I'm beginning to think that the only skills I have developed in my life is how to be truly codependent. I am having a difficult time admitting what I'm good at, or what I want to do: very typical codeopendent behaviors. My next fun task is to rewrite all 235 of Melody Beatties "Codependent Charateristics" in Chapter 4 in the affirmative tense of what I am overcoming. The way it is written now just tells me what I'm doing wrong, I need to reword it to state what I'm now doing right!I woke up at 2:00 a.m. to let the dog out, and couldn't stop the obsessive thinking so I convinced myself to get up and get it out so I could get back to sleep. The above opening paragraph was a start, in a nut shell. Are are the menial manual labor jobs I've had just the result of perfecting my codependency? The impending doom of my finances has me paralyzed, like a deer in the headlights of a car. I've been immobilized by fear. The only good thing that is worth reporting is that I have finally reinstituted the use of anger to overcome my temporary alcoholism! When I quit my addiction Feb. 13, 2005, I stopped drinking wine and any other alcohol on a dime! And I didn't look back until the fear created by the end of a 3 1/2 year construction project in the 'Rio Grande Valley'. I now believe that the stress depleted my strength enough to overcome my anger. The question is: where did I get the strength to reinstitute it now? I got angry enough Friday to quit again Saturday, and purposely walked right down the wine isle yesterday in the grocery store without so much as a tick or wince. This is the tool I want to use to overcome codependency. What I don't understand is how this works since anger is one of the things codependents have a serious problem expressing. What I want to know is the mechanics of the harmones and endocrine system that allows this to be a functional tool. I may be wrong on this, and may need to re-research it (but I'm too lazy, and too bold at the moment) but when the adrenals are depleated, and the body is under stress, does the cortisol effect the system so that the brain becomes addicted to the state of stress and develops a 'comfort zone' of constant anxiety that it feels comfortable with, and when anger and adrenaline threaten this 'comfort' that it is addicted to, the system in place rejects the effects of anger and adrenaline in order to be in stasis? Are codependents typically addicted to excitement and stress, or is it just me? And is it correctable by drugs? Is it physical as a result of behavioral conditioning? I probaby need some input from a host of endocrinologists and neurologists to answer my questions; and could be so off base as to be in a completely different universe of fantasy of my own creation! But at least, like Edison, I've found one more way not to solve the problem, or make a light bulb. Edison failed at least a thousand times before he discovered a way to make a light bulb work. So this is way #1 for me.