Key Takeaways
- Al-Anon helps family and friends learn how to cope with a loved one’s alcoholism.
- Attendees learn the importance of accepting what they cannot change and focusing on their own lives.
Al-Anon is an organization for family and friends of someone with a drinking problem. Al-Anon meeting topics are topics chosen by a meeting leader—the chairperson—for discussion at an Al-Anon Family Groups meeting.
Al-Anon meeting topics are related to the experience of dealing with a friend or family member who has a problem with alcoholism. Sometimes the chairperson will ask the group if anyone has a topic they would like the group to discuss. Meeting attendees discuss the topic and share their related experiences, strengths, and hope.
Learn more about Al-Anon Family Groups and Al-Anon meeting topics.
What Is Al-Anon?
Al-Anon is a support group for the family and friends of someone who has a drinking problem. It is distinct from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which is an organization that helps individuals recover from a drinking problem.
Al-Anon serves as an outlet and support system for its members. The goal is not necessarily to help the person with the drinking problem, but rather to teach the family and friends of that person how to cope, stay safe, and accept the things that can’t be changed. Attendees are encouraged to share experiences, ideas, and hope.
Research has shown that people who attend Al-Anon meetings over the course of at least six months report improvements such as increased well-being and a better ability to handle problems related to their loved one’s alcohol use.
Al-Anon Meeting Topics
Al-Anon meeting topics are always related in some way to addiction and the process of recovery. Each meeting topic tends to focus on a narrow aspect of this larger picture, such as coping strategies and how to deal with a crisis. The idea is that listening to the stories of others and sharing your own experiences will help you learn about addiction, feel less alone, and better understand and support the person with the drinking problem.
Below are some of the topics that seem to be of most interest to those who are newcomers to Al-Anon Family Groups, or who want to learn more about the program and learn how to deal with their friends or relatives with an alcohol use disorder.
Acceptance
How have you learned to tell the difference between those things that you can change and those you can’t regarding living with an alcoholic? Discuss what accepting that you are powerless over alcohol means to you.
Alcoholism as a Disease
Accepting alcoholism as a disease can help you understand how the alcoholic goes through cycle after cycle of swearing off alcohol but returning to their same habit days later. Explore that topic.
Dealing With Anger
You may get mixed messages about anger in your household. Are you told to control your anger but others in the family are allowed to explode violently? At Al-Anon, you learn that anger is a natural and normal emotion. Being angry is okay, it’s what you do with the anger that makes a difference.
Changing Attitudes
The Al-Anon meeting opening statement says, “So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.” What attitude is dominating your life?
Dealing With Change
The principles you learn in Al-Anon Family Groups can help deal with changes as they come in life – sometimes major changes. You may not be able to change the circumstances any, but you can change your attitude about the situation.
Choices
You have choices. You have to accept the things you cannot change. You do not have to accept unacceptable behavior. You have the right to make decisions that are in your best interest—to decide not to be around alcoholic behavior and to walk away from fights and arguments. And to decide to no longer participate in the insanity of others. Have you found the courage to make those kinds of decisions?
Control Issues
Do you have control issues? If you step in and try to solve problems for others you rob them of the dignity of being able to make their own mistakes and learn from them. Are you learning to “let go and let God?”
Courage to Change
Courage to change is not something that comes naturally to those who grew up in alcoholic homes. You may have found yourself being comfortable in relationships that were not only not healthy but downright sick. In order for all that to change, you have to seek courage from an outside source.
Dealing With Crises
Are you able to deal with major crises but find yourself driven crazy by the small, everyday ones?
Denial
Are you frustrated by the blatant denial of a loved one with an alcohol use disorder, who won’t admit that their behavior is causing problems, damaging and destroying others? Have you learned that it isn’t your job to convince that person they are in denial, turning that over to a power greater than yourself?
Detachment
Learning how to detach can be difficult. When the person with an alcohol use disorder gets into a crisis, do you want to rush in and save the day? This can be the exact opposite of what you should do to get that person to the point of reaching out for help.
Enabling
Some of the things that you do to try to help the person with an alcoholic use disorder are the very things that are enabling that individual to continue in the dysfunctional behavior.
Unreasonable Expectations
Are your expectations not reasonable at all when you are dealing with your loved one with an alcohol use disorder? You may be setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration until you learn to adjust your expectations closer to reality.
Emptiness
Emptiness is the loneliness that comes with living with and trying to love someone who was just not “there.” Someone who doesn’t care about anything else but alcohol. Have you tried to fill that void with less than healthy things?
A Family Disease
You may have come to Al-Anon thinking the person with an alcohol use disorder was the only one who was exhibiting insane behavior. But when you focus on yourself, you may realize that some of your behavior and thinking are also off-kilter. That’s why they call alcoholism a family disease.
Fear of Abandonment
Are you afraid or even terrified of being alone or abandoned? Do you go to any lengths to hold on to a relationship, no matter how unhealthy or harmful because you are afraid of not ever being able to have another one?
Focus on Ourselves
One of the 12 Traditions of Al-Anon states that we have no opinion on outside issues. Someone else’s drinking or behavior is an outside issue. How do you keep the focus on your spiritual journey of recovery and not on anyone else’s behavior?
Forgiveness
It seems to be one of those “spiritual truths” that before you can be forgiven, you must first forgive. That seems to be the way God always does it, puts the ball in your court and waits for you to make the first move. God does not require you to “feel” like forgiving, only that you forgive. By doing so, by taking that first step, even just faking it until you make it even, then God is able to give you a forgiving heart.
Gratitude
Do you find yourself feeling sorry for yourself? A suggestion is to sit down and write out a gratitude list. It is amazing how that really works to chase away the gloom.
Growing One Day at a Time
Do you work on your Al-Anon program every day? Do you see how that keeps you making progress, or at least prevents the worst backward slides?
Honesty
Do you have difficulty with the honesty part of the program? After years of covering up and keeping secrets, it can be hard to be open and honest.
Keep It Simple
It may sound like a trite saying, but there is a lot of wisdom in the suggestion to keep it simple.
Let Go and Let God
Are you practicing the principle of letting go and letting God in relation to living with an alcoholic, but also in dealing with many other things?
Live and Let Live
Learning it is okay to live your life without it revolving around an alcoholic can be new territory. How can you learn to live and let live?
Looking After You
When you start looking after yourself first and addressing your problems, you aren’t contributing as much to the chaos and confusion. The person with an alcohol use disorder can stop reacting to your efforts to control them. You won’t be stopping them from drinking, but your situation and attitude will be changed.
Mind Your Own Business
At Al-Anon, somebody else’s drinking is none of your business, You are not responsible for someone else’s choices. The shame and the embarrassment caused by their behavior doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to them. If they decide to make choices that are “bad” for them, it is not a reflection on how good a parent, or friend, or spouse, or sponsor you are.
They have the right to make their own mistakes and, hopefully, learn from them. You can only do your part right, share your experience, strength, and hope when it’s appropriate to do so.
One Day at a Time
The slogan “one day at a time” sounds like another one of those trite sayings that are overused, but there really is a lot of wisdom in reminding yourself to not live in the past or project the future, but deal with the here and now.
Powerless
You may have come to Al-Anon never once thinking you were powerless, that there was something you could do to cause the alcoholic to wake up and finally admit there was a problem. Step 1 is admitting you are powerless over alcohol.
Dealing With Rejection
Do you have difficulty handling rejection in any form? Do you have to find a way to fix any disagreement?
Restoration to Sanity
Step 2 says we came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Have you accepted that you are insane and need that help? Or do you still maintain that only the alcoholic is the crazy one?
Self Esteem
Do you have problems with self-confidence or feeling that you really belong?
Serenity
You can become addicted to excitement when you live with a person with an alcohol use disorder. Crises, problems, grief, abuse, chaos, anything but boredom. How can you accept the gift of serenity?
Trust
Trust is a problem when you first come into Al-Anon. All the lies, the betrayals, and the secrets can leave your heart broken and hardened. Have you begun to learn to trust yourself and others?
Understanding and Encouragement
Part of Al-Anon’s primary purpose is to “offer understanding and encouragement” to your loved one with an alcohol use disorder.
Unreasonable Without Knowing It
It says in the Al-Anon meeting opening statement, “Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions, and we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.” Can you really become unreasonable and not even know it?
Dealing With Verbal Abuse
It difficult it is to detach when the “disease” is in your face screaming! When the person with an alcohol use disorder is accusing, cursing, raging, dominating, manipulating, or controlling, it makes “detachment with love” seem almost impossible. How have you learned to detach during these episodes?
