Welcome to the ACA Massachusetts Intergroup
12 Step Program for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families
The mission of the ACA Massachusetts Intergroup is to unite, support, and empower ACA support groups and their membership across the state.
Through fellowship and sharing our journeys with each other, we achieve and maintain our emotional sobriety, find ways to be more gentle with ourselves and others, and to inform each other of events, information, and our personal achievements.
Our goal is healing through connection, and independence through shared strength.
Special Notice to Massachusetts ACA Groups
We can now begin to take donations/contributions again! Please mail checks to:
ACA MA Intergroup
P. O. Box 611
Millis, MA 02054
To all groups making a donation - Please include your group name and an email address with your check
Go to the EVENTS page for local social activities
Communication between groups and fellow travelers is one of our most important tools of recovery.
Our Intergroup has created a work space using Slack (www.slack.com).
Our url is
massachusetts-17v9750.slack.com
We have several channels within this work space to help with specific topics (ie group announcements, workshops, treasury).
You can request an invite to join our work space by emailing us at acamassintergroup@gmail.com - use REQUEST SLACK INVITE in the subject line.
You will need to create an account (username and password) to access the work space - you do not create a new work space.
There are many YouTube tutorials to help guide you in how to use Slack.
The Laundry List
(14 Characteristics of an Adult Child)
These are characteristics we seem to have in common due to being brought up in an alcoholic household.
1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue".
10 We have "stuffed" our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.
~Tony A., 1978