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By Root 1025 0

is a family illness. It involves far more just than the “identified patient.” Everyone in the family system is affected, particularly if there has been untreated addiction over generations. We were told that our own illnesses and reactions to childhood abuse might look very different from those of our loved one, but we came out of the same wounded family system, we shared a common source of pain, and some of our behaviors were adaptations to cope with that pain. Those behaviors, such as denial, minimizing, medicating feelings with people, places, and things, had probably served us well initially but eventually became obstacles to our own spiritual growth and well being. I also learned that there was help available for all of us, and the treatment repeatedly stressed, surprisingly, that the absolute best thing I could possibly do for my sister … for my entire family … was to get my own help and give recovery a try. We were told things like “Don’t walk, run, to open meetings of AA, to Al-Anon, to Co-Dependents Anonymous,” whatever that was.

I still could not imagine what all this had to do with me. I wasn’t an addict, and although I had to change my answers around a few times to do so, I answered “yes” to fewer than three questions on the alcohol abuse questionnaire. But my butt was in the chair, and I was listening.

As the clients who were in treatment joined us, we shifted our chairs from our small circle into many rows. I was asked not to sit by my sister or other family members, so as to maintain enough physical space to allow me to have my own distinct experiences, feeling my feelings autonomously, without the risk of filtering them through another’s, or adjusting my feelings to match someone else’s, or distracting myself with rescuing or caretaking someone who seemed uncomfortable. So I sat, rather like a big girl, with total strangers and listened with my own ears and my own heart. Next to me was a beautiful young woman with enormous doe eyes, eyes I realized later looked so big precisely because everything else about her was small from self-starvation. All around me, in fact, were otherwise warm and welcoming, empathetic, seemingly “normal,” typical-looking people. But as Granny P began to explain the “umbrella of addiction” concept, and she interacted with the clients (she knew all their stories, and although some were shy, they were startlingly honest with her and the entire group), it became clear that this was indeed life-and-death business.

The concept underlying the umbrella of addictions is that at the core of every addict of any type is loneliness. As Bill Wilson, cofounder of AA, wrote, “Alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.” The all-addiction model shows we can use anything, and I do mean anything—alcohol, drugs (street or prescription), shopping, sex, relationships, work, debting, spending, nicotine, and so on—outside of ourselves to try to soothe our core pain and loneliness, fill the hole in the soul, to try to change the way we feel.

The most generally known type of addiction is chemical dependence, including alcoholism and narcotics addiction (nicotine and caffeine are in this category, too; they are mind- and mood-altering substances that enter the bloodstream and affect brain chemistry). There are also behavioral addictions such as compulsive overeating, compulsive purging via vomiting, excessive exercise, laxative abuse, and anorexia (restricting food), among many others. Sex, shopping, and gambling addictions fall into the category of process addiction, because the gratification often comes not only from the behavior, but from the anticipation of that behavior. The idea of executing the act begins to build, living rent-free in one’s head. It becomes an idea that overcomes all other ideas (an obsession) and culminates in the act itself. Coming down from the act sets into motion a cycle of “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,” intense shame, and self-loathing … which sets up the desperate need for relief once more. These process addictions, Granny P was explaining, are actually the hardest