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.

Handling bad news...

I've recently been told that a close friend's wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This comes as a shock, not only because she appeared to be a healthy woman, but also because my friend - who has major chronic disease - always assumed he would die before his wife would. It doesn't look like that's the plan and this comes as a big, painful surprise to everyone.

Bad news, no matter what shape it comes in, is never expected. We can train ourselves to "hope for the best, but expect the worse", but, somehow when it strikes, truly bad news is never easy to deal with. This is the way this news is for my friend and I today. He feels "this is not the way it was supposed to work out" and this sadness over the unexpected turn of events in his life causes him a great deal of grief. But, under the surface of this is an anger...a righteous anger that things ought not go the way they are going and that someone (God) is at fault for this.

Whenever I come in contact with this kind of sadness, I am reminded of the book by Rabbi Harold Kushner called When Bad Things Happen To Good People. This book, that chronicles the struggle his own family went through when their young son was diagnosed with progeria (a disease of rapid aging and premature death). Kushner could hardly stand it. He watched as his son suffered and died way before his time, and he railed against a God who would do such a thing to his small son. In fact, such an event was for Kushner - who was trained as a rabbi and became a spiritual leader for many people - something that shook his faith and forced him to question everything he had ever thought or believed about God.

I will not be ruining the book's experience for anyone here by giving away a central discovery Kushner came to that helped him through this experience. In effect, Kushner challenged the common concepts of an all-knowing and all-powerful God by suggesting that, perhaps, God is no more powerful to correct the course of life than we are. He argued that it could very well be that, once he set the world as we know it in motion, forces took over that were greater than even God's power to control or influence. Once sickness was introduced into the human system, even God could not forestall it's inevitable conclusion.

It's in times like these that I remember Kushner's words. It is somehow consoling to me to know that God is no more capable of taking away ovarian cancer from a relatively young woman than her doctors are. It is somehow satisfying to me to realize that we men and women do what we can to alleviate suffering and hardship, but that there is only so much we can do against forces that seem to live on their own. And, it is enormously comforting to feel the presence of a God who weeps alongside of me as I suffer these things.

I cannot yet tell my friend this...the wound is too raw. But, at some point I will and hopefully, God willing, he will feel the same level of comfort knowing that a very powerful entity walks with him through this pain and grief. This is what I pray for these days.

All the best, Roger W.

New Chapter...

Hi Folks... Hurrah! Exams are finally over, and I'm just waiting for the grades!

Now that my formal coursework and tests are over it's time to turn toward the dissertation phase of my Ph.D. program. I've already got a title and have begun working on it: "The Lived Experience of a Spiritual Transformation in the Everyday Lives of Alcoholic Men in Recovery". (The hoped-for book would be titled: "Celebrating Serenity... the spiritual journeys of 8 men in recovery", but that's another story.) There are any number of hoops I still have to jump through in order for this to be accepted by my Dean and the Dissertation Committee that will work with me on this project for the next 18-24 months. But, it feels good to have the academics behind me.

All of this got me thinking about the spiritual aspects of my progress through the Ph.D. program. Indeed, much of what I have been through these past three years has been spiritually inspired and supported. I have never been quite able to pinpoint why it is that I chose to take up a Ph.D. study program at this stage in my life. Surely, I like the academic atmosphere and the learning. But, an on-line process is really different than the feel of a traditional bricks and mortar school I am most familiar with and I often wonder how I have sustained myself with the program. I think a lot of it has to do with a "power greater than myself" as the 12 Step programs say.

Certainly there is a lot of internal confusion about this, as I begin the process of the dissertation, to pinpoint my own belief system and how I stand in relation to spiritual principles. It has been an on-going process for years now that has to suddenly come to a head because of the nature of my dissertation project. I have chosen a format for the dissertation that will be autobiographical material melded with the stories of eight men who are also in recovery. So, I will be asking myself questions of a spiritual nature that are substantially the same ones I will be asking my research participants. It will be important for me to find, within, the sources of my spiritual energy and it will come from the deep places inside me that are tied directly to my recovery. The confusion arises as I start out because I have, for so many years and like so many people, taken issues of spirituality for granted in my life and not tried to come to a reconciliation of exactly where I stand with issues of God, principles, and the afterlife.

Now, like luggage in the backseat of the car that suddenly comes to a stop, all that "baggage" in my spiritual life comes rushing to the front with this project. It is a little scary and a lot of work, but there is something inside that impels me on this journey. It think it is my spiritual self and the power that I have identified as being in the universe onto which I can attach my mind and soul that moves me so.

How wonderful this all feels that my academic career would bring me to this point. I started this journey as an undergraduate Philosophy major at Stonehill College, got a master's degree in Psychology at Cambridge College, and now find myself at the end of my trek as a doctoral student with a dissertation that is a blend of both disciplines. My Higher Power works in strange and wonderful ways.

Off we go into the wild, blue yonder, "trudging toward my happy destiny" as Bill W. said in the Big Book! I look forward to keeping you informed of the progress.

All the best, Roger