Sponsoring or Coaching in Recovery from Alcoholism
Factors that Foster and Hinder the Process of Recovery for Alcoholic Women.Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive, potentially fatal disease that crosses gender, race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic strata.
Much of what is known about the disease of alcoholism has been uncovered studying male alcoholics.
A phenomenological study was undertaken to identify those contextual factors that fostered and hindered the process of recovery for alcohol dependent women.
Criteria for participation in the study were: women self-identifying as recovering from alcoholism, aged 25 years and older, able to converse and write in English, and abstinent from alcohol use for a minimum of two years. Eleven women (6 Caucasian, 4 African-American, one Native American; 8 heterosexual and 3 lesbians) in recovery for alcohol dependency were recruited by networking and snowball sampling. The women ranged in age from 32 to 76 years of age and had been in recovery from 2 to 37 years. Data were collected through individual audio tape recorded interviews that lasted 45 minutes. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method for content analysis.
The data revealed the factors that fostered recovery from alcoholism were:
These were all incorporated in the Alcoholics Anonymous program and fellowship.
The identified factors that hindered the process of recovery were:
Research report; M. Kathleen Brewer. The Contextual Factors that Foster and Hinder the Process of Recovery for Alcohol Dependent Women. Journal of Addictions Nursing, Volume
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“The entire purpose of my life had been to see my father sober but even after I had succeeded, I couldn’t be happy. My life was void of meaning. Other people couldn’t understand it. Honestly, neither could I. I used to think that some sick part of me wanted my father to keep drinking so that it would give purpose to my own life. If it hadn’t been for Al-Anon, I might have even killed myself,” recalls a member of Al-Anon.
Al-Anon and Alateen are twin international fellowships – also known as the Al-Anon Family groups – designed with the sole purpose of helping those families that are adversely affected by alcoholism. While Al-Anon supports family members and friends of alcoholics, Alateen helps young people, generally between the ages of 13-19, whose lives have been affected by drinking.
Relatives of alcoholics share trauma – The Times of India.
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