Preliminary results...

While I am certainly not at the finish line with my dissertation, I have completed a milestone of sorts this morning when I submitted the results of my study to my committee chairman for a preliminary review. This is a big achievement since I thought in the depths of December that I might not get this far as fast and that the results might not be completed until the end of March. Now, pending his comments (which can be extensive), my results are in and I can talk a bit about them.

As background you should know that I conducted a study in which I interviewed eight men about their experience living with a spiritual change that has taken place in their life during the first year of their recovery from alcoholism. These men came from a variety of backgrounds and had many different experiences to share. My task was to consolidate what they told me in the interviews, break that down into themes that were similar for each and come up with the essence of what it was like to live with this spiritual experience. The results were interesting, although an outsider to the disease of alcoholism might find them to be expected.

The men reported essential features of their experience as

• first feeling as if they had been living in a spiritual wasteland before the spiritual change took hold,
• then feeling as if a sudden change came over them about their feelings about God that was followed by a deeper sense of change throughout their whole life,
• then the development of a personal relationship with God,
• followed by a complete immersion into a spiritual life where they practiced spiritual principles or rituals in their life to support the change that had occurred.

This progression may seem obvious at first glance. Yet, for the recovering alcoholic within the first year of recovery, these changes can be remarkable. When we think of the spiritual void that existed before they became spiritual we often think of the hopelessness, despair and sadness of being lost in a world of drinking where one cannot stop and suffers the consequences of their behavior. We cannot truly appreciate that sense of loss unless we have experienced it ourselves.

Then, after descending to the depths of their pain, to suddenly find a spiritual presense in life was an extraordinary phenomenon for each of the men. It's one that I hope, even though we might not feel the sting of pain associated with active addiction, I can describe adequately in my study. I will do so using the actual words that the men used themselves to describe their transformation.

Soon I hope to be able to report that the discussion section of the dissertation is complete which will signal the end of the process. Then I will only have to defend it and I'll be done. Onward and upward!

All the best, Roger W.

The Program in a Nutshell...

One of my duties as a counselor is to conduct group therapy sessions for newly recovering addicts and alcoholics twice a week. During the first half of a three-hour session, I teach about the 12 Step programs. I am continuously amazed at how difficult this is to do for a number of reasons.

Foremost in amazement is the fact that few of the 20-24 people in attendance each night want to hear anything about the steps of recovery. The sit, blank-faced and bored as I talk about how it is that the steps of recovery can so completely change a person that there is no longer any reason to drink or take drugs. There are usually few questions and virtually nobody initiates their own experience with the steps. In many respects, this part of the work is a tremendous challenge for teaching.

I've tried many different methods of teaching the steps over the years with little change in the results. I've even abandoned the process of trying to teach about them with the hope that people will naturally seek out information about whatever system might be out there to help them overcome the cravings and urges to use drugs. That didn't work either. If one adopts the idea that "When the student is ready, the teacher will arrive," then it's pretty clear to me that I ought not teach about these steps to recovery because the vast bulk of newly recovering people are not ready.

But, there's the rub: There are usually a few in every group who are ready. It is for them that I teach about the steps they can take to emerge from the darkness of addiction. And here's why.

The 12 steps are a program of recovery for people that is analogous to a recipe. It is a method that, step by step, will transform a person from one dependent on drugs of any kind (and this includes the drug alcohol) to one who does not use drugs and lives a happy and productive life. It accomplishes this by outlining the way to make that kind of sweeping change. Here's the abridged form of the steps of recovery...

• In steps 1-3 we are given a gift of the ability to look at ourselves very carefully and come to believe there is hope for recovery
• In steps 4-9 we are given the chance to repair the damage that our lives of chemical abuse has caused, and
• In steps 10-12, we are given a chance to live a new life as people who do not use drugs of any kind and live life on life's terms.

The confounding thing for most of us who no longer use drugs is that many people who do use - and, who also have some remarkable negative consequences as a result of being addicted - do not see the wisdom in making changes in their lives. No, they seem to prefer to suffer. We call this denial, but it seems so much more profound than simply lying to themselves. It's really turning away from the grace that has been bestowed upon us through either God or the serendipity of life simply unfolding. For some inexplicable reason that makes this disease the most challenging of its kind, manu addicted people don't see the need to use this recipe for success in living a healthy, happy and productive life.

I guess that's where people like me come in. Our job seems to be to persevere through the denial, the indifference and the outright loathing most newly recovering people have for the steps of recovery. Our job is to try to make sense for these people that the suffering can end and that through the exercise of a few simple principles these steps are based upon they can change the direction of a damaged life.

All the best, Roger W.

The beach in winter...

I miss the ocean. It's the one thing about living in the Midwest that I regret the most, because I used to take regular trips to a small town on the East cost named Duxbury to just sit and watch the ocean, and I can't readily do that any more. I have to settle for a picture of that beach that sits above my desk.

I remember the last time I was at the ocean in wintertime. Joe was with me. We went to Westport a small, now-exclusive community on the southern Massachusetts coast where I had lived as a baby with my parents shortly after I was born. Westport was chilly that day. The wind whipped you with darting pellets of mist. It was gray. You could smell the decaying seaweed at the shore line, and the sand was so soft and deep that it nearly clawed your shoes from your feet. We walked for quite a long way along that desolate beach, just Joe and I talking about the pleasure of being there...together.

One of the wonderful parts of the beach in wintertime is that it is so deserted. Where in August there are beach blankets coating the sand, in January you are free to walk the gravel near the water or the fine sand in the dunes. There's no one there to ward you off the dunes or stop you from huddling against one to break the wind.

Such is a great time to think. I call it active meditation as you wander along a beach in solitude. You're free to allow anything to come to mind, of course, but it is best experienced as true meditation whereby you acknowledge the wind, sea spray and cold and feel the deepness with which they touch you. Meditation is - for me - more about living in the moment and feeling and acknowledging the world around me than it is trying to blank out my mind and think of nothingness. All too often I am under pressure to deal with the world as it is and my mind is frequently filled with the thoughts and worries that impinge on it. There are few times like those by the sea when I can feel the pressure of the present moment on me and revel in it.

I miss times like that. For some reason, standing by a lake that barely moves in summer and or one encased in ice in winter is a more shallow experience for me that the powerful surge of the tides and the seemingly endless horizon of the ocean. Maybe some day I can get back to that. For now, I live in the memory of it and the highly-prized feeling of warmth and love that I get when I think back to that day in Westport with Joe.

All the best, Roger W.