983, 1990 by Janet Woititz. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.

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Customer Reviews

Dysfuctional family
The book teaches you about lifestyles of alcoholics and what they experience during the time of living at home.

And not just alcohol
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
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"