Newcomer Info

Welcome to ACA!  ACA is a Twelve Step, Twelve Traditions Program.  This is your personal invitation to attend our meetings.  We know the ACA program works for us.  It offers the suffering Adult Child new tools for living that leads us to live our lives with clarity and serenity.  . We invite you to freely attend six meetings to observe and/or participate and discover if ACA feels right for you.

Download Newcomers Package
Download A New Hope Beginners Meeting Handbook
Download A New Life Guidebook

Why We First Came to ACA

Our lives didn’t work; they had become unmanageable. We exhausted all the methods we thought were supposed to have made us happy, healthy, and successful. In trying to reach our desired ends, we exhausted our resources. We often lost our creativity, our flexibility, and our sense of humor. No matter what we did, the results no longer gave us the thrill, the joy, the sense of power, or the feeling of elation they once did. We were at a dead-end. Continuing the same existence was no longer an option. Nevertheless, we couldn’t quite abandon the notion that if we knew just one more thing about how the world worked…

So we tried one more time. With little to win, nothing to lose, we came to our first meeting.

Why We Keep Coming Back

In ACA we come to understand how our childhood experiences affect our behavior and choices today. We learn how our behavior affects others, and we learn that we can change it. Gradually, from an adult perspective, we reexamine our life decisions. This is the first step in reparenting. Ultimately we become happier, stronger, more capable, and more able to take on a proactive role. We learn to be more respectful of ourselves. The quality of our lives improves as we learn to define and communicate our boundaries and insist that they be honored.

How We Work a Program of Recovery

Individuals recover at their own pace. We, however, have learned by experience that those ACA members who make the greatest gains in the shortest amount of time are using the tools of recovery.

Briefly, we…

• go to meetings and call other program people to discuss recovery issues
• read about the ACA experiences of others and write about our own
• use and incorporate information about methods and techniques of recovery
• define and enforce our boundaries
• build a personal support network

The purpose of ACA is three-fold: to shelter and support “newcomers” in confronting “denial”; to comfort those mourning their early loss of security, trust, and love; and to teach the skills of reparenting ourselves with gentleness, humour, love, and respect.  This includes reexamining our former life choices from an emotionally mature perspective. We work a Spiritual program by…

• using the Steps
• identifying, evaluating, and removing old parenting instructions from our minds
• selecting those past parental instructions that are healthy and useful to our lives today
• discarding those that are not discovering the impact and power of the Inner Child in our recovery
• attending meetings that focus on issues we need to work on
• giving service in ACA

What We Do in ACA Meetings

Going to meetings and listening to others who talk about their own experiences, strengths, and hopes often helps us in our own recovery. Sharing at meetings helps us to focus, define and clarify our problems. Sometimes we vent our anger or feel our feelings. Talking out loud about our action plan to change our lives helps us to resolve some problems. At times we report our progress or share how well our current plan is working. We often use meetings as a reality check on our overall program, comparing adult life before program to current life in program.

What We Do Not Do at Meetings

• engage in cross-talk
• criticize
• comment on what others say
• offer advice
• distract others from the person speaking by word, whisper, gesture, noise, or movement
• violate the anonymity of others
• repeat what is said in meetings (in any context)
• act out (inappropriately)

Membership

The only requirement for membership is a desire to recover from the effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family.

Contributions are Voluntary

No dues or fees are required for membership; we are fully self-supporting through our own contributions. We offer our 7th Tradition contributions at the meetings as we can afford to, an acknowledgment of the benefits our program gives us.

At the meeting level, our contributions are used to keep the doors open (pay the rent, buy the coffee, make the literature available . . . ), at the Regional level, to keep the lines of communication open between the various Intergroups and World Service, and at the World Service level so people can find meetings. Each member has a responsibility to keep ACA operational by ensuring their meeting supports their Intergroup, Region, and our World Service Organization.

Affiliation

ACA is an independent 12-Step, 12-Tradition program. We are not affiliated with any other 12-Step organization. We do, however, cooperate with all other 12-Step, 12-Tradition programs. We are not allied with any sect, denomination, organization, institution, political, or law enforcement groups. We do not engage in any controversy, and we neither endorse nor oppose any causes.