Recovery Reading: You Just Found Out You’re an ACOA — Now What?

When you discover you’re an ACOA, everything shifts — and so does the path forward

AI art created by author on Night Cafe

Finding out you’re an adult child of an alcoholic (ACOA) can feel like a door slamming, but it’s actually a door opening.

My last story contained a quiz, the answers to which can identify someone as an ACOA. It sounds like a diagnosis because it is. It’s in the ICD-10-CM, the international medical coding system.

In actuality, it’s more a doorway than a diagnosis, more an opportunity than a prison sentence.

Myriad emotions may have surfaced when you realized you were an ACOA: anger, relief, fear, grief, and more. Maybe you even felt some of those emotions simultaneously, which can be overwhelming.

You’ll probably want to collect more information on what it means to be an ACOA. Something concrete that you can work with. Here are some good places to start.

Try an Al-Anon Meeting

Yes, going to your first meeting can be scary. Al-Anon has beginners’ meetings, or you can go to a regular meeting. I remember getting out of the car at my first meeting, standing in the rainy parking lot, and questioning if I really was going to walk into the meeting room. I almost got back in the car, but I remembered how desperate I was to get help. I didn’t want to wait any longer and chose to walk into the room.

I was met with so much warmth, comfort, and — most importantly — validation. I finally felt like there was somewhere I belonged, and I still feel that way 36 years later.

Read Al-Anon literature

Every meeting has Al-Anon Conference-Approved Literature. Most of it is free, but there are also reasonably priced books. You can also get a free booklet listing all meetings in your area. If you haven’t been brave enough to attend a meeting yet, you can order literature or simply download it from the Al-Anon website.

Read Melody Beattie

The book that started my Al-Anon journey was Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. I still remember reading it on the bus ride to my job as editor at the now-defunct W. B. Saunders in Philly. I was transfixed at seeing myself in the text. It described aspects of me that I knew existed, but I never had a word for them. I had no idea that those aspects of me were common indicators of a condition called “codependency.” In short, the drinker becomes dependent on alcohol and we become dependent on the drinker.

Journaling

Writing down my thoughts and feelings about recognizing myself as an ACOA helped me get them out of my head until I could seek more information.

Conclusion

None of this happens overnight. Recovery is less a destination than a direction — and some days you’ll feel like you’re walking it backwards. But you don’t have to walk it alone. The resources above aren’t just information; they’re a community of people who already know your story because they lived a version of it themselves. And that, more than anything, is where healing begins.