Codependent No More

The introduction opens with an unusual confession: Beattie first met codependents as an alcoholic and drug addict. They were the people who hid the pills, poured the drinks down the sink, «irritating and controlling». After recovery, when a Minneapolis employer asked the author to run a group for alcoholics' spouses, the view of them stayed the same. Then came the fall into the same hole: worrying about other people's problems until there was no life of one's own left. This is where the book's tone comes from. Beattie writes as someone «in recovery», not as an expert, and says plainly that the book is not a recipe.

At the end of the introduction the author retells a parable heard from a friend, Scott Egleston. A woman becomes the student of a guru who lives in a mountain cave, wanting to learn everything there is to learn. Every morning the guru asks «Have you learned everything?», and when she says «no», hits her on the head with a stick. Months later she catches the stick in mid-air, and the guru smiles: «Congratulations, you have graduated. You have learned that you will never learn everything, and you have learned how to stop the pain.» That is the book's message too: stop the pain and take back control of your life.

Chapter one tells a day in the life of a woman called Jessica in her own words. She freezes in front of a list of dishes, dusting and laundry, escapes into afternoon naps, eats herself up imagining where her husband is, yells at the children and then blames herself. The strongest scenes are small ones: answering her husband's «how was your day?» with a forced smile and «fine», walking past the television with a hateful look, angrily tidying the yard herself although she calls it «a man's job». The husband has been sober for six months, yet Jessica feels worse. This detail carries the book's main thesis: the problem is not only the alcoholic.

Chapter two collects different scenarios. Gerald falls for the most troubled woman every time; Patty is a nurse caring for a child with cerebral palsy, seen as a «pillar of strength» but falling apart inside. Alissa has devoted herself to «fixing» a runaway teenage son, and Sheryl loses her work while checking the phone of a husband with a sex addiction. The chapter ends with a clear warning: no example is «typical»; as Al-Anon members say, «identify, don't compare».

The most interesting example in the chapter is also the least dramatic. Krissen, a mother of two, has no alcoholic or other addict around her. Yet her mood depends entirely on her husband's: when he is happy, she is happy; when he is upset, she cannot rest until she has made him feel better. In chapter three the author also quotes ordinary people's definitions: «codependency means I take care of everything», «it means knowing all my relationships will go the same way, painfully». These funny, bitter lines say more than any dry definition.

Chapter three places the term in history: the word appeared in Minnesota treatment centres in the late 1970s, while its roots go back to Al-Anon, founded by alcoholics' spouses in the 1940s. The author quotes several definitions and then offers one: a codependent person is someone who has let another person's behaviour affect them and who is obsessed with controlling that behaviour. To the question «is it a disease?» the answer is honest: Beattie does not know. But the chapter stresses that even if it is not a disease, it can make you sick.

• Real stories with changed names: readers recognise themselves before any theory
• A candid first-person voice that does not hide the author's own past
• Short notebook exercises at the end of every chapter
• A structure that separates term, definition and history in plain language