Addiction and recovery

A couple of posts over at Dean’s World - from Dean Esmay and Scott Kirwin - got me thinking about addiction and recovery. Dean was highly critical of Alcoholics Anonymous (though he’s since moderated those criticisms) and I just wanted to share my experience.

A couple of years ago, funded by the local authority, I took a busload of recovering addicts down to Cornwall for a week by the sea. Most of them had multiple addictions, usually alcohol and cocaine, and none of them had been clean longer than twelve weeks.

The idea was they’d get a week in the water with a surfing instructor, early morning exercises on the dunes and group work in the evenings. All in all, it worked well - the few incidents we had were emotional rather than physical confrontations. And, by the end of the week, some of the guys were even managing to stay on their boards. I got a lot out of it (quite apart from a week’s surfing), as did my co-worker, and I know the guys from the hostel enjoyed it.

Was it worth it? Probably not. Chances are, after twelve months, seven out of ten of them will be using again. In two years’ time, maybe one of them will still be clean. Even if they all managed it, I doubt any would credit their recovery to a week’s surfing in Cornwall.

But who knows? I’ve seen stranger things. One bunch of addicts I worked with had replaced heroin with cycling, and pedalled their way to recovery. They stayed clean and, along the way, founded a charity that provides accommodation for people in recovery - they kicked-off their fund-raising drive by cycling coast to coast across the States.

Another guy I know had a whole range of addictions. He quit them all one by one: heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol. He got through it because he found his vocation in life – painting model soldiers. Now, he does it for a living. He’s been clean twenty years, has raised a family and is as happy as any man I know.

Not one of the people I know who’ve come back from addiction would say that going to AA meetings was what got them through. It helped for sure, and they’ll tell you that they couldn’t have got through without it. But on top of that, there’s something each of them discovered, something they could connect with outside themselves that made it worthwhile for them to choose not to drink or use drugs again.

I know that every one of them would recommend AA/NA to someone who suspected they had a problem with alcohol or drug abuse. I’m not a big fan of the twelve step program but it works – if you want it to.