Parents of Addicted Loved Ones

PAL seeks to help parents deal with the issues surrounding the addiction of an adult son or daughter. By helping parents deal with the emotional, financial and physical challenges of addition, their adult children are often led to face and address their addiction.

All those who attend PAL meetings hear the meeting preamble that ends with '... it is our desire that by attending our meetings you will learn proven ways to help your loved one and ultimately learn to find joy in your own life regardless of the choices of your loved ones.'

Weekly PAL group meetings are our cornerstone program – this is where participants receive both education and peer support. PAL meetings last about 90 minutes and are facilitated by a peer volunteer with about half the time spent on the education and the other half on sharing and asking for suggestions.

Educational lessons includes topics on co-dependency, health and unhealthy helping, enabling, recovery, delayed emotional growth and others. During the discussion of the lesson, parents share their experiences and steps they took to address the concepts in their own situation. In the second half of the meeting, the parents are offered the opportunity to check-in to share what is happening in their present life challenges. During check-in, the parents may request and receive suggestions from the other meeting attendees.

Raising awareness of PAL and attracting impacted parents to start new meetings is essential to making PAL meetings available where needed. Outreach to touchpoints where parents might disclose their situation is done through contractors and by volunteers identifying and contacting such places. Brochures are provided for making referrals to PAL meetings. In addition, social media, advertising, and seeking opportunities to present or be covered in the media are areas of focus for spreading the word about PAL to families in need.

Northern Arizona University is partner in evaluating PAL's effectiveness through pre- and post- attendance surveys of meeting participants. This feedback provides information that is useful for modifying the program or outreach.

PAL is based in Phoenix and has five full-time staff that run the business of PAL. This includes identifying, recruiting, training, coordinating and supporting the nearing 400 peer-parent volunteers who establish and facilitate our meetings throughout the United States. PAL awareness campaigns are also a key role of the staff.

Foundations and grantors are instrumental in providing resources to perform targeted outreach.

Over the last five years, PAL has progressed from a full volunteer board member run organization to a staffed organization with the board moving to a policy making and support role. We have progressed from start-up to growth phase as an organization.

PAL meeting growth had a set-back with the pandemic. With the current staffing levels, the organization is again focused on growing meetings and has completed an assessment of meetings that did not sustain through the pandemic forced moves to virtual settings. That assessment did remove a large number of meetings and volunteer facilitators from our program, but we are now aiming to add 100 active facilitators and are making sound progress toward that goal each month. Other goals focus on starting meetings in every state and in the most populous cities.