Talk:Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families

Number of groups

There seems to be some issue either with the number of groups quoted or the text describing growth, I can't reconcile the two when I read the article.

"in 1989, there were 1,300 ACA meetings"

"In 2014 there were 1,300 groups worldwide, about 780 of these in USA and this number is growing by leaps and bounds"

If I add the two statements together I get - the number of groups hasn't changed in 30 years and this number is growing by leaps and bounds.

So my assumption is that either one of the numbers is incorrect or the text misrepresents growth. Any ideas? Dougmcdonell (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Tony A., 1978

The history of the Adult Children Anonymous program is difficult to explained. Adult Children by the nature of what we endured as children do many things that normal people don't. We can lie with out a real reason. I lied to protect myself from a perceived harm based on past experiences/interaction interpreted through the eyes of an Adult Child,using the faulty thinking that this process produced in me. The Anonymous factor in this program also leaves many possible discrepancies as some have notices. It seems Adult Children can be very gullible especially when looking for help. The truth is there is no Tony A., 1978. In the years to come this fact will become visible if one looks for it. The person know as Tony A. is said to have died on April 8, 2004, however this same person seems to still be living. This Hamilton Allen Jr. AKA Tony A. seems to be alive and well still living in florida. I am trying to get to the bottom of this for the first time since I created it. I truly did not know this would happen to the check list I wanted to keep that others know as The Laundry List of Adult Children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony Anonymous (talk • contribs) 18:07, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello. Hamilton (Tony) Allen was indeed a real person; I met him in Florida, spoke with him a number of times on the phone after that, and later heard him speak in Brooklyn where I live. Hell, I even have a photo of him that I took. He is no longer living; 2004 sounds about right for when he died. However, he was NOT a founder of ACOA! (This Wikipedia page's statements about the early history are _very_ arbitrary and confused.)

What Tony is mostly known for is that back when he still lived in NYC, one time when he spoke at one of the meetings, he read a list that he had jotted down of the characteristics that he felt we had in common as COAs. Someone (allegedly) then said, "Hey--that's my laundry list!". He was asked for copies of this list, and was later asked to incorporate it into a written format for COA meetings. In that connection he amplified his original list, and also wrote up some possible elements of a "solution" to these problems. He told me that he went to a secretary at the company where he then worked (on Wall Street) who was also a COA and who especially contributed to the "solution" part, since Tony himself didn't have many ideas about that. He then lost the original list. So the earliest extant text of the "Laundry List" is that three-page writeup of a meeting format, which Tony would send copies of to anyone who requested it (I have a set; we reprinted it in a booklet for an ACOA Share-A-Day in the late 1980s).

Tony always said that the actual founders of the first group ("Hope for the Children of Alcoholics" which met on Monday nights at the Smithers outpatient alcoholism center on W. 58th Street) had been a group of Alateens who had aged out of that program. They had gone to regular (adult) Al-Anon meetings but didn't feel comfortable there, didn't identify with the predominant (at the time) outlook of non-drinking wives of male alcoholics, so they founded their own group. That group still existed when I started going to meetings in April, 1983, but it had been started (according to Tony) in 1976 or 77, and the original members no longer attended it. - By the way, each time Tony ever said (for example in the book that he co-wrote with Dan F.) "here is the original text of the Laundry List" he gave different, conflicting versions of the text. But he didn't think that [other] people should revise or correct or improve or extend "the original". And all of the versions that are in use today have been revised considerably by other people, especially the versions that came to be used in California. DSatz (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

AA

I was surprised to see five references to AA in the article. That's more than appears on the www.adultchildren.org website. To my knowledge ACA is just like the other 30 or so 12 step groups that have no formal relationship with AA. The text reads "Around AA groups different subgroups have formed", suggesting that ACA is a subgroups of AA, which it is not. Personally, I think one reference to AA as the originators of the 12 steps and the twelve traditions is due, and possibly one more for the founder. Not five.Dougmcdonell (talk) 04:25, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Update Name

in 2020, ACA passed Proposal 2020-13 with 85% yes votes to formally include "& Dysfunctional Families" more consistently throughout the literature, especially the Big Red Book (BRB).

They have not yet legally changed the legal name, although it appears as though it is under consideration - see, e.g. WSO Analysis of Proposal 2021-3, also pasted here:

WSO has included dysfunctional families in our literature for at least a couple of decades. In 2020 a motion was passed to place Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families more consistently on all literature. Officially changing the name would require revising ACA’s legal documents of incorporation in the state of California. Legal costs for doing this are undetermined.

Given that, it is only appropriate to update the name of this article to match the way that ACA refers to itself on its website and throughout its literature, even if the legal entity has not yet filed a DBA. Delectopierre (talk) 22:41, 18 August 2024 (UTC)