Families Anonymous
A twelve-step fellowship for families and friends of people with drug or behavioural problems.
What the fellowship is
Families Anonymous is a twelve-step programme for the relatives and friends of someone struggling with drugs, alcohol or related behaviour. Much of its work is the distinction between helping and enabling, which is harder to draw than it sounds from outside.
What members describe
Not a checklist and not a diagnosis — just what people in FA commonly say brought them in.
- A household organised around managing somebody's next crisis
- Paying their bills, covering for them, clearing up after them
- Believing you caused it, or that you could still control it
- A partner or other children getting whatever attention is left over
- Having tried everything, and being out of things to try
Your first meeting
Families Anonymous meetings are warm and fairly blunt. The people there know what it is to love somebody in active addiction, and they will not tell you to try harder.
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 Families Anonymous.
A sponsee's profile records that they are in Families Anonymous 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 FA assigns their own materials instead — which works, and is what sponsors have always done, but it is not the same as having FA's own step work in the app.