Drug and Alcohol Interventions | 6 Things to Know

Written by MARR on August 17, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles. 1 Comment on Drug and Alcohol Interventions | 6 Things to Know

By Dr. Brian Moore
Psychologist and Interventionist
Founder and Director of The Intervention Group

The intervention has become a familiar ritual in our culture. It’s often depicted in television and movies, and many of you reading this may have even participated in one.

But despite our cultural familiarity with the idea of the intervention, people are often unsure about how to go about it, which makes sense. Discussing a loved one’s substance abuse with them is obviously a difficult and sensitive conversation, and approaching this topic should be handled with thoughtfulness and great care. Engaging with resources like this is a great beginning to finding the most healthy and effective way to communicate with your loved one about their substance abuse.

I’ve been a psychologist for over 30 years, and for 25 of those years, I’ve worked exclusively as an interventionist, providing services to families and corporate clients. At my practice, The Intervention Group, we provide a complete continuum of intervention services. This means that we help people organize, prepare, and implement interventions, which includes making arrangements for travel and checking that person into treatment if the person makes the choice to get help.

In addition to drug and alcohol dependence, we also work with families confronting behavioral addictions, such as sex addiction and gambling, as well as mental health concerns like depression.

In this article, I am going to be focusing on drug and alcohol interventions. These are some of the key things that I regularly work on with people to help them lovingly and effectively communicate with their loved one about their substance abuse.

There Is Something You Can Do

When families or friends of people in active addiction see their loved one’s drinking or drug use getting worse, too often, they are told by well-meaning but misinformed people: “There is nothing you can do. You have to wait for the person with the problem to want to get help.”

As a licensed psychologist, interventionist, and family member of multiple people in recovery, I can tell you: this simply is not true.

I firmly agree with what they say in Al-Anon about the three Cs: (1) You didn’t CAUSE the addiction or alcoholism; (2) You can’t CONTROL it; and (3)You can’t CURE it.

But that does not mean there is nothing we can do. We cannot control or cure their disease, but we can provide opportunities to allow that person to get the help that they need.

In my work as an interventionist, I have seen, over and over, that there are concrete things that loved ones can do for people in active addiction or alcoholism.

Let me be clear, we cannot make their decision for them to get into recovery, but we can at least provide them with the opportunity.

The reason we can help is that denial is the biggest obstacle to recovery.

When people are in denial, they are not able to appreciate how ill they are or how much help they might need. They are not intentionally being difficult, but they are simply incapable of seeing their sickness the way others can. The lens they are using to process their reality has been distorted by drug and alcohol use. Their disease has rendered them incapable of seeing cause and effect relating to their drinking and use the way that the healthy people around them can.

People do not typically snap out of denial of their own accord; an outside force usually helps in this process.

Everybody in Recovery Has Had an Intervention

Whether they call it an “intervention” or not, everybody in recovery has had one. Something or someone has gotten in the way of their dependence on the substance and punctured their denial about their illness and its effects.

There are structured, formal interventions, like the ones that I help people with. In these interventions, family and friends plan a meeting in which they express their love and concern for the person struggling with the addiction. They set supportive boundaries to help the loved one address the illness they are in denial about. They then continue to hold those boundaries after the initial conversation.

Sometimes, professionals like myself are called in to help facilitate these conversations; sometimes, people do it without the help of outside professionals. But in either case, an attempt is made by people who care about the person to draw attention to the illness that he or she is in denial about.

Then there is the other category, unplanned interventions, in which people are simply intervened on by the cold, cruel world. They are forced to confront the consequences of their illness, often without the benefit of loving, supportive people surrounding them to offer a tangible way forward into recovery.

The world intervenes in any number of ways, such as taking the person’s job away from them or having their spouse leave them. Maybe the person abusing substances loses custody of their children, has a car accident, or gets arrested. As a direct result of this unplanned intervention that comes through natural consequences, the person is then offered the opportunity to address the illness they had previously been in denial about.

Both of these types of interventions can be valuable and lead to long-term recovery, but of course, the first one can be performed in a safe and loving setting, whereas we have no control over how the unplanned intervention will play itself out.

In a structured, planned intervention, people close to the person can give him or her the opportunity to begin addressing the denial before serious health, legal, or professional consequences force them to.

As an interventionist, what I’m helping people create is a loving crisis in the person’s life instead of waiting for the world to create a very cold and uncaring crisis. Our goal is to interrupt the person’s dysfunctional behavior pattern and offer him or her a pathway to real help and recovery, rather than waiting for extreme consequences to force them into a desperate situation.

You Don’t Have to Wait for Things to Get Worse

Many of us have this illusion that doing a structured intervention should be a last-ditch effort. This is a mistake.

We do not need to wait until things are desperate or the person is at death’s door before we provide an opportunity for our loved one to start getting better.

As far as I can tell, treating addiction is the only area of healthcare where the general attitude is: “It’s not bad enough yet to intervene.”

If our loved one had cancer, we wouldn’t want to wait until they were emaciated without the strength to walk before we did anything. And yet, with substance use disorder, that’s how we often approach it. We wait until the situation is critical and the person is at risk of dying.

Anywhere else in healthcare, we would be outraged by this attitude. In every other area of healthcare, we want to have a treatment that’s aggressive and helps to get people to a better place before they’re badly affected by their disease.

If our loved ones had cancer, we wouldn’t want to wait until they were emaciated without the strength to walk before we did anything. And yet, with substance use disorder, that’s how we often approach it. We wait until the situation is critical and the person is at risk of dying.

It’s a myth that people have to hit “rock bottom” to get better. Because in many cases, rock bottom is death. The work I do with clients and their families is attempting to raise the bottom as high as possible so that they don’t have to continue losing things and hurting themselves and others.

Hitting the bottom is just the point at which we turn around and go in a different direction. And that bottom does not necessarily have to include dramatic, tragic, and awful circumstances.

An Intervention Is Not a Single Conversation

An effective intervention is not a one-time event that takes place, followed by everybody returning to things as they were.

Yes, interventions do include an important conversation where boundaries are lovingly and clearly communicated to the person with the addiction. But the intervention needs to continue after that conversation is over. Family members need to hold to the boundaries that were communicated in that initial conversation.

I tell families that everything that they do in their relationship with the person after that initial conversation is going to fit into one of two buckets. They are either facilitating their loved one’s treatment and recovery, or they are facilitating the disease. And I don’t believe there is any in-between.

When we uphold healthy and clearly communicated boundaries, we help ensure that we are intervening in a positive way by contributing to the person’s recovery, not strengthening their disease.

For example, if an adult child is the one with the addiction, I’ll tell the parents that I want that person to always know that the door is open to the child. However, boundaries will help put a shape to that door and help them understand how they get to enter. Healthy families aren’t going to tolerate active addiction in their midst because that simply is not healthy and productive for that person.

The intervention should be about constructing the choice so the person has the opportunity to get into recovery. That means providing legitimate, tangible steps for the person to get the treatment and help they need. If they refuse that choice, love requires us to hold the boundary we communicated to them in that conversation.

You Don’t Need to Argue

People I work with often assume that I am going to tell them that they need to get really angry, be a man, stomp their feet, and demand that the person go-to treatment. And that’s not what an effective intervention looks like.

I believe that the most powerful force that we have to bring to bear is the fact that all of the people in the room love the person. We all want the best for him or her. That is a much more powerful approach than one that is aggressive, combative, or coercive. Having people who care is so much more powerful than anybody being angry and threatening could ever be.

If you get in an argument with a person in active addiction, you’re going to lose every time. The person with the addiction is perceiving the situation they are in from a place of denial. Essentially you are arguing with somebody who is dealing with a completely different set of “facts,” which actually are not “facts” at all, but distortions of reality shaped by their disease.

The person with the addiction is seeing things through the lens of their illness and the deeply felt belief that they need to continue using, even though they don’t realize it. No emotional argument that you string together will be able to win out against that.

You Can’t Force Them to Make the Decision You Want Them to Make

I tell people going into an intervention that they need to hold a boundary for themselves that respects their loved one’s autonomy. In Al-Anon, they call this “giving the person the dignity of their own choice.”

For an intervention to be effective, the loved one’s need to make it clear that they are not here to control that person. We construct a choice, and layout a tangible option of how they can get treatment. But we can’t force them to make the decision we want them to make.

Regardless of their choice on that day, if we do our part well, the landscape of that addiction will have changed that day.

There are two pieces to the interaction: our piece and their piece. My goal is to help families have control over their piece of the interaction.

Giving the person the freedom to make his or her own decision is often the most difficult part of intervening with those we love. We often need help with this. An interventionist, therapist, and an Al-Anon group (to name just a few resources) can be helpful in assisting us in letting go of trying to control the outcome of intervening with our loved one.

Of course, we want the person to say “yes” and accept help. However, even if they say “no,” if we have communicated our boundaries clearly and lovingly, it is still a good day. We are interested in them going to treatment the day after, the week after, or as soon as possible.

Regardless of their choice on that day, if we do our part well, the landscape of that addiction will have changed that day, and we will have made progress. We can continue to build on that progress by maintaining strong, healthy boundaries going forward.

I wish I could say they always get better, but the truth is they don’t. This disease is an insidious and terrible disease, and we know that we don’t have control of that either. What we do have control over is putting ourselves in the best position to put them in the best position to get better.

MARR’s Paul Thim Invited to Speak at A.A. International Convention

Written by MARR on July 21, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles.

Eighty-five years ago, an alcoholic who was trying to stay sober stood outside a hotel bar, trying to decide whether to drink or not. He knew he had to find another alcoholic to help if he was going to make it. He made some calls and tracked down a man who reluctantly agreed to meet with him. They hit it off. The conversation between Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith lasted for hours that night and resulted in a friendship, which led to the formation of a few small groups of alcoholics in the U.S. trying to stay sober. These groups spread into a worldwide fellowship, known as Alcoholics Anonymous, which now includes an estimated 2,000,000 people across 175 countries.

To commemorate and continue the fellowship that began in Dr. Bob’s house, every five years, tens of thousands of alcoholics from around the world gather in a designated city for the A.A. International Convention. The first of these conventions took place in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio, to celebrate 15 years of the A.A. fellowship. The most recent convention celebrating 80 years of A.A. was held in Atlanta on July 2-5, 2015, with approximately 57,000 members in attendance from 94 nations across the globe, including Argentina, Egypt, China, Ghana, and India, to name a few.

This year’s 2020 A.A. International Convention was a highly anticipated event, scheduled to be held in Detroit, Michigan. It was also going to prominently feature a very special member of the MARR family. Representatives of A.A.’s World Service Board had invited MARR’s very own Paul Thim, one of MARR’s beloved and now retired counselors, to speak as a non-alcoholic friend of A.A.

It is hard to overstate the significance and honor of this invitation both for Paul Thim and MARR. His service to MARR is so highly regarded that he was invited to speak at the A.A. fellowship’s most celebrated gathering in front of tens of thousands of A.A. members.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 changed everyone’s plans, and the convention was called off, at least in its physical form. But like many A.A. meetings worldwide, the 2020 International Convention moved into a virtual format. The A.A. World Service Board asked Paul to record a video for their virtual convention experience. Below is the video, which is available on the A.A. website, as well as a transcript of Paul’s remarks.

Paul Thim’s Remarks

Until I retired in July of 2019, I worked for 20 years in the field of substance abuse treatment. For the last 11 of those years, I worked at MARR Addiction Treatment Centers in Atlanta. The programs of MARR are very much based on Twelve Step Recovery. The principles of Alcoholics Anonymous are woven throughout all parts of the program.

Before I came to MARR, I already knew about A.A., and I had a very positive view of it. I knew about the Steps, but in those years at MARR, I came to develop a much deeper understanding of A.A. About half of the counseling staff members at MARR are people who are in recovery from substance abuse, and the other half are people like me, who are not in recovery from alcoholism or addiction.

As my understanding of A.A. developed during my years working at MARR, two words in particular kept coming to my mind: Acceptance and Accountability.

When someone comes to an A.A. meeting for the first time, that person is accepted. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. I use the word “acceptance,” but what I mean by that is what many other people simply call love.

I have frequently said that I had never seen and heard as many men say to other men “I love you” until I started spending time around men who were in Twelve Step Recovery. It’s not just a sentimental idea of love. It’s not just a warm feeling. All of that’s part of it, but it involves thinking and acting.

It involves thinking: “What does it actually mean in this case to be loving towards this person? Is what I’m thinking of doing for this person actually going to help that person or perhaps enable that person?”

So that gets to the second aspect of love: accountability. Accountability has to do with taking responsibility for our actions. It has to do with right and wrong. Anybody who knows about the steps knows that A.A. emphasizes that I start withholding myself accountable and also being open to other people holding me accountable.

If someone wants to try to hold me accountable, I’m at least going to take seriously and listen seriously to what they have to say. So, I hold myself accountable. Other people hold me accountable, but also, I hold others accountable. And in some ways, for me, I think maybe the genius or the secret of A.A. is it combines both of those things: the acceptance and the accountability.

Along with working in substance abuse treatment, I’m a minister and Episcopal priest. And for me, that combination of acceptance and accountability is also at the heart of what the Christian faith is about, what it means to live out the Christian faith and to apply it. I don’t think Christians have a monopoly on that. I know many people from other faith traditions who also have an understanding of what that means. And for that matter, I know many people who would consider themselves not to be religious at all, who have a deep appreciation of what it means to put those two words into practice.

I will always be grateful for the fact that I had the opportunity to be a part of the way in which A.A. applies faith to life, and I am grateful to you for listening to this talk.

Hugging the Cactus | The First Step Exercise

Written by MARR on April 28, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

Matt Erwin, CACII

As mechanics, doctors, artists, or any other skilled craftsperson will probably tell you, when a problem presents itself, gritting one’s teeth and forcing a result does not usually resolve it. In fact, coercive actions that force a premature and unworkable solution usually create bigger problems.

This principle might relate to how we address addiction or whatever compulsive and self-destructive habit we might be struggling with. A lot of times when people talk about the opioid crisis or addiction in general, they will say things like we need to “fight addiction.” Individuals in recovery and their family members will often adopt a similar approach toward addiction, looking at it as if it needs to be “beaten.”

“In the course of 45 years of treatment, we have seen over and over again that recovery is not usually about defeating addiction, but the opposite.”

Perhaps this use of “fighting” is just a manner of speaking, suggesting that the addiction needs to be addressed and not ignored, which is absolutely true. However, I think the rhetoric of “fighting” or “battling addiction” can be easily misinterpreted. In practice, this type of approach toward addiction or compulsive behavior can start to resemble forcing a solution through sheer willpower. As the addict and alcoholic in long-term recovery usually discover, this approach often ends in frustration and relapse.

Although the urgency and good intentions behind the idea of “fighting addiction” are valid, our understanding at MARR is that an aggressive approach can sometimes be counterproductive to recovery. In the course of 45 years of treatment, we have seen over and over again that recovery is not usually about defeating addiction, but the opposite.

The way that we approach recovery is to help our clients try to surrender to their powerlessness over their addictions and embrace the difficult and painful parts of that powerlessness. Recovery isn’t about fighting. To quote a phrase Robert Downey, Jr. used when describing his own recovery, it’s about learning to “hug the cactus.”

The same is true for family members of our clients. We work with them to help them see that they are ultimately just as powerless over the addiction as their loved one is. As with our clients, recovery for them is about getting intimate with painful parts of how they have tried to control the addiction and failed. This allows them to be in their own recovery, even in the heartbreaking event that their loved one returns to drinking or using.

Denial of Powerlessness

Accepting powerlessness is not something that comes easily to humans. The AA literature states it clearly, “Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions). So to help our clients in this process, we work with them on a First Step Exercise through which they develop vivid examples from their past of precisely how they have been powerless over drugs and alcohol.

“Powerlessness provides an explanation, but not an excuse. It allows the addict and the family member to see why the person did things that weren’t logical, but it doesn’t mean that they are ‘off the hook.'”

The goal of the exercise is to help them see all the times that they have tried to control their drinking or drug use and have failed. In recovery, failure can be a very good thing. It provides evidence that they are not a “bad” person who just needs to try harder. It helps them to see that they are not immoral people who need to try harder, but that they have an illness. Rather than having anything to do with morality, they can start to see that their excessive drinking and drug use is intimately tied in with an abnormal physical reaction to alcohol and drugs that is different than other people who can drink or use drugs moderately.

Powerlessness provides an explanation, but not an excuse. It allows the addict and the family member to see why the person did things that weren’t logical, but it doesn’t mean that they are “off the hook.” It does not relieve the person from responsibilities and consequences. The person in recovery still has to accept responsibility for things that they did in their active addiction. In other words, powerlessness does not by any means absolve the person, but it does help them to understand they are not a bad person. But they are a person that does have some behavior they need to accept responsibility for any consequences that need to be cleaned up.

Hugging the Cactus

A person can make statements like “I’m an alcoholic and addict” or “My drinking and drug use is out of control” without understanding the extent of their powerlessness. They may even be able to provide specific examples of powerlessness while still remaining in deep denial about just how desperate their situation is.

One of the goals in the First Step Exercise is to help our clients generate sharp and vivid examples from their own drinking and using histories that they can see clearly. Uncovering these stories is a process.

I’ll give an example that I was given permission to share by a MARR alumnus that we’ll call Chuck. When Chuck checked into MARR as a client, he knew he was an alcoholic and addict. He really believed he had fully accepted that, to the point that he had even told many of his family members that he was going to die soon because of drinking and drug use.

On the surface, this makes it sound like he had truly accepted his powerlessness, but there was actually a lot more acceptance that he later realized he still needed to do.

“It hurts at first, but as our clients and their family members encounter the more vivid descriptions of powerlessness, it can save them the endless pain that continuing in addiction and codependency can and will provide.”

For instance, he told me that the first try at one of his first step examples went something like:

I couldn’t make it a day without drinking, and on my way home from work, I had to stop and get some beer. I needed to drink so bad that I couldn’t even wait till I got home to drink it.

He told me that he can see now that, even as difficult as this was to admit at the time, his mind had glossed over a lot of the very important details of this event in an attempt to protect himself from painful realities.

To sharpen that story, he needed to remember the vivid details so he could have a more accurate picture of what really happened. With the help of the counselors, he did.

The story became clearer, and now he states that he is able to play it in his head like a movie that clearly demonstrates his powerlessness over alcohol. By the time he was finished with the exercise that same story went like this:

I made up my mind that I wasn’t gonna drink one day, but I was shaking so badly that I pulled over at a liquor store. The store was set up so that you had to go to the counter and tell them what you wanted and they got it for you. So I told the guy, “I’d like a six-pack of Bud Light.” I left my money on the counter when he went to get it so he wouldn’t see how much I was shaking.

When he reached out to give me the change, he saw my hand was shaking so bad that he looked at me with this mixture of disgust and pity. I saw his reaction, so I lied and told him that I had just almost been in an accident, and I was really nervous and that’s why my hand was shaking. As soon as I got outside, I had to drink one to quit shaking.

The beer was in bottles, and I put one up to my mouth, and my hand was shaking so bad that I hit my mouth and cut my lip. I realized I couldn’t hold it steady to my mouth, so I had to tilt my head back and separate the bottle from my lip and pour it down my throat until I quit shaking so badly and I could drink normally. When I got back in the car, I just barely made eye contact with myself in the rearview mirror and thought “Oh my God. What’s happening?”

This is a much more vivid picture of what actually happened, and one that, thanks to that exercise, he tells me he uses regularly to remind him of how powerless over alcohol he is. The denial he had during his initial attempt did not allow him to see all those details about the incident.

Family members of addicts and alcoholics often go through similar exercises. They review all the ineffective ways they attempted to control their loved one’s drinking or drug use, and how ultimately, such efforts usually ended up making matters worse. Uncovering details of their own memories of powerlessness can have a similar healing effect for them as well.

We describe the process as “sharpening” the details because we think it works to illustrate that coming to terms with our history is painful. It hurts at first, but as our clients and their family members encounter the more vivid descriptions of powerlessness, it can save them the endless pain that continuing in addiction and codependency can and will provide. This process of accepting the uncomfortable parts of our histories is what we view as part and parcel of “hugging the cactus .”

Getting intimate with the sharp details of our memories can save us a lot of pain. It may even save our lives.

The Twelve Steps | A Path Available to Everyone

Written by MARR on April 14, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

By Matt Shedd
The Host of Stories of Recovery Podcast

“I truly believe that the Twelve Step program (also known as Alcoholics Anonymous or A.A.) will go down in history as America’s greatest and most unique contribution to the history of spirituality.”
-Richard Rohr

A Common Solution

Many of the family members and community volunteers associated with our program are introduced to the Twelve Steps for the first time by witnessing our clients work through them. These onlookers are frequently surprised by the undeniable power of the Steps. Sometimes they even decide that they could benefit from engaging with them as well.

“Whether substance abuse is a problem or not, many people who sincerely engage with the simple process laid out in the Twelve Steps seem to be able to begin addressing issues that have been troubling them for years.”

As one of our community volunteers and participants in our family program stated: “We are all in recovery from something.”

Similarly, we consistently hear from surprised clients in early recovery that they never expected the Steps to have such far-reaching implications for their lives beyond their drinking and drug use.

As a treatment center founded in 1975, we have seen these stories play out time and again in various ways. Regardless of personal background, or whether substance abuse is a problem or not, many people who sincerely engage with the simple process laid out in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book) seem to be able to begin addressing issues that have been troubling them for years.

How can such a simple system, developed by a group of newly sober alcoholics in the 1930s, provide such wide-ranging benefits to such a diverse group of people?

Brief History of the Twelve Steps

The Twelve Steps have a humble origin story. They were not published by a group of religious leaders, psychologists, or social scientists, but a man named Bill Wilson, who had worked in finance, and his group of alcoholic friends in 1939. Their new-found solution emerged from Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith’s participation in the Oxford Group, a spiritual community attempting to implement first-century Christianity.

The Twelve Step literature is not written in the grand tones of religious scripture or with the clinical precision of a medical textbook. Rather, the material is in the form of plainspoken, pragmatic instructions laying out “a few simple rules” or “suggestions.”

“It was not long after the Big Book’s publication in 1939 that people without substance abuse issues began using the Steps to help develop their spiritual and emotional lives as well.”

In laying out this approach, the Big Book makes a great effort to avoid absolute statements. It makes no claims of exclusivity on spirituality, stating “[u]pon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly” as well as denying any “monopoly on God.” The writers make their case for its effectiveness in their own lives, without attempting to coerce or force the reader into taking the same course of action. Their approach is direct in its description of alcoholism, but also gentle in its invitation to others.

It was not long after the book’s publication in 1939 that people without substance abuse issues began using the Steps to help develop their spiritual and emotional lives as well. By 1952, just 13 short years after the Big Book was published, there were already 87 groups of family members of alcoholics meeting together for mutual support to practice the principles of AA in their own lives. The Twelve Steps were also being used early on to address addictions other than alcoholism, with Narcotics Anonymous officially being formed in 1953.

In the years since Twelve Step fellowships have proliferated the world over in the form of many different “Anonymous” groups. Today there are Twelve Step fellowships addressing nearly any conceivable issue relating to chemical addiction, behavioral addiction, and the general struggles of being human. Whether it’s codependency, overeating, sex addiction, online gaming, difficult emotions, or racism, the Twelve Steps have been applied to countless psychological or spiritual difficulties that we humans encounter.

An Accessible Approach

The Twelve Steps provide this guidance while also using language that many find accessible regardless of their background. They are able to do this because they restate general spiritual principles in a neutral language not specific to a particular faith or tradition. The openness of the language also allows them to be applied in virtually any context. Practitioners have found they are able to use the Steps in conjunction with a wide range of spiritual traditions or no spiritual tradition at all.

Spiritual writers and leaders, who may not be in recovery from chemical addictions themselves, have recently been finding in the Twelve Steps another non-dogmatic way to restate what their traditions have been teaching followers for hundreds or even thousands of years.

“Throughout the Big Book, practicality takes precedence over particular spiritual beliefs.”

A recent prominent example is Richard Rohr’s book on the Twelve Steps, called Breathing Underwater. In giving context to his comparative reading of the Steps alongside Biblical passages, Rohr writes: “The Twelve Step Program parallels, mirrors, and makes practical the same message that Jesus gave us, but without as much danger of spiritualizing the message and pushing its effects into a future and metaphysical world.”

Practitioners of other faiths have found that this compatibility extends to their traditions as well. Buddhist practitioner Kevin Griffin describes the Twelve Steps enriching his Buddhist practice, stating “[t]he Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to heal people from desire gone mad: addiction.” People have noted similar points of connection in other faith traditions, such as Islam, Hinduism, and Taoism, with the website Sacred Connections (http://www.12wisdomsteps.com) providing specific examples of these and other faith’s commonality with the Twelve Steps.

Similarly, agnostics and atheists have also found resonance with the Twelve Steps. AA historian, Catholic priest, and much-beloved friend of AA, Ernest Kurtz endorsed and wrote a foreword for Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life by Joe C. This text stands as just one example of recent attempts to try to make the Twelve Steps even more accessible to people who don’t identify with any other spiritual traditions.

Throughout the Big Book, practicality takes precedence over particular spiritual beliefs.

It’s difficult, and probably unnecessary, to understand precisely why and how the Steps work. They continue to be widely applied by people struggling with alcoholism and the wider world for a simple reason: people see the Steps working in the lives of others, and as a result, ask somebody to take them through the steps as well.

As the Big Book states, almost as if the writers themselves are somewhat shocked by the effectiveness of their simple program: “It works—it really does.”

Life Story Exercise in Addiction Treatment at MARR Life Story Exercise in Addiction Treatment at MARR

The Power of Story | The Life Story Exercise

Written by MARR on March 31, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

Our brains love stories. We use them to make sense of the world, to make connections, and to find patterns. We use stories to make predictions, and we use them to pass on lessons and wisdom.

Stories are such an important part of being human. One of the most powerful things an individual can do is to share their story with others.

That is why the Life Story Exercise is one of the essential parts of our Phase I of treatment. It is a chance for the clients to actually put to paper what they have been telling themselves about who they are. Their addictions have most likely trapped them into carrying around harmful and unproductive stories about themselves. Oftentimes, people in addiction do this without even realizing it. The First Step Exercise also helps our clients come to terms with the things they have done in their addiction, while also accepting that those actions do not have to define them going forward.

When we share our own stories, we are practicing vulnerability and building connections with the people around us. We are also allowing room for a different perspective to come in. Stories remind us that we are not alone. They help us understand how we got here and imagine where we might go. They form pathways in our brains that help us make decisions and assess what is happening around us.

When Lies Become Truth

When we tell a story over and over again, we begin to believe that it contains truth. Imagine that you are telling a funny story about something that happened a few years ago. You may begin to forget the details of what really happened, and so the way that you tell the story starts to form your memory of the event. The details may shift and change over time, and eventually, you may be telling parts of the story incorrectly, but your brain will actually believe that it’s the truth.

But what happens when we start telling hurtful and damaging stories about ourselves? We begin to believe those, too. When we hear and say the same negative things again and again over time, we start to perceive them as truth even if they are lies. This can start with other people saying negative things about us, but the real danger comes when we begin saying these things to ourselves.

Addiction writes a lot of tragic stories. The negative consequences of our actions begin to pile up and start telling stories about who we think we are: a terrible mother, a disappointing daughter, a horrible son, a bad employee.

When we tell discouraging stories about ourselves over and over again, our negative actions can begin to define our identity, and we miss the good parts of ourselves. These are shame stories. They continue a painful cycle of believing that we are “bad.” And these stories give our addictions more power.

For our clients, sharing the negative stories they’ve been carrying around in the Life Story Exercise can have such a transformative effect. Sharing the shame-ridden stories with people who can identify allows them to open up and have a different experience regarding their past. It doesn’t completely take away the pain of the difficulties of the events of the past, but it allows them to have a different relationship with it.

Velcro & Teflon

We are designed to remember negative things in the world around us. It’s a survival skill. If you use a stove every day for a year and you burn yourself one day, you are going to remember that one bad experience much more easily than the 364 good ones.

Dr. Rick Hanson explains it like this:

In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades “implicit memory” – your underlying expectations, beliefs, action strategies, and mood – in an increasingly negative direction.

The bad things stick even if we don’t want them to, and good things slide right off like nonstick cookware! We have to work a LOT harder to remember positive things than we do to remember negative ones. This is a big part of what makes a practice of gratitude so important and impactful.

Writing Better Stories

So, what can we do to change these stories? It seems like an uphill battle, but you are far more powerful than in the past. Writing better stories does not mean that we ignore our mistakes or pretend that we are perfect. We accept responsibility for our choices, we own up to our shortcomings, but then we turn our eyes forward – not back.

Here are three practices for creating better stories for ourselves:

When we recognize a lie, we name it as such. Often this requires the help of somebody else.
We accept encouragement from others when they offer it.
We set healthy boundaries with people who have hurt us.

There are no quick fixes here. These are practices that we must repeat for months & years to come. This is not something that we can usually do on our own. We often need the help of a strong community with similar values to help each other make these changes. There are a lot of things in life that we are powerless over, but with the help of others, we have an incredible amount of power to choose the kind of story that we are going to tell.

There is a saying in the recovery community that rings true here: “I am not what I have done; I am what I have overcome.”

Keep overcoming. And tell a better story.

Partner Spotlight | The Willingham Family

Written by MARR on March 10, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

It’s difficult to overstate the impact our volunteers have on the vitality of our program and the recovery that we help to introduce into our clients’ lives. Volunteering at MARR has been something of a tradition for the Willingham Family. Across the span of 40 years, multiple generations of Willingham’s have been active partners with MARR, providing volunteer and financial support, and building lasting relationships with MARR clients and alumni from MARR’s earliest days up until the present.

Spiritual Life Groups are groups hosted by MARR Addiction Treatment Centers throughout the Atlanta area. The groups bring together current MARR clients, MARR alumni, and community volunteers to connect on a general spiritual basis and support one another in the process of spiritual growth.

Willingham’s involvement with MARR began back in 1981 when Jean Willingham started as one of the original members of MARR’s very first Spiritual Life Groups. Jean remained a very active participant throughout the rest of her life. Her regular Wednesday night Spiritual Life Group was permanently etched into her schedule. In fact, the family would schedule vacations around Wednesday night to ensure her regular attendance. Jean also served for several years as a board member on MARR’s Board of Directors. She remained an active presence and valued member of the MARR family until her death in 2001.

“Jean was very committed to MARR and recovery in general,” said Doug Brush, a family friend of the Willingham’s. “She would never miss a group, and she even recruited other members of her church to become volunteers as well.”

Jean and her husband, Tom Willingham II, a well-respected businessman in the Atlanta community, were also generous financial partners, supporting MARR throughout the years. Tom II became personally involved as a volunteer later in his life after his wife’s death, regularly attending a Spiritual Life Group for a year until declining health prevented him from continuing to attend. (Tom II passed away in January 2020.)

The second generation of Willingham’s, Tom Willingham III and his wife Beth, carry on the tradition, remaining active MARR community members to this very day.

Influenced by the enthusiasm of her mother-in-law, Jean, Beth began volunteering in a Spiritual Life Group in 2010. Like Jean, Beth never misses a group and even increased her participation as a volunteer to twice a week. When asked about the importance of the groups in her life, Beth responded:

“The Spiritual Life Groups provide me with a community. The groups certainly do more for me than I do for the groups. I’ve learned that we all have the same problems, we just handle them differently. Being in a room with people who are being raw and real and sharing their struggles—it’s just very powerful.”

Like the earlier generation of Willingham’s, Tom III and Beth have also been faithful financial partners. They began regularly giving to MARR in 2002, with gifts supporting various parts of MARR including all three of MARR’s programs, as well as MARR’s scholarships for clients that require financial assistance.

Tom III and Beth also remain connected to MARR as regular attendees of a Twelve-Step Sunday school class at St. John’s United Methodist Church, started by Doug Brush and another MARR volunteer Brent Woodruff. Like the Spiritual Life Groups at MARR, this class focuses on the spiritual principles of the Steps but by looking at specific Bible passages. The class discusses how the 12 Steps apply to their daily lives, and through this class, Tom III and Beth remain connected to alumni who also attend and they get to continue to watch the miracle of recovery unfold.

When asked to describe why he supports MARR, Tom III said:

“Who doesn’t love watching lives transform? You see these guys come in and, if they do the work, their lives are completely transformed. Lives are restored and families are reunited. It’s almost like watching a good movie, but so much better.”

If you are interested in making a financial donation, you can reach out to funddev@marrinc.org, or you can donate online at https://www.marrinc.org/donations/.