You Say You Got a Resolution?

So maybe you did party a little too hard last night. But don’t reach for solace in that crumpled hard pack of Camels. Or the honey-glazed doughnut. Or that last drop of leftover booze.

It’s Day One, 1998. Time for the annual rite of New Year’s resolutions.

You might want to start by enlisting the kindness of similarly troubled strangers, and you certainly won’t be alone. Support group business soars in the first few months of the year, with some groups getting up to 20% more participants than usual.

Rest assured, there’s advice for every vice--more than 7,000 self-help groups in Los Angeles County alone. Topics range from the typical--drinking, smoking, gambling, overeating--to the more obscure. There’s even a group for men who suffer from botched circumcisions.

People who use the support groups swear by them.

Kavita, 39, an artist who in 1996 had to be taken home from Disneyland because the crowds and fast-moving rides caused her severe anxieties, last year attended meetings sponsored by Recovery Inc. It’s a self-help group for people with nervous problems.

Last month, she was back in Disneyland. This time she shrieked with joy as she rode Space Mountain.

“I’m totally, totally different. On some level, I’m not even the same human being,” Kavita said. “In the past, I was my problem. There was no separation between me and my distress. Now, I get to live my life from a new reality.”

One group preparing for a boom next month is Self-Help and Recovery Exchange, which serves as a clearinghouse for support groups. With 450 different types of groups in its database, the nonprofit group can find help for just about any issue.

Ruth Hollman, its director, said she can handle up to 200 calls a day.

The help from support groups, “gives us courage,” she said. “People say if they can do it, so can I.”

Experts agree. James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island professor who has conducted several studies on the effectiveness of support groups, said people who attend stop-smoking groups, for example, double their chances for quitting.

“They can be quite helpful,” said Prochaska, who also wrote “Changing for Good,” a guide for people who want to make life changes.

Only 5% to 10% of the people who try to change on their own--without the support of a group or professional counseling--succeed, he said.

Alan Marlatt, a professor of psychology and director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington in Seattle, said those who are successful in dropping bad habits have three things in common.

First: They establish a plan and a concrete start date. That’s why a New Year’s resolution can be helpful. Of course, if the resolution is made in an alcoholic fog at 11:50 p.m. New Year’s Eve, that particular advantage is lost (see next step).

Second: They take reform seriously. In one study, Marlatt said, people who didn’t rate their commitment a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 stood a far greater chance of failure.

Third: They get strong support from family, friends, or a roomful of sympathetic strangers.

Those strangers helped Sandy--not her real name--for the past 10 years as she struggled to control her compulsive eating habits.

This year, Sandy, a 52-year-old professional, decided that her New Year’s resolution would be to get rid of some of her feelings of inadequacy.

She’s turning to another support group to help her do it.

“I have to find my own way and my own way of dealing with things,” Sandy said. “For example, I’m not the world’s neatest housekeeper. Well, it’ll have to be neat enough for me.

“It’s not going to sparkle, but I’m not a sparkle person,” she said.

Those who wish to join a support group can call for a free referral from Self-Help and Recovery Exchange at (310) 305-8878.

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Self-Help Groups Listed

Following is a list of the top 10 groups to which people are most often referred by Self-Help and Recovery Exchange, a clearinghouse for self-help organizations. Director Ruth Hollman notes that the well-known groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous don’t make the list because people don’t generally go through her organization to find them.

1: Co-dependency groups (For people who have trouble in relationships).

2: Recovery Inc. (For people with depressions, anxieties and other nervous symptoms).

3: Adult Children of Alcoholics.

4: Fear of Success Anonymous (For people who have trouble reaching goals).

5: Alternative drug and alcohol groups (For people who dislike the religious references in more traditional 12-step programs).

6. Incest and child-abuse groups.

7. Smoking groups.

8. Sex addiction groups.

9. Debtors’ groups.

10. Families of those with drug and alcohol problems.

Source: Self-Help and Recovery Exchange