Codependency, Addiction, and The Landmark Forum.

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under Psychology |

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by Lorelei F

As many of you know, Second-Hand Addiction is my term for the people who love addicted people. They are the innocent victims of the sickness, if you will. Therapists call these same people codependents, and they will say that codependents are just as sick from the drinking and drugging that happens around them as the addicts are…if not more so. Unfortunately, Second Hand Addicts do not always realize they are living with addiction. they do not see how drastically they are affected by addiction, or that they need help. They often know they are desperate- but don’t know exactly why or what to do about it. Hence the reason for my blog.

In addition, as those of us who are knowledgeable about addiction know, both addicts and codependents have just two primary ways of being…They are either the action or the reaction. The aggressor or the aggressee. I lump myself, by the way, into both of these catagories at various times in my life, as I am a former codependent, and I have also struggled with food addiction.

Now many of you therapists and 12-step attenders will balk when I say former codependent. You are well aware that codependency does not go away, and is a life-long problem. And I was aware of the very same thing until I took a course called The Landmark Forum.

Now those of you in the recovery world balk because you know what it means to fight the endless battle against dangerous codependency in both the addict and the Second Hand Addict.

Now there is a very good reason why Landmark Education courses and The Landmark Forum have the ability to virtually erase codependent traits. And here is what it is. The tools in these courses cause people to complete their pasts so fully and so quickly, that you would almost believe that the person had never had that past. And we all know that the addict or codependent often has a sordid, dis-empowering past that is just waiting at any given moment to cause trouble in his or her life.

I can only tell you from my experience what it is like. This year I struggled greatly with finances. I tried to add another job but did not get an interview for a whole year. Then in a landmark Course I put the past in the past. That week I had three interviews and I now have several possibilities for a job to choose from.

Now the past that was in my way was a complete blind-spot to me and I could not see it- even in years of therapy- until I sat in that course at Landmark Education.

Here was the past I had to see, and then complete to succeed in finding/keeping a job. 1) For all my high-falluting words and concepts, I was arrogant and run by my ego. I had the addict’s grandiosity and I thought I was too good for a lot of jobs. I picked that idea up watching my mother suffer at jobs that were well-below her abilities. I vowed I would never do the same thing. 2) I was terrified to fail again at my chosen field. I had ‘failed’ as a teacher because I had to be the best, the most creative, the most talented. I ran races around my tail, never asking for help in this monumental task of being a new teacher, until it was too late. Subsequently I did not succeed. This was also my past. In what felt like the darkness of my childhood I had built an identity like a life raft. I was told, and I agreed, that I was the most brilliant, the most creative, the most talented child on the planet. That was my identity, and that was what I had to be, come hell or high-water. 3) I sabotaged my efforts to get a job because I did not want one. I wanted to create my own business, my blogs, writing, and speaking and do it my way. At my core, I finally saw that I was afraid of two things. One, if I got a job I would never create my business. I had gone down a lot of start-stop tunnels in the past when it came to having my own dreams, so I knew the pattern, and feared it. Two, and even more fundamentally- I had to stay at home. As a single mom having wrestled my family away from my alcoholic ex-husband, if I was not there, who would be? And it mattered not that my children were older and getting more self-sufficient. Deep in my past was the experience of not being kept safe, and I was simply not going to leave the house to go out to a job.

So do the Landmark Forum, whoever you are. And if you deal with addicts and codependents, and they are healthy enough of mind, have them do it to. You can visit my blog for the website. Then let me know that you did it and how it went. Or better yet, email me and I will personally register you for the course. It would really make my day to have you get something so meaningful for your life.

About the Author:

For more about these and other ideas to have a happy, joy-filled life go to the blogs of famed Second Hand Addictions Spokesperson, Lorelei F at secondhandaddiction and at

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