Excerpt from Chapter Six of Ross Rosenberg's book,
“The Codependency Revolution: Fixing What Was Always Broken
By the 1970s, alcohol treatment providers considered the limitations of the medical model, primarily when it was used as the only treatment modality. In addition, they understood the necessity of including the social, familial, and relational aspects of the alcoholic’s life. Therefore, until the early 1970s, the alcoholic’s partners and family were not regularly included in the treatment process.
A significant advancement for the AA movement occurred in 1951 when Lois W. (the wife of one of AA’s founding members) and Anne B. created a twelve-step recovery group for the loved ones affected by the alcoholic’s harm. Al-Anon followed all the essential customs and traditions of its big brother, AA. However, Al-Anon’s followers’ uncontrollable problem was not alcohol but their unfounded belief that they could influence and control a relationship partner, family member, or friend’s addiction. While the alcoholic’s relationship with alcohol caused chronic heartbreak, losses, and consequences, the partner’s unrealistic and impossible attempts to control the alcoholic caused the same.
With sympathy for the dysfunctional symbiotic relationships, Al-Anon provided a compassionate and non-judgmental twelve-step recovery program. It was a refuge for relationship partners and family members who otherwise had nowhere to turn. Al-Anon’s successes were met with open arms as it was a change begging to happen.
By including family members of relationship partners in the recovery process while helping them realize their conscious and unconscious support of the problem(s), co-alcoholics and other affected family members had access to their own affirming and healing recovery program. By addressing the multidimensional and interactive impact of the alcoholic and their loved ones, everyone benefited.
Because of the contributions of family systems and dysfunctional role theories and the positive impact of Al-Anon, the term co-alcoholic was coined in the early 1970s. Co-alcoholic literally translates to “the partner of the alcoholic.” From these developments, relapse rates not only decreased but also could be better explained. Moreover, the participation of the co-alcoholic in the partner’s treatment became a powerfully predictive indicator of positive treatment outcomes.
Despite the prevalence of alcohol consumption worldwide, most cultures turn a blind eye to its scientifically proven addictive properties. No person, ethnic group, culture, or community has ever thwarted their brain’s response to the chronic absorption of ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH)—the psychoactive chemical in their preferred alcoholic beverage. The problem the world has faced for thousands of years is this tasty, refreshing, “socially lubricating,” disinhibiting, and relaxing beverage is often considered harmless. But scientific facts point to it being a psychoactive drug that, when used in excess, predictably causes harmful changes in a person’s thoughts, feelings, mood, behavior, and judgment. Hence, people in modern society turned to alcoholism treatment programs, which increasingly became more available in the mid-1940s.
In the early 1980s, scientific and cultural advancements showed that alcohol and other addictive drugs had many more similarities than differences. All were toxic psychoactive substances or chemicals that, when used frequently, could cause an addiction. However, because the designations were artificial and, therefore, unnecessary, society accepted what was always clear to scientists and medical and mental health professionals: both were brain-altering and addiction-inducing chemicals. Hence, chemical dependency became the catch-all phrase for chemically based (drug) addictions.
By merging alcohol and drug addictions into the term chemical dependency, alcohol, and drug addiction treatment were not different enough to require two types of treatment. Hence, the chemical dependency field was born.
With such a change, the partner of the alcoholic, or co-alcoholic, naturally morphed into co-chemically dependent. Being too much of a mouthful, it was shortened to co-dependent. Using a dash to separate the “co” and “dependent” literally translated to “the partner of the person suffering from chemical dependency.”
The “dash” version of co-dependency never advanced beyond its original family systems theory influence. Still, it sheds light on the addict’s chemical dependency and their partner’s propensity to sabotage their treatment unconsciously, reflexively, and predictably. Moreover, with the development of the co-dependency term, concept, and burgeoning treatment accommodations available to them, positive and negative treatment outcomes could be statistically correlated to the participation of the partner to the addict.
A limitation of the “dash” explanations, which continue to the present, is the classic definition of codependency. Many people mistakenly believe a co-dependent is one of two needy, insecure, and mutually dependent relationship partners. Not only is this interpretation and belief not entirely accurate, but promoting it misrepresents the actual mental health challenge this book attempts to explain. Shared dependency might occur between codependents and narcissists, but it is not codependency’s primary problem. If accurate, at best, it is one of a long list of secondary symptoms, just like saying sorry when the person is not.
Although the discoveries of co-dependency benefited the mental health and addiction treatment fields, it would not evolve beyond its partner-of-the-addict origins. Because it did not accommodate later understandings and revelations, it became a frozen relic of the early chemical dependency treatment movement.
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