Melody Beattie

Born Melody Vaillancourt in Minneapolis, Beattie graduated from high school with honors. She began drinking at age 12, was a full-blown alcoholic by age 13, and a junkie by 18.[1]

Beattie authored 18 other books including Codependent No More, Beyond Codependency, The Language of Letting Go and Make Miracles in Forty Days: Turning What You Have into What You Want, published in 2010. Several of her books have been published in other languages.

Beattie, along with Janet G. Woititz and Robin Norwood, were popularizers of science, helping to digest and explain the work of psychiatrist Timmen L. Cermak, author of Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence.[2]

• Janet G. Woitit's Adult Children of Alcoholics had come out in 1983 and sold two million copies while being on the New York Times best seller list for forty-eight weeks.[2]
• Robin Norwood's Women Who Love Too Much, 1985, sold two and a half million copies and spawned Twelve Step groups across the country for women "addicted" to men.[2]
• Melody Beattie popularized the concept of codependency in 1986 with the book Codependent No More, which sold eight million copies.[3]

All three contributed to the general emergence of the idea that addiction to a person (who was addicted to a substance or a behavioral process) was a possibility.

Codependent No More was published by the Hazelden Foundation[4]

Beattie's early works also served as the first the Big Book for a 12-Step program called Co-Dependents Anonymous. Although "CoDA" now has a conference-approved (official) '"the Big Book" of its own, Beattie's works continue to be central texts in some CoDA meetings.[5]

• Official website