Beyond Rehab

Last month, a guy who, like me, wrote a book on overcoming addictions, made a video aimed at me (and Dr. Peele who wrote the foreword to my book). He was upset that I wrote my book within my first five years of having quit drinking (among other addictions). Unlike me, however, this person supports Alcoholics Anonymous and that is where he undoubtedly adopted the idea that people in their early years of sobriety are incapable of thinking clearly enough to offer valuable healing advice to others suffering from addiction.

Although I have no doubt in my mind that is an incorrect assumption, I pondered the idea momentarily: Why would AA have people believing such a thing? Is there any truth to it?

My conclusion is that yes, there is some truth to the idea that a person is basically a marshmallow for the first five years of their sobriety—but only if the person believes that is true and, therefore, fulfills the prophecy.

It is a physical truth that after many years of ingesting drugs and alcohol the brain, nervous system and cellular functions are adversely affected and it can take long periods of time to heal from that. But it is not true that you cannot love deeply, think clearly, create brilliantly or express life in many other wonderful and talented ways within the first year (another AA target) or five years of giving up drugs and alcohol. You can. I can give a long list of some pretty wonderful things I accomplished within the first few months of having quit drinking—things that deeply touched and inspired others, things that I stand by today: writings, artwork, verbal communications.

AA and I differ in our approach (and success rate). However, in this case, it is not so much that one of us is right and the other is wrong, but that AA focuses on a different aspect of the recovery process than I do. Where AA focuses—fear and limitation—a person can never fully recover. Where I focused—on the joys of the healing process—led me to my fully recovered status of today.

There are two energies going on when a person quits drinking and using drugs: the energy of the painful process of giving up substances and the energy of the quite miraculous, even joyful process of healing. A person can concentrate on either when they quit drinking.

AA and the man who made the video both overlook the significance and the joys of the healing process; the joys of caring for yourself and, consequently, the joys of caring for others more fully. Instead, they choose to focus on the limitations a person might have in their early days of quitting drinking and drugging. AA’s technique is to use the negative aspects of recovery as a way to prevent relapse. My technique was to use the positive aspects of healing, which has proven to be a much stronger source of support for me than the alternative ever was—not once have I relapsed using my method.

It is not true that you are incapable of being brilliant within your first five years of sobriety. It is also not true that you must wait to enjoy anything or that you cannot encourage the healing process along by embracing the experience of healing. Healing, after all, is a positive event.

Tags: aa alternatives, addiction, addiction help, addiction is not a disease, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, change, early sobriety, healing fear, helping people with addictions, limiting beliefs, powerlessness, recovery, Stanton Peele, substance abuse

“Yet that day, crawling on the floor in my own sweat, I felt so desperate that I actually considered going to the only AA meeting in town. I felt that helpless. But I also felt sure that AA would not be any different than it ever was. Even though I was terrified, in withdrawal, and feeling helpless and alone, I just could not bring myself to go to a meeting. I needed more than that“

That is an excerpt from my book. THAT is the reason I wrote the book: “I needed help, and I knew that others like me did as well.”

“I had made up my mind to do something to help myself. I was sweating and trembling and horrified, yet I became 100 percent determined that I had to do this. I was sick of all of the promises.”

In the name of love and compassion for all of you who suffer as I did with the deep emotional pain, sadness and turmoil that comes with long-term substance abuse, I am here to shed light on the notion that AA is the only road to recovery: It is not. I am proof.

Thankfully and finally, more and more free groups and affordable resources (books, websites) are appearing for those of us who want to be well but want nothing to do with Alcoholics Anonymous (other than offering alternatives). You can read my book, From Death Do I Part, for insights and for guidance with the inner healing process (and a few tips on the physical as well). The first three chapters are free on smashbooks.com. And here is a starter list of alternative website I began in a recent post (I have not personally experienced any of them but they look good): SMART Recovery, LifeRing, RationalRecovery, Women For Sobriety. Also check out Dr. Stanton Peele and Dr. Marc Kern.” For more insights into addiction, also read this best seller: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté M.D. It is a book filled with compassion and understanding and it is extremely well written (so in tune with the reader and addict). If anyone has any other sites to add, please comment here or send me an email.

Tags: aa alternatives, addicted society, addiction, addiction help, alcohol, alcoholic, alcoholic spouse, alcoholics anonymous, Gabor Mate M.D., helping people with addictions, hitting bottom, intervention, recovery, Stanton Peele, substance abuse

I was shopping in Trader Joe’s last week when I overheard one woman say to another in a strangely uplifted, bordering on proud tone of voice, “…well, my son has been in rehab SEVEN times.”

Aside from wanting to send her to my recently published Los Angeles Times article, “AA doesn’t work for everybody–and that’s OK,” I also felt like saying—”Doesn’t that tell you something?? Like, you’re wasting your money and precious time?”

And then I got a grip. After all, I went to rehab even more times than her son before I was finally able to quit using drugs and alcohol. However, as I pointed out in the Times article, it was never rehab that helped me to finally quit. In fact, the limiting beliefs of the rehab programs I was in—the idea that we are powerless over alcohol, the belief that alcoholism is a “disease,” and the assertion that one must attend AA in order to be well—were major hindrances in my recovery. In spite of my best efforts, I never managed to abstain from using drugs and alcohol more than a month or so after I was discharged from rehab. Yet I kept going back….

Like so many people who check themselves into drug and alcohol rehab, I was desperate to escape the pain and confusion that I knew drugs and alcohol were bringing into my life. I was starving for help and so I succumbed to the one thing that everyone seemed to think was my best chance of survival—rehab. By that time I had long since abandoned my own instincts and stopped drawing my own conclusions about what I was experiencing and how to help myself. I was willing to try anything, including repeating a program that had repeatedly failed to assist me. I would think to myself, “It must have been me…. I must not have been letting them help me right. Maybe if I can just find a way to surrender even more this time, they’ll be able to help me.”

And so I would surrender to the rehab program. I would check in exhausted and willing and I would begin to follow the program. And once again I would be coerced into accepting that in order to be helped I needed to abandon the very qualities of myself that were necessary for me to recover—my intuition and my natural impulse to make my own connections.

However, since rejecting AA and its supporting rehabs of my past (you know, the ones that make all those promise$), I have come to realize it was not my critical attitude, my intuition, or my inclination to draw my own conclusions that led me to fail with rehab and AA. It was those programs that failed to realize that the better thing for me to do at that time was nurture my intuition, strengthen my natural impulse to make connections, and empower myself rather than submit to powerlessness.

So knowing that, and had the woman in Trader Joe’s actually asked me, I would have suggested the following websites (which I borrowed from Stinkin’ Thinkin’s list) that might be more useful to her son than another round with rehab: GoodTherapy.org, SMART Recovery, LifeRing, Non12-Step, RationalRecovery, StantonPeele, Women For Sobriety for the daughters, mothers, sisters, lovers and, of course, my book, “From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction.”

Tags: aa alternatives, addiction, addiction is not a disease, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, beliefs, goodtherapy.org, helping people with addictions, intuition, life ring, limiting beliefs, non 12-step, powerlessness, rational recovery, recovery, rehab, smart recovery, Stanton Peele, stinkin thinkin, substance abuse, women for sobriety

This is an important comment I left on Dr. Stanton Peele’s recent Psychology Today article, “How Everyone Already Knows the Disease Theory is Full of ___, but is Afraid to Say So.” My comment is regarding teenagers and the addiction-is-a-disease theory.

Dr. Peele replied: “Just right on, insightful, and remarkably expressed. And brave. The most original and best-written comment I have ever read at PT.”

I engaged in a conversation with a woman who disagreed with me when I stated that the disease theory does not help a person get well. She claimed that the concept absolutely helped her. She also asked me for further explanation about how it was harmful in order that she better understand the “other point of view.”

Here is my reply:

Dear Kate, Thank you for your considerate reply. You sound like a wonderfully thoughtful person and I, too, congratulate you. However, there is a difference between you and me: I am not also in recovery. I am recovered. The only way I, and many people, are able to get well is with the understanding that we can get well — thoroughly well.

Imagine a teenager being told that she is a slut, scum, whoe-bag in an attempt to get her to change her behavior. For certain personality types that tactic may work. The girl might think, “Oh my God! I don’t want to be that!” and she may clean up her act. But another girl might think, “Oh my God. I am so terrible. I am disgusting, a terrible, worthless whore — I might as well sleep with the entire football team.” Her self-worth and self-understanding were severely diminished because of an authoritative statement.

I don’t really care what grown, life-experienced adults choose to believe about disease for themselves. That’s not my business. However, when those adults convey the “diseased” message to teenagers and twenty-somes, I intervene (where appropriate). I consider it shameful and criminal to implant the DEBATED theory that addiction is a disease in young developing minds as fact. Young people are in the process of learning about themselves and life. They are forming their self and life-views. It’s not right to scare and depress the crap out of them before they even get a chance to think for themselves.

I relate to the girl who does the football team. I felt very bad about myself, that there was something seriously defective in me — and for the rest of my life?? I don’t believe that today. And I am free. You, perhaps, relate more to the first girl who works well with simple instruction. This issue may be related more to personality than to biology.

You can read the entire article and comments here. For my comments, look for “submitted by alive,” that’s me.

Tags: aa alternatives, addiction, addiction is not a disease, alcoholic, helping people with addictions, recovery, Stanton Peele, substance abuse