I have studied and worked various aspects of addictions for a long time as Clergy and as Counselor. I specifically studied how to help people through the addictions and recovery processes earning both a Master's Degree of Human Service Counseling in Addictions and Recovery and a Master’s Degree of Divinity in Chaplaincy. I have been involved in motorcycle ministry, and in prison ministry. I have worked with the homeless and the drug addicted; I have worked the shelters, residential programs, and out-patient programs. I have also participated in and worked several 12-step programs and learned those paradigms.

During this time, I realized that there were several resources for those seeking to get clean, and that the field was very well researched, although there is still a lot we don't know. But, as I had the chance to work with those suffering from someone else’s addiction, I realized that there were significantly less resources for the sober family members. The vast majority of the research that does focus on the sober family member is concerned with what it is like to be the child of an addicted parent, spouses can expect anywhere from sympathy to recrimination, siblings are practically ignored, and parents are generally villainized as the cause of the addiction. The 12-step programs that exist, brand the family members with shaming terms such as Co-Dependent, and make them go through the same 12-steps as the person with the addiction.

Billy Sunday was famous for saying “Some desire to live within the sound of church bells and choirs, I wish to run a rescue shop one foot outside the gates of hell.” Realizing both personally and experientially that the unsupported family members of an addicted loved one were indeed just one foot outside the gates of hell, I studied all I could about what it is like to be the family member of an addicted loved one. I earned certifications in crisis counseling, trauma counseling, pastoral counseling, marital counseling and family counseling. I also created a small group program specifically designed to help the parents of addicted children. This program was originally intended to be a 48-week program covering everything from the initial discovery of the addiction, through getting him or her into treatment, and ending with long-term rehabilitation.

However, as we ran this program a few things became obvious. First that the term children was far too limiting, and second that we were missing a couple of critical pieces – restoring the family and perhaps the hardest part of recovery, welcoming back the now sober family member.

The reasons that the term children was far too limiting were because:

• “Children” convey the idea of adolescents still living at home, but as parents we see them as our children whether they are at home or not, whether they are 80 seconds old or 80 years old; we are still their parents and we still suffer from their addictions.

• “Children” convey the idea of biological off-spring, but the step-parents, foster-parents, adoptive-parents, etc. love their “children” just as fiercely as the biological parents and sometimes more.

For both the parents of adult children and the parents of children who were not their biological offspring, the title "Parents of Addicted Children” was seen as personally excluding them. In response we changed the title to “Parents of Loved Ones Suffering Addiction”.

The program was well received until the Covid Pandemic made group gatherings inadvisable to most people. Others, most of whom served on the review team for this book, had the vision I lacked. They encouraged me that instead of letting this program sit idle until Covid was over, to expand the scope of our little “Rescue shop one foot outside the gates of hell”, by publishing the entire program as a series of books that people could follow individually or use to start their own small groups. And so the idea was born.

We took the original program and divided it into what we felt were its natural break points.

• Volume I “Hope For Parents With Addicted Loved Ones” focuses on the addicted loved one: From discovering the addiction, through treatment and concluding with answering the question of where addiction came from.

• Volume II “Peace…” focuses on how the addiction has affected the other family members. It then moves through several of the most common healing steps unique to parents with addicted loved ones and concludes with “long-term rehabilitation.

• Volume III “Love…” addresses the identified shortcoming of the original program by focusing on restoring the family and hopefully welcoming back the now sober loved one.

The format we have tried to incorporate was to integrate real-world personal experiences in the form of vignettes that speak to the main point of the chapter, followed by a professional level understanding of the addictions and recovery topics. We arranged all of these chapters into the most common sequence in which parents experience them. As if that was not a big enough challenge, we decided that it would be best to do all of that in the tone of two dear friends, having a quiet fireside chat. No lecturing, no judging, no “you should do this…”, just two friends that respect and honor each other’s intellect and intentions reasoning and sharing from the heart to the heart. And like a fire side chat, to speak as friends, not trying to impress each other with $50 words, nor insulting each other with 5-Cent words, just speaking friend to friend.

Earlier, I alluded to what makes this series different than the 12-step programs that you might be familiar with. To expand on that we need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the 12-step programs. Bill W. created AA by modifying the Oxford Program, but the focus was on the Alcoholic. Lois created Al-Anon by modifying Bill W.’s AA Program to include the wives of alcoholics. Most if not all subsequent 12-step programs are based on these two programs. These programs have helped many people over the years and continue to do so, they also provide a warm, welcoming environment where people going through this nightmare can socialize and find empathy.

But they are not without problems.

The 12-step program is based upon the biological/disease model, which is over 130 years old. This series takes into account all of the models, biological, psychological, sociological, spiritual, and holistic.

The 12-steps were designed specifically for the person struggling with an addiction and assume that the sober family members have the same problems and the same issues. We now know that the sober family members are not the same, the issues they go through are not the same. For example

• Parents, and Spouses of addicted loved ones go through 8 major themes such as Discovering the addiction, Trying to set limits, Seeking treatment for their loved one, Trying to protect their addicted loved one, and Learning to live with blame and shame, to name a few.

• Parents and Spouses also have to deal with the reality that their loved one’s addiction has impacted all seven major areas of family functioning. The parents, and the spouse if married, have to maintain all of those areas in some semblance of a functional system despite the impact that the addiction has had on them.

The focus of this series is on those areas which the 12-step programs do not address, we are not competing with them, nor undermining them in anyway. In fact if you are finding help in the 12-step programs we encourage you to continue with them, but we believe that this series would complement your experience. On the other hand, if you do not find the 12-step programs helpful, we believe that you would find this series beneficial.