Due to its pervasiveness, the leaching landscape of substance abuse provides fertile ground to cultivate the dangerous seeds of co-dependency.  As professionals who chose to dive headfirst into all makes of dysfunction, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals likely encounter this behavioral and emotional phenomenon often. It may present itself as the overly avoidant patient who’s loved ones enable their misanthropic tendencies. Or perhaps you have enough self-awareness to recognize the patterns of co-dependency in your own life? Unfortunately, if we look at one particular subset of the population, it is obvious that the number of people who find themselves in such a dyad, far surpasses the number of mental health professionals there will ever be at one time.  According to the WHO, some 31 million people suffer from some form of substance abuse. Of that 31 million, it is estimated that about 4 million of them suffer from alcohol use disorder.