Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families
A twelve-step fellowship for adults who grew up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional families.
What the fellowship is
Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families is for people who grew up around addiction, chaos or neglect. ACA works on the survival behaviours learned in childhood — the traits its literature calls the Laundry List — which tend to keep working long after the household they were built for is gone.
What members describe
Not a checklist and not a diagnosis — just what people in ACA commonly say brought them in.
- Harsh self-criticism, and a standing need for other people's approval
- Being drawn to chaotic or emotionally unavailable partners
- Difficulty naming a feeling, or real fear in taking your own side
- Doing almost anything to stop a relationship ending
- Reacting to life rather than choosing a response, carrying an old shame you did not earn
Your first meeting
ACA meetings are built around emotional safety: members share and nobody responds, advises or interprets. The relief most newcomers describe is recognising that what they had privately filed as personal defects are common, predictable responses to an uncommon childhood.
Where 12Gradus fits
12Gradus is software for the sponsor, not a substitute for one and not part of any fellowship. Nothing here is affiliated with or endorsed by Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families.
A sponsee's profile records that they are in Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families and dates their clean time from their recovery start. Daily check-ins, a self-reported urge score, high-risk days noted beside the chart, a rough-moment button that reaches the sponsor immediately, secure chat and a text bridge all work the same in every programme.
The step work is the part that does not. The built-in library is written for Gamblers Anonymous. A sponsor in ACA assigns their own materials instead — which works, and is what sponsors have always done, but it is not the same as having ACA's own step work in the app.