Addiction Recovery

What Helps?

December 27th, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized — Addiction Recovery Author

Addiction counselors are strange birds. Many, having squandered a sizeable portion of their lifetime, then gladly proceed to sacrifice what’s left in hopes of being useful to the next poor soul. Many will assume that their emergence from pits of despair and weirdness automatically qualify them to lead the blind. A few will come to see that, just as no one gets out of here alive, none will recover who has not first decided to do so and that a counselor merely holds an open door.

I recall a particular group of clients, six men in their thirties and forties. All were in a court-ordered program but none was the frightened first-time offender for whom the program was supposedly conceived. No, these were convicted felons, in treatment for drug offenses but having done time in prison for who knows what. Parolees all, their next few moves would likely determine whether they returned to prison or not and these were not the kind who wished for the comforts of a cell. To a man, they were weary of the life they’d led, of the appalling depths of dishonesty and shame and selfishness, yet none had an idea of how to change. At home, spouses or roommates may still have been using, their children may have been taken from them and sympathetic employers were hard to come by. Hope, not of the “daily reflections” variety, but real hope for a sustainable future, was missing. Realizing that the standard psycho-babble fare was worse than boring to them and, hearing them say that a future in Narcotics Anonymous would not be considered, I asked, “Where will you go then, when you leave here, just to talk to someone?”

“There is no where” one said.

“So what helps? ” I asked. “You tell me; what helps?”

One of them spoke: “This helps.” Another nodded.

“This” was a handful of guys in a room, talking. Not sharing, one at a time, but talking back and forth, trying to get the hang of telling the truth. My job was to keep them on track, adding a bit of color here and there and not much else.

Carl Rogers taught that, given enough time and a place and someone to listen carefully, people will often solve their own problems. It starts with someone holding the door. That helps.

Rick Niemi