ABSTRACT
The concept of process addiction was designed to elicit people's commitment to twelve-step membership. The proliferation of twelve-step groups for the wide range of new process addicts testifies to co-dependency's success in securing that commitment. By drawing an analogy between alcoholism and process addiction, co-dependency emphasizes these incentives, seeking to elicit its adherents' commitments to twelve-step membership. The concept of process addiction expresses that analogy, and the analogy is the means in and through which co-dependency secures people's commitments to membership in the twelve-step subculture. The legitimacy of the alcoholic role, as with any sick role, is contingent upon the alcoholics' cooperation with efforts to get them well. In essence, the argument is that, like alcoholism, its already legitimated prototype, process addiction is a progressively worsening disease in which inevitability must outweigh intentionality as the relevant criterion for the assessment and handling of the sufferers.
