Addiction And Recovery Are Not A Game

Addiction is a FATAL disease.  Addiction is NOT curable.  Addiction IS treatable.

We acknowledge that recovery is hard work - but if we are talking about protecting lives, salvaging relationships, and restoring hope, is it not worth it?

Since this is a family illness, meaning addiction affects all members of a family not just the user, it is important that families engage in recovery work, and where appropriate, work with the professional team assisting the addict.

At The HERO House, we have developed a plan of action for residents that seems to work. Recently, a resident scoffed when Randy Haveson shared at our 5-Year Gala Celebration 80% of our alumni are in recovery today.  I know that to be an accurate statement.  However, I wanted the resident to really know that this is true.  I pulled all the alumni files and calculated who is still in recovery today.  Astonishingly, 89% of HERO House Alumni are in recovery!

It is far too often we hear the dissatisfactory statisitics of 1 in 10 people remain in recovery after treatment.  Unfortunately, this is true because many do not engage in long-term aftercare plans. 

Our program takes on average, 12 months to complete.  According to national research and science, after 1 - 3 years of recovery , 66% will make it another year in recovery.  This is encouraging! However, our success rates are still higher.  We focus upon living a life of recovery - working the 12-Steps with a sponsor, attending classes, engaging in employment or service work, and completely changing their lifestyle.  This is a challenging program, but again, the results show it is worth it to complete our program.

This past Friday night, one of our residents graduated from our program.  His program of recovery is solid! These are the events that make every challenge we encounter worth it.  However, he did not complete our program in the average 12 months.  It took this young man 21 months to successfully graduate!  He was not ready to graduate any earlier than he did; his family understood this and supported this.

As family members, you play a very significant role, despite the fact we work with a population of adults.  Healthy boundaries, expectations and appropriate support will have an impact upon our residents. I will discuss ways to find ways to engage in appropriate roles further on.  Sadly, we often work with families who do not understand the disease of addiction, that it is a family disease, and that they play a role in the addiction and recovery of the young adult in our program.

We recently had a young man from a western state depart our program against our advice.  This former resident had made progress in the first many months in our program.  However, about 2 months before he left our program - behaviors started to change.  He no longer kept his room neat and tidy.  His participation during group meetings was no longer insightful nor meaningful.  His attitude started to turn negative.  He departed the end of April without even a conversation with me to share that he was leaving.  The family had been in town the previous weekend to help him set up his new apartment.  The family did not have a conversation with the staff about their son's readiness to live on his own. 

When I contacted the family, they stated there was nothing they could do; he was going to depart our program.  Yet, they co-signed a lease, pay rent, utilities, and tuition.  Unfortunately, this young man is no longer in recovery.  His return to full-blown addiction has been swift - starting with drinking (the old excuse, alcohol was not my drug of choice, I didn't have a problem with alcohol, etc.) and he is now using needles to get high.  It is my hope that at least we planted the seeds of recovery.

However, I believe if the family had practiced self-care and worked with the professional staff, there is the possibility the son would still be in our program, walking along a path of recovery.  Sadly, family members are often resistant to getting involved in their own recovery.  It is essential.

Again, I can not stress how important it is for family members to work with the professional team that is working with the addict.  Another family chose to disregard our advice that their son was not working a program of recovery, and that he was far from ready to depart our program.  Instead, this family chose to be dishonest with our staff, and to play games with a disease that can kill.  They pulled their son from our program as soon as he finished a term at school, viewing this as some sort of success measurement.  We have notified this family,that the lab results for drugs screens from his final two days in our program came back positive for marijuana and synthetic marijuana. The resident knew he was leaving, and started to engage in active use before he even made it home.  Our advice may not always be what you want to hear, but our interest is helping young adults to build a solid foundation for a life of recovery.

Why does this happen?  To begin with, addicts are masterful manipulators. This is part of the disease. They lie through omission and comission.  It is the addict's full time job to get what they want.  What they want is an easy way out.  What we ask them to do is not easy.

Denial is also a participant.  Who doesn't want their child to be normal? It is not easy to accept that a son or daughter has a lifetime illness. For some, it is embarrassing.  For others, it requires somebody to be at fault if their child has this disease.  While both of these are unhealthy beliefs, they do exist.  It also prevents a seamless working relationship with the professionals trying to help the addict.

Most importantly, it is a lack of self-care.  Learning new ways to love and support the addict are necessary. 

How do we participate in the recovery process?

by Sharon C.

Today is my birthday - and the only thing I want is to thank all of you for the blessings I have received from Al-Anon. All of you have shared and reached out to me in ways that have touched my heart.  You helped me to believe that it is possible to endure the pain and accept that my son has a problem with drinking and using drugs.

My son is almost 20 years old.  He has been walking down this destructive path for the past five years.  There is nothing I can say or do to change the fact that he is driven to abuse his body.  His actions threaten to destroy the very life he was given.

At one time, I believed I was to blame for my son's drinking and drug use.  Outpatient had failed, and all my hopes for his recovery were shattered.  A compassionate man saw me crying in the parking lot. He encouraged me to go to an Al-Anon meeting for parents.

I found the courage to go to the Al-Anon meeting, and I kept coming back.

With hard work and faith, I came to believe that the only way I could help my son was to give him to God, and love him just the way he is with no conditions attached.  I had to accept that I could lose him to the deadly disease of alcoholism.  When I surrendered and let him go, a great burden was lifted  off my shoulders, and I realized that I was not responsible for my son's choices.

I have learned in Al-Anon that the only person I can change is myself.  I have my son to thank for that.  When I was so desperate over his problems, I walked into the rooms of Al-Anon and out of denial.  My obsession and the insanity were robbing me of whatever life I had left.

I can't fix my son, because he has decided to continue to drink and use drugs.  Even with all the love I have in my heart for him, it is still impossible for me to cure him.

I am still learning to mind my own business and to live my life without fear and regret, "One Day at a Time." I will "Keep Coming Back."

Reprinted with permission of THE FORUM, Al-Anon Family Group Hdqts., Inc.

Every week we have a Program on various topics related to recovery, academic success and life skills. This past week we discussed worry and turning over our problems to God. We discussed how once we've done everything we possibly can (in healthy ways) about a situation, we should no longer bear the burden of ruminating over it. Let it go and let God/Goddess/Universe/Spirit/Higher Self take care of it.

We did this by making God boxes where we placed the worry we are currently grappling with inside. A God Box is the place where we symbolically turn over our difficulties, fears and defects to our Higher Power. It is "symbolically" because we write down on paper what we want to turn over to God and then place it in the box. In and of itself, it is a physical gesture not much different than signing a card and placing it in an envelope. So it is what is inside of our heads and hearts that make this act meaningful. In the God box are things to be placed into Gods hands.  When we look a the things we have put in our God boxes a year later we will realize our  problems were solved, it was not a question of if, it was a question of when and how much we trusted.

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A calm mind fosters clear seeing, which is another way of saying that if we practice mindfulness, we will have less self-deception. We learn to be honest, and delusions fall away. When we sit in meditation, we observe our mind, watching the thoughts pass through, all the mental traffic honking, swerving, and cutting in. We practice holding "bare attention" toward the thoughts and feelings that arise, accepting them with kindness and non-judgment.

 --from Mindfulness and the 12 Steps