Tony A. - An ACA Founder

Tony A., one of ACA's Founders.

Adult Children of Alcoholics was officially founded in 1978 in New York. Tony A. is considered the primary founder, along with members of an Alateen group. Alateen is a Twelve-step program for children of alcoholic parents. Alateen is sponsored by Al-Anon.

The Alateens and Tony formed a specially focused meeting that broke away from Al-Anon and became the first ACA group. The new group, Generations, focused on recovering from the effects of being raised in a dysfunctional family rather than the Al-anon focus of being powerless over alcohol.

Tony is the author of the Laundry List, the first piece of ACA literature. The Laundry List is a list of 14 characteristics or common behaviors that detail the adult child personality. Tony also developed the ACA Solution of attending meetings, focusing on ourselves, working the Steps and feeling our feelings.

Tony died in April 2004 at the age of 77.

How Tony A.'s 12 Steps came to be

Tony A gave a talk recorded Feb. 25th, 1991 in Orlando, Florida at the 7th Annual National Convention of Children of Alcoholics. You can listen to this talk from this link on Youtube, playing the video linked below, and/or following along with a PDF of this transcript at this link. 

The talk was given at an optional support group meeting before the main conference began.  During this recording, Tony briefly explains his version of the 12 Steps of ACA.

However, by the time Tony was making this presentation, ACA had already approved their “official” version of the 12 Steps in 1984 at a Business Conference.  Tony didn’t get his version of the steps completed and presented to the fellowship until 1991 when he published his book along with Dan F., The Laundry List: The ACoA Experience.

Although his suggested steps were not officially adopted by ACA, the concepts have been incorporated throughout the text of the Twelve Steps of Adult Children Workbook.

Tony A.'s 12 Steps:

  1. We admitted that we were powerless over the effects of living with alcoholism and that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could bring us clarity.
  3. We made a decision to practice self-love and to trust a Higher Power of our understanding.
  4. We made a searching and blameless inventory of our parents because, in essence, we had become them.
  5. We admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our childhood abandonment.
  6. We were entirely ready to begin the healing process with the aid of our Higher Power.
  7. We humbly asked our Higher Power to help us with our healing process.
  8. We became willing to open ourselves to receive the unconditional love of our Higher Power.
  9. We became willing to accept our own unconditional love by understanding that our Higher Power loves us unconditionally.
  10. We continued to take personal inventory and to love and approve of ourselves.
  11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of its will for us and the power to carry it out.
  12. We have had a spiritual awakening as a result of taking these steps, and we continue to love ourselves and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Tony A. and the Sick Family

This text was the origin for what ACA now calls, "The Laundry List". This list, written by Tony A. on October 30, 1979, describes the qualities of a sick family.

Sick Families:

  1. A sick family has no active higher power, i.e., God.
  2. A sick family lives in fear and teaches fear of others different from itself in race, religion, color, nationality, etc.
  3. A sick family believes that you must “do for yourself,” since there is no God to guide you.
  4. A sick family believes that to be happy and successful you must make, marry or have money.
  5. A sick family believes that to have a worthwhile identity you must gain the approval of the outside world–and especially the approval of the family itself.
  6. A sick family feels that the family should stick together and depend on each other to the exclusion of the outside world. The exception to this is when the family finds outsiders identical to themselves.
  7. A sick family teaches that the authority figures in the family are right.
  8. A sick family teaches that marriage completes the identity of the individual.
  9. A sick family feels a glow of achievement when a family member does “well,” and feels let down when a family member does “badly.”
  10. A sick family teaches each member to adapt to the emotional sickness of the group and feels threatened when a family member seeks outside help.
  11. A sick family has fights, arguments, violence, hate, criticism, grief, lusts, resentment, jealousies, fantasies, anger, depression, euphoria, and teaches conditional love.
  12. A sick family feels totally abandoned at the death or departure of a loved member of the group.
  13. This type of family tries to hold itself together through guilt and pity, which it calls “love.” It also creates expectations regarding each other.
  14. A sick family believes everyone within the group should like the same things and people.
  15. A sick family is conditioned by the beliefs and experiences of the past and is unable to live a serene and peaceful present. This type of family perceives only a fearful future.
  16. A sick family thrives on excitement and teaches through sick experience that if you are not excited you are not alive.
  17. A sick family teaches that everything you see, hear, taste, touch and smell is the only reality and that there is nothing beyond the sense world or in the invisible.
  18. A sick family does not know how to pray or meditate.
  19. A sick family believes that strength is togetherness–when strength actually is in oneness with the higher power, God.
  20. A sick family can be a person, a family, a community, a church, a Twelve-Step group, a state, a country, a therapy group, a world, and an entire universe.
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