What is Al-Anon?
I believe most of the time, drinking too much is simply a bad personal decision that isn’t very good for your health. Sometimes I drink too much, sometimes my friends do but I don’t feel compelled to do so. Basically I think alcohol becomes a problem when one of two things occur:
1. You become addicted and it has an impact on your health and wealth
2. Your drinking starts to have a negative effect on your friends or family.
When I was younger, a member of my family had an alcohol problem and it had a negative effect in our home. I lived at my family home trying to “fix things” until I moved out at age 19. Then, even though I had left, I was still occasionally roped into trying to resolve family dramas caused by the alcoholic. This all seemed “normal” to me (Maybe it seems normal to you too - well it isn’t).
Years later (8 to be precise) I started to visit a councilor because of the hard time I was having dealing with the breakup of a long term relationship. Pretty quickly it became apparent to me that the reason I was going to a councilor was because I wanted to talk about myself, not about my ex. For two years he tried to persuade me to try an Al-Anon group and for two years I argued that I didn’t need to go. Why the hell would I want to go sit in a circle with a bunch of whining losers who couldn’t just get over it?
Eventually at the age of 30 I became so depressed that I was willing to try anything, so I visited an Al-Anon group.
Wow.
Life completely changed.
It’s hard for me to express just how much difference Al-Anon has made in my life. I’m afraid that if I try to express it, I’ll come across like a deranged cult worshipper. So I’ll just say this, Al-Anon gave me the tools that I needed to cope with life and the ability to learn to better myself.
So what is Al-Anon?
Al-Anon (and Alateen) is an international organization providing a twelve-step program of recovery for friends and family members of alcoholics. Al-Anon is for adult friends and family members of alcoholics and alateen is for children affected by alcoholics.
You might go to Al-Anon because a parent drank or used to drink or you could go because child, partner, friend, even a grandparent’s drinking has had an effect on you and/or your family.
If you decide to go to a meeting you will probably be quite nervous, I know I was. There really is absolutely no reason to be. The great thing about Al-anon is that you can be as involved as you like, so if you decide to go along and just sit and listen without saying a word for the whole meeting, you can do that. However if you’d like to talk to someone about anything, you can do that too. All Al-Anon asks is that you keep an open mind and try at least 6 meetings before you decide if it’s for you or not.
If you do decide to give Al-Anon a try, I wish you all the best with it. I can honestly say that nothing else has such a positive effect on my life and I believe it can do the same thing for you too.
The Official Al-Anon Site
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Have you heard about ACOA? It’s also a 12 steps program but for Adults Children of Alcoholics - ACOA provides a ground to make peace with one parent who may have had an addiction to alcohol - Only after attending Alanon meetings can anyone understand that alcoholism is an illness - In ACOA meetings there is no barrier between Alcoholics on recovery or active alcoholics and non alcoholics - We are adults children of alcoholics and disfunctional families who have witnessed the devastatous effect alcohol had on us and determined to get a full and complete recovery.