Al-Anon Online Meeting Friday

This post has a couple of messages;

First and foremost, the Al-Anon Online Weekend Meeting starts tomorrow Friday! I must admit I am excited. Am I excited about helping others? Is this my codependency coming through? Nope. It's OK to help others. In the helping of others I am finding that I am helping myself and learning more and more about the addiction of alcohol. Press here (click here) to get more information on the meeting.

Second and more, I had a great meeting last night at my wife's Family Night Treatment Center. While this week was strange at the house, I learned last night that I am not crazy. I also learned more about the addiction and to trust my instincts. I will post more on this night later. In fact, I have a lot to post (talk about) and have 8 separate drafts of documents (posts) ready to be published. I just feel that if I publish these right before the Al-Anon Online Weekender, it may diminish the meeting or obscure it.

But I am going to post a really critical link for all to see in the next post. It is a study conducted about Al-Anon and the relapse of alcoholics. It is a very interesting study!

As you may know, finding studies on alcoholism and AA is hard, because they are scarce. Some circles of people (who I must say, turn into doubters, vocal doubters) say AA doesn't work. While there are thousands of therapists and reformed/recovering alcoholics who say it does work. The problem with the thousands of those in recovery, is that they are anonymous.

This turns out to be a conundrum for scientists studying the behavior and rehabilitation of alcoholics. Plus, for a scientific study to be conducted properly, there needs to be a control group (click links for definitions in Wikipedia). A control group is a group who thinks they are taking the "medication" but in fact are not, for they are taking "sugar water" in a double blind experiment (neither group knows which is getting the real medication). For people wanting to learn more about the studies, I can provide sources in a later link or post. (I read wAAy toooo much. But my findings state this, conclusively; AA does work, if it is worked. Al-Anon does work if it is worked.)

But back to this study - I will post a link to it if requested.

Back to number two above. In an earlier post I made a statement something to the affect that I would like God to help me with my answer to my dilemma at home. I am not sure what happened, but I received my answer last night. The post where I actually spoke/wrote my feelings was somewhat embarrassing for me. I even thought about wiping it off this blog for I thought it exposed my "foibles" and my "fragileness." Even as I write this I feel wimpy. My apologies to anyone that reads that I am a wimp. I am 6 feet 4 inches, a pretty big guy, who has been knocked to his knees with this disease. I can just about anything. I have worked construction, I have driven trucks, and I have put myself through college working two and three jobs. I am not exactly wimpy. But with alcoholism and the dance with the alcoholic, it is pretty amazing the power of it over us, and we are not drinking!!!!!! Click here to read my post about asking God for an answer.

Okay. Now this is really, REALLY(!) important. I want to make sure I write this. And I will state this again somewhere later in some post, because it is soooo important.

Here it is: If you can get to an Al-Anon Meeting, you will find FREE literature. I am reminding myself of this fact, because the FREE literature - the little pamphlets are EXCELLENT sources for reading.

I keep going back to the pamphlets for beginners/newcomers and get something new each time I read them. In fact, the last meeting I picked up more free pamphlets.

Let me read you the titles of some of the Al-Anon Literature that is FREE that I just pulled out from my briefcase:

1. So You Love An Alcoholic?
2. 3 Views of Al-Anon
3. Information for the Newcomer
4. A Guide for the Family of the Alcoholic
5. How Can I Help My Children?
6. Does She Drink Too Much?
7. Does He Drink Too Much?
8. Understanding Ourselves and Alcoholism
9. Al-Anon is for Men (I am sure there is one that says for women, although most people who attend are women, so it might be a "given")
10. Dear Mom & Dad
11. Purpose and Suggestions
12. Just for Today (a beautifully written piece and my link is here for the words)

Pretty cool titles - and they are written extremely well. Plus, I missed a couple of pamphlets. I need to find them.

ANY WAY!!!! I have written too much.

See you tomorrow!

PS - The Al-Anon Online Weekend Meeting (AAOW?) will be on "detachment" - what it is, how you have used it, how we can use it better and more!