The decline of Co-Dependents Anonymous in the late 90s

and the state of recovery in CoDA in 2007

“As I explore CoDA meetings here in San Diego, what I am seeing is many people - who have gone to meetings for years - that only have a rudimentary intellectual understanding of codependence. They do not actually know how to live codependency recovery in their lives because they have not gone beyond simply working the 12 steps. Working the 12 steps of CoDA is not enough to help people actually start living in the solution - to stop giving the past the power to dictate how they are living today. The meetings are structured in such a way that the sharing stays almost exclusively on an intellectual level - and anyone challenging the structure is seen as “threatening the Unity of the group.” It is very sad to me that there is so little actual codependency recovery in the CoDA meetings I have attended here.” “It is also sad to me, that many people who attend CoDA are as closed minded as people in AA - and are not even open to searching the internet for resources because they think they have to do recovery strictly according to the 12 steps. Unfortunately the 12 steps of CoDA as written do not address the core issues.” “In the early to mid 90s, codependence was the hot buzz word and people were flocking to CoDA meetings. CoDA - Co-Dependents Anonymous - began in the fall of 1986 in Phoenix Arizona. By the time I went to Treatment (30 days in the Desert) in spring of 1988 there were between 15 and 20 CoDA meetings in the state of California. (All the meetings were listed on 1 side of one sheet of paper. LA County where I lived at the time, had 3 meetings.) When I moved from the Central Coast back to Taos in the summer of 1992, there were 18 meetings a week in San Luis Obispo county alone - 3 in Cambria which I had started. When I moved back to the Central Coast in late 1995 there were only 3 meetings in SLO county. Now there is one. This is a trend that has occurred pretty much across the country. It happened for a variety of reasons in my understanding.” “Another problem with CoDA was that it adapted most of it’s literature almost word for word from AA - which left it with a version of the 12 steps that isn’t really too accurate in describing the process of codependence recovery - as well as other literature which didn’t really apply.”

In my Update Newsletter for February 2019, I did some process writing about CoDA and the Twelve Traditions.

The following excerpt where I discuss the decline of Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings is from the personal journal that I write for my Joy2MeU Journal. I have had a short excerpt of it at the bottom of my Referral to Local Healers page but it didn’t really belong there - so I decided to move it in August 2002. In moving it, I decided to share a longer excerpt - one which was really too long for the Finding CoDA Meeting page. Thus this page.

In the first paragraph below - which was written in May 2000 - I mention that there was then only one CoDA meeting in the county - there are now 5. Progress.

“In the early to mid 90s, codependence was the hot buzz word and people were flocking to CoDA meetings. CoDA - Co-Dependents Anonymous - began in the fall of 1986 in Phoenix Arizona. By the time I went to Treatment (30 days in the Desert) in spring of 1988 there were between 15 and 20 CoDA meetings in the state of California. (All the meetings were listed on 1 side of one sheet of paper. LA County where I lived at the time, had 3 meetings.) When I moved from the Central Coast back to Taos in the summer of 1992, there were 18 meetings a week in San Luis Obispo county alone - 3 in Cambria which I had started. When I moved back to the Central Coast in late 1995 there were only 3 meetings in SLO county. Now there is one.

This is a trend that has occurred pretty much across the country. It happened for a variety of reasons in my understanding. One is that people hit the second level of powerlessness (see 1,2, 3, 1, 2, 3, article about 12 steps) where it was necessary to do the emotional healing - and they didn’t know how to do it. They did not have a framework in which to do the inner child healing. That is why one of the testimonials for my book said that I had taken inner child healing to the next level, because that is what my work is - the next level that people were missing, a framework to do the emotional healing. People really didn’t know an effective way of doing the grief work and integrating themselves as an empowered adult. A second is that CoDA meetings were run by codependents. Many of those codependents were rigid and controlling. Some were people pleasers and rescuers. Others were irresponsible and unable to make a commitment. The ones that were willing to commit to be the secretary of a meeting were more often than not the controllers and people pleasers. The controlling people tended to try to control and ended up chasing people away. The people pleasers didn’t have good boundaries and ended up feeling used. For some people it was a mark that they were getting healthier when they stopped being the secretary of a meeting. Without a secretary who will show up to unlock the door and make sure the meeting takes place, meetings die out very fast. The very nature of codependence recovery worked against the movement. AA has always had lots of codependents to do service work (opening meetings, making coffee, literature, etc.) - in CoDA the codependents who got healthy enough started letting go of keeping meetings going for the sake of others who weren’t responsible enough to make a commitment. Meetings started disappearing. In addition, during the early to mid 90s when lots of CoDA meetings sprang up, what happened was a lot of lonely, hurting people came together in one place. That led to a lot of dysfunctional relationships with other people in CoDA - which led to break ups that made people feel uncomfortable to go to meetings “they” might be at. (What I saw happen over and over again, was both people in an ex-relationship avoiding meetings out of fear of the other being there, so that both people stopped coming.) Problems didn’t just occur in romantic relationships. Because of not having people with long term recovery to learn from and as role models, because of not having a healthy framework within which to do the emotional healing, many people got way out of balance. People made friendships in CoDA and then ended up feeling betrayed and abandoned by other CoDA members. It was not at all unusual for people to use “being honest with their feelings” as an excuse for abusing other people. Some of the people that claimed to have been in recovery the longest were often the most controlling and abusive. When I first moved to Santa Barbara there was a guy there who claimed to have 9 years in recovery and thought of himself as the grand old man of Santa Barbara CoDA. It evidently really upset him when I started two new meetings there because he had not been able to keep a meeting going. The first time I ever met this guy, he came up to me after the meeting and asked if he could share something with me - and then proceeded to criticize how I shared in a meeting. This is a gross violation of the traditions and principles of 12 step recovery, and showed me just how screwed up this guy was in his control issues. It is usually a warning signal when someone in recovery asks if they can share something with you - it usually means they are about to blast you in the name of being honest about their feelings. It is bullshit and codependence at it’s worst, and I saw way too much of it. Another problem with CoDA was that it adapted most of it’s literature almost word for word from AA - which left it with a version of the 12 steps that isn’t really too accurate in describing the process of codependence recovery - as well as other literature which didn’t really apply. The thing that AA had going for it when it first started, and still does, it that it deals with a black and white issue. You drink or you don’t drink. Codependence recovery is not black and white - and in fact, is a lot about getting away from black and white thinking. This is an inherent difficulty in structuring the program. People with time in recovery in other programs came into CoDA and wanted to make it just as rigid as the programs they came from. People who had no clue what recovery was about when they first came to CoDA, were looking for someone to tell them how to do it “right.” As CoDA grew the controllers won out and made it more rigid. I passed up the opportunity to have my story in the CoDA Big Book because I was so unhappy with how things were evolving. And still CoDA meetings were a most important part of my recovery. I wish there were more available to attend now. I hope that someday there is a renaissance of CoDA . . . . .” My Unfolding Process - May 2000 - The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul An excerpt from the story of Robert’s Spiritual Path published in the Joy2MeU Journal.

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Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995. Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 through 2019 by Robert Burney PO Box 1028 Cambria CA 93428.

Originally published at https://joy2meu.com/CoDA_decline.htm