What is ACA?
The ACA World Service Organization (ACA WSO) defines ACA as a "12 Step Program that focuses on emotional sobriety." As a function of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family system, we have developed "laundry list traits" that helped us survive our circumstances. Although these traits were adaptive and necessary for us as children, as adults, they have come to profoundly disrupt our lives, including our jobs, our relationships with each other, with money, with food, with sex, with alcohol and/or other substances, and most importantly, our relationships with ourselves. ACA offers a program of recovery, which includes attending ACA meetings regularly, working the ACA 12 steps with a fellow traveler or in a group, and performing acts of service in the meetings we attend and/or for the ACA WSO. To learn more about dysfunctional family systems and "the laundry list traits", click on the links below.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to recover from the effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family system.
ACA is a spiritual but not a religious program. In ACA, we turn to each other in fellowship and to a God of our understanding for support and guidance in our recovery process. For those of us who are survivors of religious abuse, accessing a higher power may be difficult, but the ACA 12 steps are designed to support our discovery of a Higher Power of our understanding who loves us unconditionally and does not shame, blame, threaten, judge, or abandon us.
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Each ACA meeting is autonomous meaning that experiences will likely differ somewhat from meeting to meeting. Our meeting - like other ACA meetings - follows the ACA 12 traditions and the ACA guidelines to ensure a safe meeting place to share our experience, strength and hope. We welcome you to this meeting and encourage you to try out other in-person meetings in Oregon and via Zoom to find meetings that are the best fit for you. You can find other in-person meetings in Oregon here and you can find Zoom meetings on the ACA WSO website here.
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Note that is it not uncommon for many fellow travelers to be working other programs in addition to ACA. If this is true for you, we welcome you. Note that the ACA WSO recommends obtaining a level of sobriety in other programs in order to experience all that ACA has to offer you.
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To learn more about the ACA 12 traditions and the ACA meeting guidelines, click on the links below.
ACA World Service Organization
ACA Corvallis
ACA Literature