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Steps * Traditions * Concepts

Our Three Legacies

Recovery through the Steps * Unity through the Traditions * Service through the Concepts

Al-Anon launches podcasts to help families

For the first time, Al-Anon Family Groups are offering podcasts to families and friends of people who have a drinking problem. Podcasts are audio recordings on the Internet that are available by subscription. The podcasts entitled "First Steps to Al-Anon Recovery" are at www.al-anonfamilygroups.org. The subscriptions are free. An automated e-mail will notify subscribers each time a new instalment is posted. Our podcasts give people a private and easy way to hear what Al-Anon has to offer. The series of six podcasts contains conversations with experienced Al-Anon members who anonymously explain how they realized they needed help to deal with a loved one’s drinking. They also reveal how they overcame their fear of attending their first face-to-face Al-Anon meeting.

Al-Anon Family Groups, which includes Alateen for young members, usually teenagers, neither expresses opinions on outside issues nor endorses outside enterprises.  It is not a religious organization or a counseling agency.  No dues or fees are required.  Membership requires only that one's life has been affected by someone else's drinking. Al-Anon is a worldwide fellowship that offers a program of recovery for the families and friends of alcoholics, whether or not the alcoholic recognizes the existence of a drinking problem or seeks help.  Members give and receive comfort and understanding through a mutual exchange of experience, strength, and hope.  Sharing of similar problems binds individuals and groups together in a bond that is protected by a tradition of anonymity.  Al-Anon is not a religious organization or a counseling agency.  It is not a treatment center nor is it allied with any other organization offering such services.

Detachment
Detachment is neither kind nor unkind.  It does not imply judgement or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching.  Separating ourselves from the adverse effects of another person's alcoholism can be a means of detaching: this does not necessarily require physical separation.  Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.  In Al-Anon we learn nothing we say or do can cause or stop someone else's drinking.  We are not responsible for another person's disease or recovery from it.  Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another's behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives.  We can still love the person without liking the behavior.  By learning to focus on ourselves, our attitudes and well-being improve.  We allow the alcoholics in our lives to experience the consequences of their own actions.
In Al-Anon we learn:

• Not to suffer because of the actions or reactions of other people.

• Not to allow ourselves to be used or abused by others in the interest of another's recovery.

• Not to do for others what they can do for themselves.

• Not to manipulate situations so others will eat, go to bed, get up, pay bills, not drink, or behave as we see fit.

• Not to cover up for another's mistakes or misdeeds.

• Not to create a crisis.

• Not to prevent a crisis if it is in the natural course of events.