Adult Children of Alcoholics, Addicts, and Abuse

Design for Growth: Twelve Steps for Adult Children by   Veronica Ray Timmy Cham 's review Jul 22, 2020   ·    edit really liked it How can the 12 Steps benefit adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs)? Veronica Ray offers this book to show "how various people have learned to identify their adult child problems and how the 12 Steps have helped them to a better life" (page 3). Each chapter contains a brief discussion of the Step, followed by a case study or two about a person's specific application of the Step to their own lives. In this review, I'll focus on Ray's discussion of the first three steps. Step 1: Admitted we were powerless...that our lives had become unmanageable Ray rightly observes that most people get caught up on pronouncing themselves  powerless , so she explains, specifically,  what kind of "power"  Step One says we're surrendering. After all, there's nothing wrong with saying we have the power to cho...

Adult Children of Alcoholics by   Janet Geringer Woititz Timmy Cham 's review Jul 11, 2020   ·    edit really liked it We've long known that children of alcoholics are impacted by their upbringing in an alcoholic home. After all, Alateen was established in 1957. But the idea that such effects persisted into adulthood was rarely attended to before the 1980, before the founding of  ACoA in 1978  and the publication of Claudia Black's bestseller  It Will Never Happen to Me!  in 1987. Woititz's doctoral thesis (1976) and this book (1983) are early explorations of the issues confronting Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoAs). Woititz's book is clearly written and well-organized. It falls into three parts: 1) How does a parent's alcoholism impact children? In the introduction and Part One, Woititz discusses three main effects of children's exposure to an alcoholic household: First, such a child is robbed of his or her ch...