Together Nov 11

T gether

Rob Lowe: Learning Who I Really Am Page 7

A voice f or health a n d rec overy

www.together.us.com

The Gift of Rest:

Researchers studying the brain say that giving has a more powerful effect on your health than receiving

By Senator Joe Lieberman

Page 6

Is Your Teen at Risk?.......8 Brilliant, Tragic Lives.....9 Sex, Drugs & Rehab........13

When Legal Meds Cause a Relapse.............. 4

feeling pretty good,” he says. “No more isolation or malaise. I felt gratified.”

Today, Post is a leading authority on altruism and bioethics, studying the profound impact giving has on our health and well-being. “Giving is the most potent force on the planet,” says Post, Ph.D., director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University. “It’s as good for the giver as it is for the receiver. We’re happier, healthier, and live a little longer if we’re generous.” We’ll also be more successful in recovery, research shows.

“Giving back is essential to recovery,” says the psychologist Donna Wick, executive director of the Freedom Institute, a not-for-profit resource center in New York City for those affected by alcohol and drug

By Suzanne Riss

W

hen Stephen Post was 13, it wasn’t unusual for him to drink a sixpack or two of beer while hanging out with friends on the beach. “I was drinking heavily at an early age, and so was everyone around me,” he says. Losing two of his favorite uncles to alcohol-related illnesses when he turned 15 changed all that. “I realized I had alcoholism on both sides of my family,” Post says. “I saw where it could lead. I quit drinking and never went back.”

His mother was quick to suggest new ways he could spend his time. “When I’d feel sad or lonely, she’d tell me to go do something for someone else,” he recalls. So he’d rake leaves for a neighbor, help someone put canvas over a boat or run errands for an elderly couple across the street. “I’d come back home

(Continued on page 18)

Was Ulysses S. Grant an Alcoholic?

It seemed so to many, but he was also recognized as one of America’s greatest generals

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November/December 2011

The Power of Giving It Away

Inside

Three Foundations of a Great Life........................3

New York Edition

By Randy Lewis

n the eventful history of the United States the American Civil War continues to stand out as its most defining and profound episode. Among its greatest players, Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant excels for his ability to discern and act on military opportunities, and for a capacity, next only to Lincoln, to know what had to be done to win this bloodiest and most important of all American conflicts. Few military leaders have surpassed Grant’s strategic vision or tactical implementation, with the possible exception of Douglas MacArthur.

Yet, there is strong evidence to indicate that Grant by today’s standards was an alcoholic. Some would say no to this observation based on the standards

of the time, to include the great Civil War chronicler, Bruce Catton. What do we make of this question? Let’s explore some key points of Grant’s life, and the impact that alcohol had on him.

Grant was born in 1822 with the baptized name of Hiram Ulysses Grant. At West Point he was incorrectly registered as “Ulysses S Grant.” He did not dispute this mistake, which may suggest some level of poor self-esteem. His father, Jesse, was the son of a “drunk,” Noah Grant, who had abandoned his family.

Jesse was supposedly a driven man, because of the shame he held for his father, and became a successful tanner on the Ohio frontier. He was known as a taskmaster and a demanding father. In fact “Hiram” did not want to go to West Point, but Jesse obtained the appoint-

ment and insisted that his son attend.

Grant graduated in 1843, 21st in a class of 39. He was known as a quiet, introspective person who was good at math and was a superb horseman (something that he would be known for throughout his life). There is no credible evidence then that Grant had a drinking problem, though he would imbibe, as did most of his fellow cadets.

“Flabby and undone” The excessive use of alcohol during the early to middle 1800’s was greater than it is today, with an average consumption per person of five gallons a year. Heavy drinking on the frontier

(Continued on page 12)

EDITOR'S•DESK

The passions of our youth

I

first heard Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” in 1970 when I was in college. Today I have the CD in my car. I never graduated to Lawrence Welk or whatever “adult” music is.

The song, one reviewer says, “is propelled by the voodoo rhythms of seduction and darkness.” Another writes that, “Were we to scour the globe in search of the most aggressively, malevolent and unmistakably evil music in existence ... nothing would be found anywhere to surpass voodoo.”

Yikes! I had no idea.

The passions of our youth stick with us.

Today, many of my fellow Baby Boomers are finding their way to rehab – the acceptance of drugs by my generation held on in adulthood and has caught up with them.

Boomers bring all kinds of baggage to treatment, as our story on page XX details, not least of which is rejection of authority.

The mores of the generations affect us in other ways. Those having babies in 1970, a let it all hang loose time, produced a generation that is today mystified that its teenagers are unabashedly using alcohol and drugs. And drunkenly driving cars into trees. And overdosing on heroin in towns that resemble the one The Beaver grew up in. And ingesting designer drugs hardly anyone has heard of that produce paranoia and suicide.

You’ll find those stories in this issue.

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Yet you’ll find an equal measure of hope in our pages – the power and well-being that come from helping others in this season of giving, and an ancient religious practice that can give all of us today a much-needed gift of rest.

And this, from a fellow Boomer: “Now and then I look longingly back at my carefree days before drinking got bad; we had some fun, we surely did. How different it might be if it had stayed consequence free. But it did not, and the time came to put away childish and ultimately very destructive things. So I did and do and turn each day over to a higher power I don’t understand and don’t feel the need to.

Life is good. The view from here is excellent and getting better each and every day.”

Life is good. I’ll try to shed some childish things – maybe we Boomers can learn something after all. But when I’m alone in the car, I’ll still turn up the volume on Santana.

Editor-in-Chief | Terry A. Kirkpatrick Contributing Editor | Barbara Nicholson-Brown Contributing Editor | Suzanne Riss Design Director | Mario J. Recupido Web Director | Maggie Keogh Publisher | Richard Horton Marketing Director | Rosalie Bischof

Contact Together: General information: info@together.us.com

Letters to the editor: letters@together.us.com

Editorial submissions: editorial@together.us.com

General correspondence: news@together.us.com advertising@together.us.com distribution@together.us.com subscriptions@together.us.com

Terry A. Kirkpatrick

The road to recovery begins at Marworth When your loved one makes the decision to seek treatment for alcohol or drug dependency, help them make the best choice for their recovery. Marworth offers personalized programs based on the 12-step philosophy. We involve the family and our team has a proven record of success.

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For more information, please call 1.800.442.7722 or visit www.marworth.org.

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GUEST•COLUMNIST

Three Foundations of A Great Life A distinguished professor has learned that the attributes of successful leadership apply to all of us in our personal lives.

By Michael C. Jensen

T

he three factors my colleague and co-author Werner Erhard and I identify as constituting the foundation for effective leadership can also be seen as the foundation for a high quality personal life.

Those three factors are: integrity, authenticity, and commitment to something bigger than oneself. I wish I had been exposed to these themes when I was young. At 71 it is now clear that I could have avoided much personal drama and difficulty – most of which I created.

Integrity By integrity I do not mean the normal concept of integrity, which makes integrity a virtue that is confounded with moral and ethical behavior. By integrity I mean the purely positive state of being whole, complete, unbroken, sound, perfect. For a human being (or any human entity) this is a matter of one’s word – nothing more and nothing less.

Our Law of Integrity states: As integrity (whole and complete) declines, workability declines, and as workability declines, value (or more generally, the opportunity for performance) declines. Thus the maximization of whatever performance measure you choose requires integrity.

Violating the Law of Integrity generates painful consequences just as surely as violating the law of gravity. Put simply (and somewhat overstated): “Without integrity nothing works.”

Think of this as a heuristic (it is not literally true). But if you or your family or your organization operates in life as though this heuristic is true, performance, however defined, will increase dramatically – easily in the range of 100% to 500%.

And note that the impact of integrity extends to the quality of your life and your happiness. The relation between integrity and oneself: It is my word through which I define and express myself, both for myself and for others. It is not too much to say that who I am is my word. It follows that to be whole and complete as a person, my word to others and myself must be whole and complete.

In this new model of integrity, being whole and complete is achieved by keeping your word, or, when you will not be keeping your word, then honoring your word.

By honoring your word I mean that when you will not be keeping your word you immediately inform all those counting on you to keep your word that you will not be keeping it. And you clean up the mess that you have caused in their lives by not keeping your word. This is the actionable pathway to being a person or organization of integrity.

Integrity maintains you as a whole and complete human being. It creates workability in your life, and finally it generates trust in you by others, and does so almost immediately.

What is it like to be whole and complete

as a person? When you honor your word to yourself and others: • You are at peace with yourself, and therefore act from a place where you are at peace with others and the world – even those who disagree with or might threaten you.

• You live without fear for your selfhood – that is, who you are as a person.

• You experience no fear of losing the admiration of others.

• You do not have to be right; you act with humility.

• Everything or anything that someone else might say is OK for consideration. There is no need to defend, explain, or rationalize yourself. You are able to learn.

• This state of affairs is often mistaken as mere selfconfidence rather than the courage that comes from being whole and complete – that is, from being a man or woman of integrity.

much we want to be admired, and how readily we will fudge on being straightforward and completely honest in a situation where we perceive doing so threatens us with a loss of admiration.

We also all want to be seen by our colleagues as being loyal, protesting that loyalty is a virtue, even in situations where the truth is that we are acting “loyal” solely to avoid the loss of admiration. And, in such situations, how ready we are to sacrifice integrity to maintain the pretense of being loyal, only because we fear losing the admiration of our colleagues.

Also, most of us have a pathetic need for looking good, and almost none of us is willing to confront just how much we care about looking good – even to the extent of the silliness of pretending to have followed and understood something when we haven’t.

We are all guilty of being small in these ways, including me – it comes with being human.

Great leaders are noteworthy in having come to grips with these foibles of being human – not eliminating them, but being the master of these weaknesses when they are leading.

If you watch carefully in life, you will have the opportunity to catch yourself being small in these ways. While you won’t like seeing this, by distinguishing these weaknesses in yourself, you will give yourself a powerful opportunity to master these weaknesses.

One cannot pretend to be authentic. That, by definition, is inauthentic. The actionable pathway to authenticity is to be authentic about your inauthenticities. Being authentic is being willing to discover, confront, and tell

Integrity creates workability in your life; it generates trust in you by others, and does so almost immediately.

Being whole and complete as a person is thus critically important to living a great life and to being a great leader. (Remember, leadership starts with being the leader of your own life.) And, being whole and complete is one of the foundations for being a great organization.

Authenticity Quoting my Harvard colleague, Professor Chris Argyris who, after 40 years of studying us human beings, says on the subject of our inauthenticity: “Put simply, people consistently act inconsistently, unaware of the contradiction between their espoused theory and their theory-in-use, between the way they think they are acting, and the way they really act.”

And if you think this does not apply to you, you are fooling yourself about fooling yourself.

Common examples of being inauthentic include pretending to be some way you are not actually being – that is, hiding what you actually think or feel, covering up what is actually going on with you, or covering up something that happened or didn’t happen in your life. This is thought of as a façade or a face you put on.

Because it is painful to be caught being inauthentic, everyone goes to great lengths to avoid revealing their inauthenticities. This means we are inauthentic about being inauthentic. Examples of our inauthenticities: We all want to be admired, and almost none of us is willing to confront just how

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the truth about your inauthenticities – when and where you are not being genuine, real, or authentic.

Specifically, where in your life are you not being or acting consistent with who you hold yourself out to be for others, and where are you not being or acting consistent with who you hold yourself to be for yourself?

If you cannot find the courage to be authentic about your inauthenticities, you can forget about being at peace with yourself, and you can forget about being a great leader.

And, similarly, an organization that cannot be authentic about its inauthenticities will experience great conflicts, costs, and loss of reputation.

The attempt to be authentic on top of our inauthenticities is like putting cake frosting on cow dung, thinking that that will make the cow dung go down well. Quoting Bill George, former Medtronics CEO and now Harvard Business School Professor of Leadership: “After years of studying leaders and their traits, I believe that leadership begins and ends with authenticity.”

To be a leader you must be big enough to be authentic about your inauthenticities. This kind of bigness is a sign of power, and is so interpreted by others.

To be authentic about your inauthenticities, you must find in yourself that “self ” that leaves you free to be authentic about your inauthenticities. That “self,” the one that gives you the freedom to be authentic about your inauthenticities, is who you authentically are.

And you will know when this process is complete when you are free to be publicly authentic about your inauthenticities, and have experienced the freedom, courage, and peace of mind that comes from doing so. And this is especially so when you are authentic with those around you for whom those inauthenticities matter (and who are likely to be aware of them in any case).

Authenticity is one of the conditions for a great personal life, great leadership, and a great organization.

(Continued on page 22)

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BODY•MIND•SPIRIT

When Legal Meds Cause a Relapse The hazards of some prescription and over the counter medicines aren’t so obvious

By Robert W. Mooney, M.D.

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or those in recovery, preventing relapse is top-of-mind. For many, however, relapse can be triggered in relatively innocent, unsuspecting ways through the reaction some pharmaceuticals have on their brains. For example, alcoholics know to stay away from alcohol, but do they understand the need to steer clear of Tylenol® PM or Benadryl® -- medicines that are perfectly OK for nonaddicts?

What makes the chances of an unintentional relapse more frightening is that it is not necessarily associated with large doses of drugs. Even exposure to minimal amounts can trigger an allergic sensitivity.

So how are those in recovery to know?

Sometimes it can be an innocuous situation such as going to the dentist or having surgery. It can even be as innocent as taking an overthe-counter medication to relieve the symptoms of a common cold.

Drug and alcohol addiction is basically a kind of allergic response to chemicals that change brain activity and reward systems. The brain’s response to these chemicals can be immediate, such as instant cravings for similar drugs. Or, it can be more gradual -- thinking and perceptions become altered in such a way that motivation for sobriety decreases and addicts return to old patterns of behavior closely linked to their original substance use. That is why it is important to understand the impact of some pharmaceuticals and hazardous chemicals on patients and their sobriety.

What’s a hazardous substance in recovery? Essentially, a hazardous chemical is any drug that is associated with relapse. Of course, alcohol is the No. 1 offender, but the others can be divided into three distinct categories: • Street narcotics: frequently abused, illegal and recreational in nature.

• Prescription medications: available only with written instructions from a doctor or dentist to a pharmacist. These include Seroquel®, Adderall, Vicodin, Xanax® and Lexapro.

• Over-the-counter drugs: sold without a prescription and found in almost every corner drug store, such as Tylenol® PM, Benadryl®, NyQuil, Robitussin® DM and Stackers.

Unfortunately, even though a doctor may prescribe these drugs or patients may not have had previous experience with

Here are some prescription medications to be wary of: Seroquel, Adderall, Vicodin, Xanax, and Lexapro.

Over-the-counter drugs to watch out for: Tylenol PM, Benadryl, NyQuil, Robitussin DM, and Stackers.

All of these drugs act at least in part by activating those areas of the brain associated with addiction.

All of these substances do one or more of the following:

1) Relieve tension and anxiety 3) Impart a sense of well being

2) Promote restful sleep 4) Improve interpersonal relationships.

Nyquil contains alcohol and an antihistamine; Tylenol PM contains a sedating antihistamine; Benadryl is an antihistamine and is often included in other OTC medications. These work simply by putting the brain to sleep. This sedation is clearly associated with relapse. Weight loss and sleep prevention/ energy compounds usually have a stimulant effect that activates those parts of the brain associated with meth or cocaine. Even a small effect in the brain can have a devastating impact on someone in recovery.

them, it doesn’t change the affect on the brain.

The most innocent medical event can trigger a relapse. Scheduled medical procedures, in particular, present challenges for those in recovery. It is paramount that patients discuss their experiences as a recovering alcoholic or drug addict with their physicians or dentists, focusing on their special sensitivity to any mood-altering substances, which include medications given before, during or after surgery.

Doing so will help recovering patients avoid any unnecessary risk of relapse. This does not mean that doctors or dentists are responsible for their patients’ sobriety -- they aren’t.

But there are things they can do to make it easier for patients to get through the procedure with their sobriety intact.

Before Surgery: Instead of ordering sleeping pills on the evening before or a mild tranquilizer on the morning of a procedure, seek non-pharmacological ways to ensure that patients’ emotional states do not interfere with their surgery.

During Surgery: Being put to sleep with general anesthesia is like being passed out drunk. The brain just does not see the difference. If appropriate, consider local anesthesia or an epidural. If an alternative is not medically possible, just remember that it is not unusual for an alcoholic or addict to require higher doses for general anesthesia. Patients should be prepared for their personalities, including their judgments, to be altered for approximately three months.

After Surgery: This is when most addicts end up in trouble.

At this point, their brains will probably be convincing their bodies that they need relief—spelled N-A-R-C-O-T-I-C-S.

Get

Besides the physical discomfort, patients may seem anxious, irritable, or unable to sleep, and it will be very tempting to treat these symptoms with a variety of medications that could be hazardous to their recovery. So before getting a prescription, remember: The Phenergan® for nausea, the Xanax® or Ativan for anxiety, the Trazodone, Ambien® or Benadryl® for sleep or even Ultram for pain can all trigger a compulsion for more.

The ideal but often impractical solution is to keep patients in a controlled environment until medications are no longer needed. Sending them home with a prescription can be dangerous. In the rare cases where narcotics are required for pain control, it may be best to use a medication that most are hesitant to administer. Giving a more potent narcotic for a shorter period of time is less risky than using a milder drug for a long time. Addicts often admit that Tylenol, Motrin or Toradol actually worked as well as narcotics in most cases following a procedure.

How can someone educate his or her healthcare provider?

Start with a frank conversation and ask that a history of addiction be flagged on your medical record. Most providers will not always know what may be hazardous to recovery, so it is your responsibility to learn a drug’s effects before taking it.

You may need to contact a doctor with special training in addiction, such as one connected with an alcohol or drug rehabilitation center.

Robert W. Mooney, M.D., is an Addiction Psychiatrist and Medical Director at Willingway Hospital, an alcoholism and drug addiction treatment center in Statesboro, Georgia.

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www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

BODY•MIND•SPIRIT

The View from Now Growing up is hard. My character defects helped me survive. How difficult then to put them aside, though they now stunt my growth like a too-small shoe.

I

By Anne M.

’ve been lucky. After many years of trying and failing to get sober, I have been able by the grace of God to not pick up a drink for many years now. I attribute it to many things: good sponsorship, the fellowship of the rooms, the twelve steps of recovery and just plain growing up.

It was way past the optimal time to stop chasing the thrill – in fact all of them: the various rushes of overspending, overeating, over-caffeinating, sounding off, not showing up, pulling one over on; going around instead of through, etc., etc. As my sponsor’s father said to her, “What is it about moderation that you don’t get?”

Obviously not an alcoholic or he wouldn’t have to ask.

Getting sober is akin to slamming the brakes on a station wagon full of stuff; stuff from childhood, stuff from adulthood, stuff from work, stuff from relationships. Because none of it was ever processed, but instead thrown in the back, it rattled around there occasionally making itself vaguely noticed, but manageable where it was.

Back of the head Then what happens is, we get sober. We stop drinking and the all the stuff comes flying forward at 60 MPH and hits us in the back of the head. They are only emotions, if you look at them reasonably, which is impossible, and they don’t stop coming for quite some time. It’s amazing a brain can even hang onto this stuff, but for me it was waiting in excruciating detail. The things I’d said; the things I did … the things I didn’t say, the things I didn’t do. I remember one Christmas Eve, far from home, I realized I hadn’t started my Christmas shopping yet.

That was how I lived.

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My early sponsors did nothing more than listen to me and offer reasonable advice; I was so far from sane it sounded inspired. I couldn’t conceive of how my sponsor had gone TWO YEARS without drinking but I knew that meant she knew everything.

Fellowship covered everything from how to get through an evening, to how to get through the holidays, all without drinking.

The first annual cycle of holidays, birthdays, weddings, football games and more without drinking didn’t seem within the realm of possibility and yet it was. And is.

Peace of mind is inevitable Step work is my default. Whenever I seem to be off the beam I turn to the steps. I think all the wisdom of the life is contained within their simple logic. Adhere to the steps, which become ever deeper with each passing year, and peace of mind and true happiness become not only possible but inevitable.

Growing up has been hardest of all. I have heard that our liabilities or character defects are often what helped us survive until we got to the rooms. How difficult then to put them aside though they now stunt our growth like a too-small shoe. The dishonesty, the procrastination, the anger, the gossip barbed with subtle superiority. Like the bottle, they were once friends; but no more.

Now and then I look longingly back at my carefree days before drinking got bad; we had some fun, we surely did. How different it might be if it had stayed consequence free. But it did not, and the time came to put away childish and ultimately very destructive things. So I did and do and turn each day over to a higher power I don’t understand and don’t feel the need to. Life is good. The view from here is excellent and getting better each and every day.

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BODY•MIND•SPIRIT

The Gift of Rest The Sabbath is an old but beautiful idea that, in our frantically harried and meaningstarved culture, cries out to be rediscovered and enjoyed by people of all faiths

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By Senator Joseph Lieberman

t’s Friday night, raining one of those torrential downpours that we get in Washington, D.C., and I am walking from the Capitol to my home in Georgetown, getting absolutely soaked. A United States Capitol policeman is at my side as we make our way up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol building toward our distant goal, a four-and-a-half-mile walk. Before leaving my Senate office I changed into sneakers, but now they are full of water.

As we slosh forward, a Capitol police car travels alongside for extra security at a stately pace. But I do not—indeed I cannot—accept a ride in the car.

What accounts for this strange scene? The presence of the two policemen is easily explained. The Senate’s sergeant at arms, who oversees the Capitol police, once said to me, “Senator, if something happens to you on my watch while you’re walking home, it will be bad for my career.” So that’s why the police are with me.

But why am I walking instead of riding on a rainy night? Because it’s Friday night, the Sabbath, the day of rest when observant Jews like me do not ride in cars. That would violate the letter and spirit of the Sabbath laws, as the Bible and Jewish rabbinical opinions make clear.

Normally I get home from my work in time for the start of the Sabbath—Shabbat in Hebrew, or Shabbos in Yiddish, at sundown on Friday. But on this occasion, important votes on the budget of the United State kept me from doing so. Voting in the Senate is conducted the old fashioned way, by voice, and there are no proxies. You can’t vote on behalf of one of your colleagues. If I miss an important vote, it would mean that on that particular issue the people of my home state of Connecticut would lose their representation. They would lose their say in the running of our country, the spending of their tax payments, or the safety and quality of their lives. That is something my religious beliefs tell me I cannot allow, even on the Sabbath, so when there are votes in the Senate after sundown on Friday, I vote and then I walk home.

I’ve taken this long walk from the Capitol to my home on thirty or forty occasions in my twentytwo-year senatorial career. The police officers who accompany me normally provide not only security but welcome companionship and conversation. Many are devout Christians. The journey takes about an hour and a half, and we’ve had some wonderful discussions about the Sabbath in particular and faith in general. But not tonight. It’s just too wet and miserable to talk much. It is now 10:00 p.m., and my police escort and I take a break and slip under the shelter of a convenience store awning.

At that moment, I must admit, I looked to the heavens from which rain continued to pour and asked,

half in humor and half in sincerity, “Dear God, Is this really what you want me to be doing to remember and honor the Sabbath?”

More like a gift That’s not a question I often feel compelled to ask. Observing the Sabbath is a commandment I have embraced, the fourth commandment to be exact, which Moses received from God on Mt. Sinai. Most of the time, it feels less like a commandment and more like a gift from God. It is a gift I received from my parents who, in turn, received it from their parents, who received it from generation of Jews before them in a line of transmission that goes back to Moses.

For me, Sabbath observance is a gift because it is one of the deepest, purest pleasures in my life.

It is a day of peace, rest, and sensual Senator Lieberman and family walking to Temple on the Sabbath during pleasure. By sensual his 2000 campaign for vice president.

I don’t mean sexual— though you might find it interesting to know that one religious “responsibility” consider that a small price to pay for all the Sabbath gives and given to every married Jew is to make love with their spouse teaches me. on the Sabbath, because this is meant to be a day on which we experience the fullness of life.

My wife, Hadassah, once mentioned this to be couple of women friends who were started by the revelation.

Hadassah and I sometimes speak of a place beyond time “Oh,“ said one, her eyes going wide, “I wish my husband called “Shabbatland.” In many ways, the Sabbath is an entirely would become more religiously observant.” different place from the one in which we live our weekday When I said the Sabbath is sensual, I meant that it engages lives. It’s a place away from the clocks and watches, bound the senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—with beauti- only by the natural movements of the sun. Whether I am ful settings, soaring melodies, wonderful food and wine, and spending Shabbat in Washington, D.C., or in my hometown of lots of love. It is a time to reconnect with family and friends— Stamford, Connecticut, entering the Sabbath is like stepping and, of course, with God, the creator of everything we have into a different world defined not by geographical boundaries time to “sense” on the Sabbath. Sabbath observance is a gift but by faith, tradition, and spirituality. that has anchored, shaped, and inspired “On Shabbat,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the my life. rebbe (or chief rabbi) of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, The Sabbath is an old but beautiful said, “we cease to struggle with the world, not because the task idea that, in our frantically harried and of perfecting it is on hold, but because on Shabbat, the world meaning-starved culture, cries out to be is perfect; we relate to what is perfect and unchanging in it.” rediscovered and enjoyed by people of In speaking with Christian friends, especially in the Evanall faiths. It takes the form it does—its gelical and Roman Catholic communities, I’ve felt an apprelaws and customs—because from an- ciation for the gifts of Sabbath observance and a desire to cient days, generations of rabbis and spread them. Some have asked me, “Why do you observe the sages have been transmitting, refining, Sabbath?” and “What do you do on the Sabbath?” I now proand elaborating traditions that define pose to answer them and you through the prism of the HeSabbath observance. These traditions brew Bible, which most Christians call the Old Testament and build fences—like not riding in a car— which provides the shared wellsprings from which we draw around the Sabbath to protect it as a our faith. day of faith and rest.

In the Torah, the Bible’s first five books, we are given the The Sabbath is an organic entity text of the fourth commandment twice: once in Exodus, when reflecting centuries of thought and Scripture narrates the revelation of God to the children of Isexperience. It is not an arbitrary con- rael at Mt. Sinai, and again three books later in Deuteronomy trivance. Some ordinances may have when Moses repeats the story of the Sinai revelation to the seemed meaningless in the past, but Israelites in the desert forty years later. The wording of the they have been revealed in their full commandment in these two accounts is different. meaningfulness in modern times. I Exodus emphasizes the role of the Sabbath in commemoconstantly seek the wisdom of Sab- rating the creation of the world and in acknowledging and bath practices, and I’m rarely disap- honoring God as Creator. We are told there to “remember” the pointed by what I find. If the cost Sabbath, to remember particularly that the world has a puris an occasional inconvenience or posive Creator. We are not here by accident. We got here as a discomfort—like getting soaked on result of God’s creation. the walk home from the Capitol—I

Sabbath observance is a gift because it is one of the deepest, purest pleasures in my life. It is a day of peace, rest, and sensual pleasure.

“What a beautiful book about a beautiful concept—a day of rest as a gift to humanity.” -- Alan Dershowitz

6

A place beyond time

(Continued on page 14)

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

HEADLINER

Learning Who I Really Am To let his real self emerge in rehab, the actor had to gradually strangle the good-looking, successful, charming poster-boy pod person

R

By Rob Lowe

ob! Rob! Pick up, it’s your mother!” I’m standing over my answering machine with its seventy-three unanswered messages. “Rob, please.

Are you there?” begs my mother, clearly in a panic. But I am too messed up to pick up the phone; there is no way I can face her in my condition.

“Your grandfather is in the hospital. He’s had a massive heart attack.”

I listen to my mom as she describes his critical condition and asks for my help. Still, I do nothing. I stare at the answering machine, frozen, until my mother hangs up.

As shame and guilt begin to penetrate my altered state, I begin to hatch a plan of attack. I need to chug the last of the tequila, I tell myself. So I can get to sleep, so I can wake up ASAP and deal with this.

This insane logic holds right up until I catch a glance of myself in the bathroom mirror. Then, very slowly, I turn and face myself full on. I’m so hammered that I can barely stand. The girl I love has just left me, because I can’t keep my word and I have no integrity. My grandfather is dying. My mother is in crisis, desperate for help and comfort, and I am cowering and hiding in shameful avoidance. I have arrived at the bottom.

Since I was a boy I’ve been running. Running to make my mark. Running to avoid reality. Running to avoid pain.

And now … a moment of clarity. I can run no longer.

I go into my bedroom, past the sleeping girl, a total stranger, and find my wallet. In it is a business card that I have carried for over a year.

I find it and pull it out. It’s from a drug and alcohol counselor named Betty Wyman. I take her card, head back to my office, and sit next to the phone. I hear the terrible chirping of the early-morning birds.

I watch the cityscape, gray on the horizon as the sun begins to rise. A new day is beginning.

I make the call. It’s May 10, 1990.

T

here are many kinds of rehabs. You can pretty much get any setup that suits you. You’ve got your shaved-head cuckoo’s nests and hard-core lockdowns, you’ve got your latte-sipping, horsebackridin’, yoga-centric country clubs. You’ve got your remote, Spartan locations; you’ve got ’em smack-dab in L.A., convenient for visits from managers, agents, publicists, and dealers.

I’m on a plane headed to Arizona for a middle-of-the-road version. Betty Wyman, in her wisdom, got me the hell out of L.A. to a serious rehab, but well short of a lockdown. Less than forty-eight hours have passed since I called her, but Betty moved quickly when I said, “Help me. I want to stop. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.” Now I sit, shaking with anxiety, next to her associate,

Together - A Voice for Health & Recovery

Bob, who is escorting me to the monkey farm.

Bob is a former Hells Angel. He’s tattooed head to toe, with a beard that makes him look like Charles Manson but a voice that sounds like Kermit the Frog.

“Let me tell you my story,” says Bob, attempting to comfort my now crushing anxiety, and to bond us together.

“I first remember feeling different and scared and anxious when I was a little boy and my mom invited the mailman into our apartment. We found out later, but didn’t know then, that she was a paranoid schizophrenic,” he says in his sweet, Kermit-like singsong.

“Anyway, she stabbed the mailman to death, then cut up his body with a butcher knife. She made me lie down in our bathtub and placed his severed limbs on top of me. She told me that God would be angry but this would protect me.”

Bob takes a sip from his fifteenth cup of black coffee and continues. “Anyway, that was hard for me. And growing up after Mom was committed, I got into heroin and selling it.

I went to prison. But when I got out, I got sober and have been now for seventeen years.”

I try to conjure up an appropriate response to this story, but my instincts tell me that since there is no way to top it, I should just take it in. Bob smiles. “Don’t you worry about a thing. You are right where you should be. Scared.

Freaked out and shattered. Ain’t nobody ever gotten sober who wasn’t.”

The rehab (I won’t name it, to protect anonymity, and any names I use here have been changed) sits in the low foothills of glowing, red-rock mountains. There is nothing but saguaro cactus for miles. If I decide to flee, it will be a long walk to civilization.

But I won’t flee. Bob will check me in and say good-bye, and I will begin one of the most exhilarating, liberating, and exciting four weeks of my life. Scary, yes, and filled with unspeakable emotional discomfort, but for me, it’s unquantifiable relief that I am being shown a different way to live. I am so tired of the lying, my inability to keep my word, the bullshit relationships, the hangovers, the cover-ups, and the

(Continued on page 15)

What I’ve Learned in Sobriety

I

felt a sense of peace and a satisfaction from my marriage and early steps in recovery. I went to meetings with other alcoholics daily, and so each day my old ways and perspectives changed. I took fewer chances in my personal life and more in my work.

I’ve learned to confront people when I’m being taken advantage of, to enforce boundaries, when in the past I either had none or let people encroach upon them while I stuck my head in the sand. This will prove great for growth and maturity, and not so great in show business, which thrives on actors being distracted, checked out, and fearful.

Pre-sobriety, I would’ve been too shy to accept, or written an invitation off as small talk. But now I take people for their word and have almost silenced that inner voice that kept me from extending myself and making new friendships.

There was clearly some traction for me as a writer-director.

I began to mentally transition away from the life I had always known and worked so hard to

achieve. I began to develop material, take pitch meetings, and otherwise begin down my new path as a filmmaker. But, as they say in sobriety, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

I had been an alcoholic for an important portion of my life. During that time I had hidden from conflict, fearful of not being liked, worried about how I would be thought of. But after being sober for almost fourteen years, I was not the little boy back in Ohio in the lumberyard who said what he felt and got emotionally sideswiped for his efforts. I was not the overwhelmed twentyyear-old “sensation” who found it so much less painful to just say yes than to say no, even when I knew I should. I was also not a boy, without any real advisors, making it up as best I could. I was none of those things. Not anymore.

I came to the realization: Nothing in life is unfair. It’s just life. To the extent that I had any inner turmoil, I had only myself to blame. I also thought of my two boys and what kind of example I hoped to be. I would always want them to take charge of their own futures and not be paralyzed by the comfort and certainty of the status quo or be cowed by the judgment of those on the outside looking in. But how could I ask that of Matthew and Johnowen if I couldn’t ask it of myself?

Today, life’s blessings continue to surprise me.

And the stories that follow from this mysterious, glorious, maddening, saddening journey are enough to fill another book.

-- From Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe, published by Henry Holt and Company. © 2011 by Robert Lowe.

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SPECIAL•REPORT

Is Your Teen at Risk?

Studies reveal why teens get into trouble with drugs and alcohol – and what parents can do about it

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By Rudy Ruggles

hey found his lifeless body on Main Street in our picturesque little town an hour north of New York City.

It’s a town of tree-lined streets and upper-income homes and excellent schools and teenagers headed to the best colleges – but not this one, a 17-year-old boy dead of a heroin overdose. Heroin? Here?

Someone died of an overdose here?

That’s not supposed to happen in Ridgefield, Connecticut, but it did, and it wasn’t the last time. Every year, it seems, we loose a teenager to a car crash involving alcohol or drugs. Just this year three teens died tragically.

That heroin overdose in 2005 affected me deeply. I care about my town, of course, but I also raised four boys here. They lived through the usual teenage dramas and

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emerged safely into productive adulthoods.

It was my blessing to not be the father of a boy found dead on Main Street.

The death stirred the whole town deeply.

My friend Rudy Marconi, the First Selectman (mayor), started an organization to look for answers. It would include the chief of police and the schools superintendent and others. I volunteered. I’m a physicist by training, and I’ve studied the darkest mysteries of creation, but nothing baffles me more than a young man with his whole life ahead of him losing it to a chemical, one associated with drug dens in the inner city. If I could help make a difference, it would be time well spent. The difficulties of being a parent were still fresh in my memory.

No different for your child One thing I’ve learned serving on the Ridgefield Community Coalition Against Substance Abuse is that, while our town is unique in many ways, the issues facing our teenagers are not. Their struggles with substance abuse are no different than those of teens in bigger towns or inner cities. What we as parents are learning here can be of use to parents everywhere.

We know that from surveys of our teenagers and similar surveys across the country.

We have a higher level of marijuana use because of our affluence, but otherwise what goes on here tends to go on everywhere. Consider the time a teen spends alone at home.

I think most of our parents would find that surprising – the time spent at home without supervision or just hanging out during the week, even though it might be disguised as going to a friend’s house to do homework.

Maybe that sounds familiar to you.

The most important thing that has been reinforced for me is that a parent’s role should begin long before the moment of confrontation when drug or alcohol use is discovered. A number of things are either present or not in a child’s life that will determine whether he partakes of alcohol or drugs. These are developed in the home and school and community long before someone offers him a joint behind a century-old maple tree in our Ballard Green on Main Street.

We call these “assets,” a term we learned from the Search Institute, an organization that surveys our high schoolers every two years. For more than 50 years this Minneapolis-based organization has been surveying kids in more than 60 countries to learn the prevalence of these assets in their lives.

“Studies of nearly 3 million young people,” the Institute says, “consistently show that the more assets young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of highrisk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive. Research has proven that youth with the most assets are least likely to engage in

four different patterns of high-risk behavior, including problem alcohol use, violence, illicit drug use, and sexual activity. The same kind of impact is evident with many other problem behaviors, including tobacco use, depression and attempted suicide, antisocial behavior, school problems, driving and alcohol, and gambling.”

Armed with knowledge I can’t help but wish, although my boys turned out okay, that I’d had the benefit of this knowledge when they were young and I was trying to be a good father.

Here are just a few of what Search Institute calls the 40 Developmental Assets: integrity, honesty, personal power, a positive view of a personal future, interpersonal competence, creative activities, positive peer influence, adult role models, family boundaries, family support, a caring neighborhood. (The full list can be found on the Institute’s website, http://www.search-institute.org/. There are also lists for middle and grade school children.)

Three of the assets stand out for me: Boundaries and Expectations, Restraint, and Positive Adult Role Models. I focus on these because Ridgefield students scored particularly low on them. You may zero in on others depending on your child’s situation and what’s going on in your town.

Let me develop these three a bit to give you the flavor of all of the assets.

Boundaries and Expectations Boundaries and Expectations are set in the school as well as the home. Research shows that young people who attend schools with clear rules and consequences are more likely to display positive behaviors and at-

titudes, rather than engage in risky behaviors. Only 38 percent of the Ridgefield High School students surveyed said their school provided clear rules and consequences! This is more than 10 percent less than the national average in the Search Institute’s survey, and it is lower than the students’ response regarding consistent parental boundaries.

And yet our schools are known nationally for their excellence!

It’s important for parents to stay involved in their children’s school. Teachers and administrators can help by creating a conduct code at the beginning of the school year and sending it home to parents. Parents can reinforce the rules set by the school. Conflicts may still occur, and when they do, everyone -- students, parents, teachers, and others in the community -- should feel comfortable voicing their concerns and suggesting solutions. The more families, schools, and communities work together to establish consistent boundaries, the better off young people will be, because they’ll know what to expect.

The convenience of boundaries What happens if you’re late to a business meeting? Run a red light? Fail to pay for your morning coffee? Rules and expectations are important. They help establish the do’s and don’ts for society and help things run smoothly. But rules are not automatically known; they must be created and learned. That’s where parents come in.

If young people are not taught early on that there are rules they must follow, they think they can do anything they want at any time.

And, while we may like the freedom to make choices, having boundaries to follow -- and

(Continued on page 16)

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

THE•ARTS

Brilliant and Tragic Lives Four artists, who advanced the abstract expressionism movement that put New York on the international art map in the early 20 th Century, came together in that special period as friends, lovers, promoters, competitors – and captives of alcohol.

T

By J. Roger Guilfoyle

he Museum of Modern Art in New York is exhibiting a lifetime of work by the Dutch born, American artist/sculptor Willem de Kooning. This show, in nine galleries, with almost 200 pieces, affirms de Kooning’s position as a titan of modern art, easily the equal of Picasso and Matisse as well as of American contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock.

Drawn from public and private collections, the show concludes with the spare, elegant works that were created in the 1980’s while de Kooning was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s and the effects of his alcoholism. de Kooning was also included in “Abstract Expressionism,” the 2010-2011 monumental MoMA show that occupied the entire fourth floor of the museum and spilled onto the third and second floors. That show, drawn entirely from the museum’s collection, is the genesis of this article.

In the 1960s my office was around the corner from the Museum of Modern Art. Armed with MoMA press passes, my fellow editors and I used the museum’s cafeteria as an extension of our office. Abstract Expressionism and MoMA were entwined at this time. de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and their contemporaries became our familiars.

provided, Pollock’s alcoholism would have raged out of control. He would unlikely have produced the work on which his reputation rests. So it is a designation she earned and deserves.

Gail Levin’s Lee Krasner: A Biography was published almost simultaneously with the closing of the “Abstract Expression” show in spring 2011.

I began reading it, and it inspired me to look more deeply into the lives of these great artists.

Without the home life Lee Krasner provided, Jackson Messy lives The creative process, acPollock’s alcoholism cording to Freud, is an alternative to neurosis. Artists would have raged have the ability to turn their into art instead out of control, and fantasies of into symptoms, thereby and entertaining he would unlikely engaging society. By doing so, artists’ like their art, fall into have produced the lives, the public domain. And, human, those lives work on which his being are frequently messy, leavthe impression that to reputation rests. ing be an artist is to be compulsive/obsessive, manic/ Stability for Pollock

Life in a shadow Leaving the “Abstract Expressionism” exhibit last spring, I was stopped by “Gaea” (1966), a painting done by Lee Krasner, Pollock’s wife and a respected painter in her own right.

It is Krasner’s fate that, then, and even now, when her name is mentioned it is bracketed with “Mrs. Jackson Pollock.” I realized that I had only the sketchiest idea of Krasner and her life. I guess to me, as to almost everyone, she was Mrs. Jackson Pollock. It was not a designation she desired. However, without her, and the home life and companionship she

depressive, or addict/alcoholic, among other diagnoses. Many artists lead successful, normal lives.

However, the public remembers Toulouse-Lautrec’s affinity for absinthe, and Amy Winehouse’s and Keith Ledger’s addictions.

Lee Krasner met Jackson Pollock in 1938, the same year de Kooning met artist Elaine Fried whom he later married.

Pollock had already been treated in a psychiatric hospital for depression and alcoholism at the behest of his brothers, Charles and Sande. As part of this treatment, Pollock saw two Jungian analysts through the late 1930s and early 1940s. While his mental problems were far from resolved, he was sober for two years. This led to a very fertile period of creativity. It also became a sometime pattern in Pollock’s alcoholism -- first some sort of treatment, sobriety, then relapse. In 1942, de Kooning, Krasner and Pollock would all come together again when they were asked to contribute work to fill out a show of Picasso, Matisse, Braque and other well-known European artists, curated by John D. Graham at the McMillan Gallery in New York.

Krasner and Pollock married in 1945 and shortly after moved to Springs, on the outskirts of East Hampton, Long Island. They bought a house with a down payment from Peggy Guggenheim, who was a patron of Pollock’s. In 1948, Pollock began seeing Dr. Edwin Heller, a family practitioner, and stopped drinking. Krasner said that Dr. Heller was “sympathetic.” Jeffrey Potter, a friend of Krasner, “remembered that they (Pollock and Heller) just talked.” This suggests elements of AA, although there is no evidence of a connection.

Suffolk County did have an AA presence. The Huntington Group was founded in 1947, but, Huntington, LI, is a considerable distance west of East Hampton. Heller and, unquestionably, Krasner gave Pollock stability. Heller through his empathetic treatment and Krasner by being wife, mother, manager, and kindred art spirit, roles she assumed early in her relationship with Pollock. She and Heller formed a de facto recovery support system: Heller through his therapeutic approach, Krasner through watchfulness and love. So Pollack became very productive again as he had been in the late 1930s. In this period in the late 1940s, he created some of his most famous canvases. In 2006, media mogul David Geffen sold Pollock’s No 5 (1948) for a record $140 million.

(Continued on page 10)

Above: Willem de Kooning (American, born the Netherlands. 1904-1997) Rider (Untitled VII) 1985 Oil on canvas 70” x 6’ 8” (177.8 x 203.2 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase and gift of Milly and Arnold Glimcher © 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

At left: Lee Krasner (American, 1908–1984) Gaea. 1966 Oil on canvas, 69” x 10’ 5 1/2” (175.3 x 318.8 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Kay Sage Tanguy Fund è 2010 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Together - A Voice for Health & Recovery

9

THE•ARTS

Tragic Lives (Continued from page 9)

In her Krasner biography, Levin quotes Helen Phillips, a friend in East Hampton, who says, “I don’t think we would have much production out of Jack, if it hadn’t been for Lee, or even survival.”

Heller was killed in an automobile accident in March 1950. After Heller’s death, Pollock remained sober until November when, at the completion of Hans Namuth’s filming him from below painting on glass outside his barn/studio in Springs for that now famous documentary film, Pollock began drinking and, after arguing with Namuth, in an outburst of violence, overturned the dining table. This scene was vividly re-enacted by the actor Ed Harris in the film, “Pollock,” in 2000. Marcia Gay Harden won an Oscar for her portrayal of Krasner in that film.

Violence flares Violence had always been a part of Pollock’s behavior. Freud’s thesis about creativity speaks about artists being capable of transposing fantasies into art rather than indulging in neurotic symptoms.

However, it is Pollock’s tragedy that, while the symptoms were recognized, no one was treating his dual diagnosis. There is even speculation that Pollock may have been bipolar. Heller and Krasner, despite their best intentions and the temporary effi-

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cacy of their efforts, were ill-equipped to be an effective support system for someone as ill as Pollock. Further, his relationship with Krasner was becoming strained. In 1951, in an attempt to deal with his alcoholism, Pollock went on a “Protein” diet of soymilk, vegetables, nuts and fruit.

In the last year and half of his life as his illness progressed, Pollock no longer painted. He was being treated by a Sullivanian therapist. Unlike the analysts whose Jungian ideas inspired Pollock artistically in the late 1930’s, the controversial Sullivanian approach encouraged experimenting with drugs and alcohol, sleeping with anyone, and cutting family ties. In 2003, Amy Siskind, who was raised in the Sullivan community, turned her doctoral dissertation into a book, Madness and Evil -- A Review of the Sullivanian Institute/Fourth Wall Community.

The tragic end As Levin says, “Though these [Sullivanian] practitioners aimed to heal patients, sometimes, instead of cures for conditions like alcohol, which they did not understand, they offered misguided therapy, coercive advice that ended up doing harm.

It was Klein [Pollock’s therapist], after all, who postponed trying to stop Pollock from drinking and encouraged his relationship with [Ruth] Kligman.” Krasner was in Paris, separated for the first time from Pollock in East Hampton, when Pollock killed himself and Edith Metzger and injured Ruth Kligman in a drunk driving accident when

Pollock’s psychological make-up had led him in the 1950’s to embrace fad diets and Sullivanian therapy. his convertible flipped over on Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton in August 1956. He was 44 years old.

If Heller had not died, if Krasner had not gone to Paris, perhaps that accident might not have happened. This is conjecture. Pollock’s psychological make-up had led him in the 1950’s to embrace fad diets and Sullivanian therapy. At the time of his death, although still together, he and Krasner were estranged. Alcoholics and addicts, as their disease progresses, often turn against those who have provided for physical and emotional support.

Today, AA has a strong presence on the East End of Long Island. Psychiatrists and social workers are more skilled in treating addiction. There is even help on line, soberartists.com.

Competing with Pollock In the 1950s, de Kooning began going out to East Hampton. After Pollock’s death,

he took up with Ruth Kligman. Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan say in their book, de Kooning: An American Master (2004), that de Kooning took up with Ruth Kligman because “he was still competing with Pollock, even after Jackson’s death.” Kligman was a very beautiful woman, with movie star looks and an affinity for artists. de Kooning named his painting, “Ruth’s Zowie,” for her.

An abstract artist herself, she wrote Love Affair -- A Memoir of Jackson Pollock (1974).

Her work can be seen on ruthkligman.com.

She died in March 2010. She was 80. de Kooning moved permanently to East Hampton in the early 1960’s. At the time, he was estranged from Elaine and was abstaining from alcohol. After Pollock’s death, Krasner continued to paint and nurture Pollock’s artistic legacy, as she controlled his paintings. This control, Levin observes, meant that Krasner “would never be financially needy again.” While Pollock was alive, money was always tight. They had moved to Springs because it was cheap and there was space for Pollock to paint. Their life choices, including whether to have a child, were determined by “the pecuniary and painting.”

Although in her later work the influence of Pollock can be seen, some of that influence derives from their mutual, yet separate, earlier interest in the surrealist, whose psychic automatism is cited by H.H. Arnason in his History of Modern Art as inspiring Abstract Expressionism. As H.W. Janson says about Krasner in his History of Art, after Pollock’s death, “she succeeded, in her painting, ‘Celebration’ (1959-1960), in doing what he had been

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www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

THE•ARTS

Together Welcomes Together AZ

Sober and Grieving attempting to do in the last three years of his life: to reintroduce the figure into Abstract Expressionism while retaining its automatic handwriting.” Krasner died in June 1984, at the age of 76.

Ravaged by alcoholism

significant life events and how these events impact on their lives in the present. Viewing these timelines, I often observed that directly after the occurrence of tragic life losses in these patients’ lives, it appeared that their substance use spiked — sometimes dramatically. In some cases the loss triggered a downward spiral of using and depression that ultimately resulted in admission into treatment. I was drawn to learning more about how grief, addiction and recovery affect each other and how I could help newly sober people negotiate their grief more adaptively. I came to believe that if life losses were not adequately addressed in treatment, the neglect of this would be a contributing factor in potential relapse. My own experience of loss also reinforced my emerging viewpoint.

My father died in February of 1986, a time Jackson Pollock Number 31, 1950. 1950 Oil and enamel paint on canvas 8’ 10” x 17’ 5 5/8” (269.5 x 530.8 when, sadly, I was (American, not yet sober.1912-1956) One: My response cm) Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund (by exchange) è 2010 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), to that loss was that I used more of the subthoughtless of the needs of others. months of sobriety. I was now rememberNew York stances I was then addicted to. Throughout the In grief, recovering people experience the ing my dreams as my sleep pattern began to initial mourning rituals of my religion, I was struggle “normies.”

We too areGuilfoyle. faced one with hisaswife, Barbara Allen the mid 70s he was editor in chief of “In- same J. Roger Guilfoyle is Adjunct Professor normalize. physically present but emotionally checked out His the articles architecture, furniture, dustrial Design” Magazine. lateYork 70s, with in the Graduate Communications Design taskson of accepting the reality of theprodOne night I dreamt that I wasIn in the a New and unavailable. uct experiencing design, art and graphicscoping have without appeared he worked at WNET exploring Department at Pratt Institute in New York. City loss, our feelings, subway car.

The carChannel was empty13with the In November of 1987 I hitinmy bottom and in loved design consumer ways to create architecture andtodesign pro- the Prior to this, he taught the Art History oneand we have lost andpublications, accommodat- inexception of someone sitting next me. That began a new journey of recovery cluding “Print,” “Interiors,” gramming for television.

Between Department at Pratt for over and 25 hope. years. He person’s ing to a world that has changed. “Graphic Scirole in thepublic dream was to listen to me As my body andprofessional mind healed,career an interesting ence,” and “USAirways Magazine.”

1977 and 1985, he wrote four books of “The began in his in design as I spoke of the new hope I was experiencmagazines, and from theI late 1960sthree until Best in Packaging” series, three singly and phenomena occurred when had about THE RITUALS ing in recovery. In the far corner of the car a Participating in mourning rituals often involve person was reading a newspaper. The paper interactions with family members. Many was shielding their face. cultures celebrate the passing of a loved one As I spoke of my new life, the person in the with wakes, funerals and the like. Participating corner put down the newspaper and stood in these ceremonies can often be problematic up. It was my father but not as I remembered For over 20 years, Cottonwood's beautiful, 35-acres setting for those new in recovery. To be thrust into him. He was not the eighty-two year old who has been the perfect place to begin the process of recovery. a situation where family members might be had recently died from pancreatic cancer. He drinking is difficult enough. When this is looked like he did in photos I had seen of him compounded with unresolved family conflicts in his twenties, healthy, robust with dark hair and mistrust of the recovering person, the — the prizefighter he had been in his youth. I chances of relapse increase. Even when we are said, “Dad! What are you doing here? You’re mindful of this risk, we often feel an dead!” He replied, “I just wanted to tell obligation to attend and somehow you to keep doing what you’re doing. It’s we must find a way to cope. going to be O.K.” Many recovering addicts and I woke up with tears running down alcoholics come to the realization my face. Shortly afterwards I went to that their grieving process had been his grave at the cemetery. Standing by SWEETWATER ADOLESCENT ADULT PROGRAM delayed or postponed until their his tombstone I wept as I spoke to him GIRLS PROGRAM recovery began. This fact, I think, about my life. I walked back to my car is evident in my story and also in feeling relieved — as if a weight had Cottonwood's 90-day residential Cottonwood's intensive Adult Program with the stories of many clients I have been lifted from my shoulders.

Sweetwater Program for girls 13-17 places individualized treatment plans includes a worked with. As a grief counselor I a strong emphasis on scholastics as well as Over the next ten years I continued solid base of medical management. a therapeutic curriculum. have adopted the position that I am my pursuit of recovery and eventually • Mood/Bipolar Disorder “companioning” people in the first entered my current profession as a • Chemical Dependency • Substance Abuse/Dependence fitful steps of their journey through grief. By therapist. In 1988 my mother died of a stroke • Depression • Depression accompanying them on the first stage of their at the age of 81. I left Tucson to go to her • Anxiety • Anxiety journey through the grief process, I am able bedside as she lay in a coma. During a seven• PTSD • Self-Harm Behavior to help them to narrate the story of their loss day death vigil, I stayed in touch with my • Grief and Loss • Trauma without judgment. This task is of paramount recovery support system and received support • Anger and Rage • Eating Disorders importance in successfully negotiating the from new friends I met at 12-step meetings in • Compulsive Gambling • Family Conflict grief process. Addicts and alcoholics often exFlorida. When my mother finally died, I was • Sexual Addiction • Grief and Loss perience complicated grief as a result of their there to hold her hand and talk to her in her • ADD/ADHD • Low Self-Esteem self-perceived failures and lapses in being a last moments.

• Eating Disorders “good” child, parent, partner, sibling or friend.

My mother’s death helped me to realize that • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder It is common to hear statements beginning as an alcoholic working a spiritual program I was able to cope with adversity differently than with “If only I had…” or “I should have…”

Sometimes people will have had an ambiguwhen I was using substances. I was supported tucson ous relationship with the deceased. The fact every step of the way and I found that I could that the deceased family member might have 1-800-877-4520 • Tucson, Arizona be there for my family as well as for myself. struggled with his or her own issues and This was a real contrast to the time when I inappropriate behavior can also complicate lost my father and was self-medicated and

By 1975, de B Kooning Y DAn Swas TonEravaged by his alcoholism. Elaine returned to Springs and took charge histhat dietthe and living conditions. t has beenof said only guarantees Their marriage by proin life are deathhad and been taxes. marked This applies miscuity and their alcoholism, but Elaine to everyone whether they are in recovery had stopped drinking. Her return made it or not.for Various of the painting grieving until possible him aspects to continue process, hold special challengesThese 1990 as however, he slipped into Alzheimer’s. for recovering and addicts.prescientlast paintings,alcoholics spare and elegant, Everyone grieves uniquely.ofInrecent the past it was ly anticipate the direction contemthoughtart that there predictable that porary and areare the coda for stages the current show of MoMA. grievers must go through to achieve accepElaine, asloss.

Krasner had been withofPollock, tance of the Twenty-three years perwas in experience promotingtells deme Koonsonalinstrumental and professional that, ing.

Beautiful, sexy and vivacious, she was when it comes to the process of grieving, one not an artist but a writer.

Inand this sizeonly does not fit all. In myalso private practice role, she did much to articulate Abstract Exalso at Cottonwood Tucson where I work as a pressionism. Elaine died of lung cancer in grief counselor, I have conducted grief therapy February 1989. She was 70. de Kooning was withtold newly clean and sober clients, and found, not of her death.

He died in 1997 at the time and again, that they respond to their age of 93. losses differently.

I have greatest discoveredworks that, inwere Many of Pollock’s working withhe clients these, the treatment made while was like sober in the late 1940s, of grief requires an individualized approach. early 1950s.

Towards the end of his life while, under the spell of the Sullivanians, he hardly painted.

After Elaine’s return, she organized GRIEF, ADDICTION AND RECOVERY de life and saw to his diet. Those In Kooning’s 1997 I had been working at Cottonwood last years, in One which sheassignments provided stability, for two years. of the that pade Kooning on those remarkable tients at that embarked time presented in primary group paintings that close the MoMA show. was a timeline in which the patient depicted

I

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COVER•STORY

Grant

(Continued from page 1) was the norm. Many Americans believed that liquor was a practical way to help digestion, calm nerves and tolerate poor food and cooking conditions. A famous story is told about one of Abraham Lincoln’s lawyer friends who asked him why he did not drink, which was highly unusual on the judicial circuit traveled by lawyers twice a year, taking them from their homes and families for months at a time. Lincoln’s reply is revealing: “I choose not to drink because it makes me flabby and undone.” Very few if any on the frontier or elsewhere for that matter had such an attitude or understanding of the dangers of excessive drinking.

Grant would serve in the “old” (pre Civil War) Army from 1846 until he resigned under a cloud in 1854. He served with distinction in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848, being promoted twice, and was recognized for being cool and calm under fire. After that service he married the love of his life, Julia Dent, a sister of a West Point classmate, in St. Louis in 1848. She had a stabilizing and affirming impact on him throughout his life.

They had four children whom Grant adored and was devoted to. From 1848 to 1854 he would be periodically stationed away from his family in duty stations in Detroit, New York, Oregon, and California, where he would experience great loneliness, boredom and monotony, and at times self pity and depression.

He missed his family terribly. He felt empty without them.

Grant, like many other soldiers far from home, would binge drink but to such a degree that it stood out to his peers as a problem. His pattern would be to drink to excess for several days, and then stop for weeks at a time. It is reported that while in Sackets Harbor, New York, in the early 1850s he joined the “Sons of Temperance” so he must have realized that he had some type of problem. Many of his peers commented that Grant would sometimes become drunk after only a drink or two, possibly because of his small frame and slight build (he was 5 feet, 7 inches tall).

This was reported to be a continuing pattern. In California, his commanding officer, Col Robert Buchanan, who did not like Grant (they had had a run-in several years before) claimed that Grant was unable to fulfill his duties due to his drunkenness and insisted on having a court martial proceeding.

A binge drinker To avoid this, Grant resigned his commission from the Army in 1854 and walked away with a reputation as a binge drinker. He returned to his family in St. Louis and attempted to be a farmer, which proved unsuccessful. Out of desperation he ended up selling firewood out of a handcart on the streets of St. Louis. A classmate from West Point and future Confederate general, Simon Bolivar Buckner, saw Grant on the street once and talked to him. Later Buckner would reflect that it was one of the sorriest things had ever experienced, seeing such a disheveled person, and how far Grant had fallen from his days at West Point. There is no evidence that Grant was drinking then, probably because he was with his family. Frustrated and under great financial stress, Grant moved his family to Galena, Illinois, to work as a clerk in his father’s leather good store. This was a man with poor prospects and a dim future.

12

Then came the War. As a former regular Army officer he volunteered to serve under a number of commands, but was turned down.

Many believe it was because of his reputation as a binge drinker. Eventually Grant secured a command of Illinois volunteers, and his abilities were recognized as an organizer and builder of cohesive units, a strategic thinker, being cool and calm under fire, and above all a fighter who would not hesitate to engage the enemy.

Because of the capture of Forts Henry and Donnellson in early 1862 he emerged as the leading general in the west.

At Shiloh, in April 1862, the first of the great catastrophic battles of the Civil War (there would be over 25,000 casualties), the Union would win on the second day but only after horrific bloodletting. Many, horrified at this result, claimed it was somehow due to Grant’s carelessness and drinking. To the contrary, Grant did not drink, and would not during any battle of the Civil War. There are numerous eyewitness accounts to that fact by fellow generals and soldiers, civilian visitors, and members of the government. There are stories that on several occasions after a battle he would imbibe either briefly with no consequence and or sometimes for longer periods.

Military and political rivals often promoted the rumors that he was continually drunk.

vated by his sense of duty and responsibility to the men he served, not the least of whom was Lincoln, who would promote him to head of all Union armies in 1964. Grant always expressed his concern for his men, and they respected and obeyed him to the fullest degree. He was regarded as a soldier’s soldier.

I believe that by today’s standards we can regard Grant as an alcoholic due to family history, periodic binge drinking, suggestions of low self esteem and passivity, HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and also depression and boredom), loss of reputation, and his self awareness that he had a drinking problem. I imagine that if Grant had taken the Johns Hopkins “Are you an Alcoholic” 20 Questions test he would have said yes to many of these questions. Would we regard him today as a functioning alcoholic who still could perform?

I think so. He rose to the occasion. He absolutely did his duty by engaging and destroying the Confederate armies in the field, thus curtailing the South to wage and win a war.

If Grant had taken the Johns Hopkins “Are you an Alcoholic” 20 Questions test he would have said yes to many of these questions.

Checking the rumors Lincoln sent a representative, Charles Dana, to visit Grant for an extended period to find evidence of drunkenness, and he saw nothing to indicate this. Some indignant Senator called for Grant’s dismissal because of the rumors of his constant abuse of alcohol. Lincoln would answer as only he could: “I cannot afford to be without this man. He fights.” Lincoln added that if indeed Grant was a drinking man that he would like to know his brand so that he could send a case to his others generals.

It is reported that Grant understood that he had issues with alcohol, as indicated by the following story. When asked by General Schofield at a dinner why he had not tasted his wine Grant supposedly replied, “I dare not touch it. At sometimes I can drink freely with any pleasant effect; at other I cannot take a single of light wine.” This statement strongly suggests he recognized his weakness, or as we would say today, his “disease.”

Whenever possible his wife and family would visit him in the field for extended periods. These visits, coupled with the attentions of his chief of staff John Rawlins, were no doubt beneficial. In the later phase of the war when Grant lived at City Point, Va., his family stayed with him full time.

Their influence and love (his support system) were profound, and Grant never drank when they were with him. Grant was moti-

Sober when it mattered For me, Grant is next only to Lincoln as the greatest man of this terrible epoch. There are two stories that illustrate this greatness, based I believe on his capacity to be sober and clear of mind when it mattered.

At the Battle of the Wilderness in early May, 1864 Grant sits under a tree whittling a stick as the Army of the Potomac engages Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

He is now the general chief of all Union armies in the field, and has chosen to “command in the saddle,” out in the field with his men, not back in Washington. At the end of this first day, May 5th, casualty reports come back to Grant indicating horrific loses. Grant excuses himself, goes to his tent, and cries so hard that his moans are heard throughout the area. He does not drink. Many are concerned about his sanity.

The next day the battle continues, with even more horrific casualties. Many of the union field generals return to headquarters seeking out Grant, telling him that once again, Bobby Lee has beaten them, as he has done most every time before, certainly on his home turf in Virginia. Once again the Army of the Potomac must retreat from the field battered and beaten. The story goes that Grant stands up, takes off his gloves and slams his fist on a table, and looks at his generals calmly and tells them: “Gentlemen, this is no longer about what Bobby Lee is going to do to us; it is about what we are going to do to him. We will engage the enemy and destroy him and end this war.”

The next morning, the third day, the Army receives orders to move out. They do so marching out on the Plank Road, just as

they had in 1863 after losing the Battle of Chancellorsville. Men in the back of the line hear what sounds like a guttural primeval roar to their front. As they come towards the end of the road they know they will either turn left, going south, or right, going back to Washington, retreating as they had so many times before. As they approach the fork in the road they see General Grant mounted on his horse, Cincinnati, calmly smoking a cigar, along with his staff, and they hear a command from the sergeant major of the Army to “the left flank march!”

They are going south, and they can see those ahead of them going that way. They are not retreating. Their commanding general is telling them they will fight and win.

They are going south to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, and in all probability the Confederacy and all of what that entails, and will save the Union and forever end slavery.

They too let out yells of victory and determination with feelings they have never had before. They are now a great, unified army, an irresistible force. The Army of the Potomac is finally forged.

Years later Otto Van Bismarck would reportedly tell Grant when he visited him in Germany that he believed that Grant commanded the greatest army of the 19th century, an amazing statement coming from the Chancellor of the newly unified Germany know for its militarism.

Bankrupt and terminally ill In 1884 Grant learns that he is bankrupt due to do to a swindle by his investment adviser Ferdinand Ward. Depleted of money he is also forced to pay off a $150,000 loan with his Civil War mementos. He also learns that he is terminally ill from throat cancer, no doubt from having smoked 20 cigars a day.

Mark Twain offers to publish his memoirs, and Grant gets about the business of writing them despite of his illness. By sheer tenacity and force of will, qualities that he consistently demonstrated as a general, he completes his memoirs just a few days before he dies on July 23, 1885 at the age of 63. His memoirs sell more than 300,000 copies, earning the Grant family more than $450,000. They are saved from financial ruin. Twain promotes the book as “the most remarkable memoir since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar” and others to include the famous literary critic regard it as a classic. Many historians today feel it is the best of all Presidential memoirs due to its clarity, simplicity and straight-ahead style. The book truly reflects the man.

Randy Lewis, a history major at the University of Virginia, is a lifetime student of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. For more than fifty years as an amateur historian he has studied and read numerous biographies and histories. His great-great grandfather, Isaac White, was a legal client of Lincoln’s in Menard County, Illinois. Both Mr. White and his daughter, Anna White Lewis, were present at Lincoln’s burial. Family diaries and letters recount this day. Mr. Lewis has visited and studied most of the major Civil War battlefields in the Eastern theater of the war and several elsewhere, and has conducted numerous tours of the Gettysburg battlefield for charitable fundraisers. He recently retraced the escape route of John Wilkes Booth and plans to visit the Shiloh Battlefield in Tennessee, the Natchez Trace, and the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson.

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

I N • T R E AT M E N T

Sex, Drugs&Rehab Welcome to the latest adventure of the Baby Boom

By John Dyben and Juan Harris

Younger generations, Gen X, the 30 and 40 somethings, grew up with anti-drug campaigns from the time they were little kids. ‘Just say no.’ It doesn’t mean those things worked, but it means they grew up with a cultural concept of substance abuse being a problem.

But the Boomers had imprinted on them from their formative years the concept that maybe drugs are not so bad. They come into rehab having heard people tell them they have a problem, but they have a deeply ingrained denial system -- the idea that what people say isn’t true, and they just can’t believe there’s a problem.

A

nearly 66-year-old CEO complaining of abdominal pain, vomiting, nausea and excessive sweating showed up at a trauma center, where doctors could find only slight dehydration. They sent him home with a diagnosis of viral syndrome.

His next admission was to the Hanley Center, a drug rehabilitation facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. Doctors there diagnosed a dependency on heroin, which he took through his nose. The ER doctors didn’t think to test for this, because they couldn’t imagine a 66-year-old executive doing illicit drugs.

Welcome to the latest adventure of the Baby Boom.

It’s been a long, strange trip for another The Boomers’ reaction to authority Boomer, Gus, age 63, who got high for the means a recovery plan has to be very diffirst time when he was 18. After that, he was Left, normal brain. Right, addicted brain. As part of their treatment at Hanley, Baby Boomers ferent. up for anything and everything, for years. are shown SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans of their brains. By A 75-year-old will come into one of Gus enjoyed the feeling of being on the fore- capturing blood-flow information and using baseline knowledge of a healthy brain, doctors our offices, look at the degrees on the front in college, from anti-war to civil rights can recommend more effective treatments, identify brain disorders that affect addiction and wall, and say, “Aha, this person is an exdemonstrations, and dope made it all larger demonstrate what works and what doesn’t in addiction treatment. pert. I’m going to wait for this person than life. It was a “happening time.” When to tell me what to do.” They expect to he joined the real world and took a job in retail, he fueled it – 77 million people born between 1946 and 1964 – the Baby be given a lot of direction and instruction up front. And if with weed, cocaine and beer.

Boom has played havoc with everything it touched – swelling they don’t get it they don’t think they’re getting their money’s He was a “combination man:” beer with marijuana, LSD the number of elementary schools, then high schools and col- worth. or cocaine, with cocaine becoming a favorite. Cocaine fueled leges, pouring into the job market with multiple degrees, then With a Boomer, on the other hand, you greet them with his high-energy state. Quaaludes (methoqualone, a sedative getting married and creating its own baby boomlet. a blank treatment plan. They might see diplomas, but they hypnotic drug) were popular prescriptions in the late 70s, Now the kids who declared, “Don’t trust anyone over 30” couldn’t care less. Boomers are not impressed with your creand Gus took those, too. He was successful in his job, and are starting to retire -- every day more than 10,000 Baby dentials. They grew up in a self-help generation in which his life was a non-stop party scene. Then the scene became Boomers will reach the age of 65, and that will continue every there’s a guru on every corner. There’s an expert on every a party of one. single day for the next 19 years. Another way to look at it: channel and every webpage. If you try to take a position of “Once in the early 80s I realized I was the only one left at every seven seconds another Boomer turns 50. authority -- I’m an expert and therefore you should listen to a retail trade reception,” Gus said. Something had to give. He And they’re bringing their “little helpers” along for the ride: me -- the Boomer is going to say there are ten other experts tried to stay clean but became tempted by a big expense ac- SAMHSA predicts that at the number of Boomers with sub- better qualified than you. So you bring a Boomer in and say, count and cocaine. He finally gave up cocaine again, but still stance abuse problems will double from 2.5 million in 1999 to “What do you want? How can I join with you?” You become a used weed and drank.

5 million in 2020, and the need for treatment will also double. paraclete, one who walks alongside.

After he married and had a son in the mid 80s, Gus was Boomers know how to use Google. They mistrust “what never high around the child, until the boy turned 16, and the man says.” For example, one of us was working with an Gus felt unneeded. Cocaine beckoned again, and this time alcoholic who could not stop smoking pot. He was convinced Gus took up the invitation. Through a divorce and a regular Anyone who grew up in the 60s and 70s was touched by that pot was just fine. He would hear arguments like, “Pot depolypharmacy routine, Gus thought he was fooling everyone. pervasive psychedelic cultural icons of the era, such as Timo- stroys your brain cells.” This is not true, and it’s easy enough With an online supply of Oxycodone he was popping five or thy Leary’s mantra to “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.” There was to do research and find out it’s not true. People would try to more pills a day. rebellion against all authority. These attitudes linger decades use these stories to tell him why he should stop smoking pot.

“I finally felt I was losing my dignity. I could no longer trust later, even among those who don’t consider themselves anti- But for every story of someone being destroyed by pot, he myself to be me,” Gus says. His recovery took him through authoritarian, and they make treatment for substance abuse had 10 other stories of people smoking and doing fine. The two different residential treatment stays before he found sta- difficult. trouble is, once he started smoking he’d start drinking, and bility. Today he volunteers and shares his story with those in In one group session at Hanley a lady was talking about he couldn’t stop. treatment. He has rekindled a mutually satisfying relation- growing up in a generation that stuck it to the man, stuck We sat with him at length, going over the evidence about ship with his son. it to the government. She said, “I didn’t grow up like that in pot and brain cells and other scientific findings, admitting the 60s. I was brought up in very conservative home. I was to the man that he was often right, acknowledging that not taught not to challenge authority, but rather to obey. In fact, everything he’d been told was true. Boomers don’t trust “exmy nickname in high school was ‘Establishment.’” As every- perts” and don’t give credence to old wives’ tales, but they will These aren’t isolated stories. Half of all Boomers have tried one in the group laughed, she said, “Oh my god. I’m realiz- pay attention to facts.

illicit drugs at some time in their lives. That could be experi- ing that I do have that mentality. It affected me. I always saw mentation, but 2009 statistics from the Substance Abuse and myself as apart, isolated, away from, because I was different Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) show from everyone else. Part of me will do what I’m told to do, but that 4.3 million adults age 50 and older had used an illicit I resent it.”

One way we get their attention is with a SPECT scan of drug in the prior year, and some 4 million of those nearing reThe sex, drugs and rock and roll culture they grew up in their brains. It shows blood flow, and it’s quite easy to see tirement age suffer from substance abuse. Drug use between affects them to this day. The national culture imprints you. when the blood flow in areas of the brain having to do with ages 50 and 59 is nearly double that of previous generations, The reality is that the Baby Boom is the only generation to addiction and depression isn’t normal. No need for half-true SAMHSA says. A study by Duke University found that a sig- grow up with a cultural question mark around drug use. Peo- horror stories. nificant percentage of middle-aged adults are binge drinking. ple before had a very specific view: substance abuse is morThe Boomers are at it again. Because of its sheer numbers ally wrong and there was a lot of shame associated with it.

(Continued on page 20)

Don’t trust anyone

The (Old) Age of Aquarius

A boomer drug boom

Scanning the brain

Together - A Voice for Health & Recovery

13

BODY•MIND•SPIRIT

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(Continued from page 6) The second recording of the commandment to observe the Sabbath is in the context of God’s liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt. It is an affirmation that God not only created us but that He continues to care about His creation and about human history: "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord, thy God 7.45 9.1 with a mighty brought thee out fromxthere hand and a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commended thee to keep the

And with the law came the responsibility each of us has to become God’s partners in shaping, improving, and ultimately perfecting human history.

Sabbath day." (Deuteronomy 5:15) This Exodus let to the revelation at Sinai in which the commandment to remember and guard the Sabbath is given. And with the law came the responsibility each of us has to become God’s partners in shaping, improving, and ultimately perfecting human history.

The Sabbath officially begins on Friday

evening at sundown and ends on Saturday at nightfall. Like a symphony with its different parts, Shabbat also has its “movements”—distinct phases of the day. I count nine of these, formally beginning on Friday night with Kabbalat Shabbat, the Welcoming of the Sabbath Bride, and concluding on Saturday night with the ceremony called Havdalah, which means Separation. Havdalah is the moment when the conclusion of the Sabbath separates the holiness of the Sabbath from the ordinary weekday that follows.

But in a very real sense, the Sabbath begins during the day on Friday, which we call Erev Shabbat, the eve of the Sabbath, a time of intensive practical and, one hopes, spiritual preparation. Shabbat officially concludes at “nightfall” Saturday night (rather than at sundown, which is earlier) when we enter the six days of work that follow the day of rest.

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14

The Sabbath is for both Jews and non-Jews, whatever their personal religious observances may be, because the fourth commandment and its gift of Sabbath rest were given to all people. In fact the Sabbath provides answers to the most difficult questions people of all faiths have asked themselves for generations: How did I get here? Does anyone care how I behave? What will happen to me after I die?

The prophet Isaiah taught beautifully about a future time when everyone will observe the Sabbath: "Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one that keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it…Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer." (Isaiah 56:6-7) Then in the concluding verses of his book, Isaiah pictures how it will be in that blessed future: "And it shall come to pass, that every new moon, and every Sabbath, Shall all flesh come to bow down to the ground before Me, says the Lord." (Isaiah 66:23) The Sabbath is a gift from God to all people. In our time, I believe, it is a gift that is desperately needed.

The Sabbath is not an all or nothing proposition. It offers to enrich your life and give you rest in direct proportion to how much of its spirit and practice you choose to incorporate into your life. But I warn you: a single taste of Sabbath can lead you to want more. I hope that the more you experience its pleasures, the more you will want to remember, guard, and enjoy God’s day.

Now in his fourth and final term representing Connecticut in the United States Senate, Joe Lieberman is perhaps best known as the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 2000. Senator Lieberman is Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This article is adapted from The Gift of Rest by Senator Joe Lieberman. Copyright ©2011 by Joseph Lieberman. Reprinted by permission of Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

HEADLINER

Who I Am

I take direction for a living and I’m competitive.

This gives me great advantage. If they tell me to stand on my head to stay sober, I’ll do it. And I won’t let anyone get the better of me while I try.

(Continued from page 7) helplessness to stop doing the things I truly want to stop doing. I had long ago become a creation that was an amalgam of self-crafted persona built to succeed and public image made to be consumed, piled on top of a precarious shell of a little boy wanting to be loved. Finally, the whole thing has caved in around me, and I am thrilled. Now, just maybe, I could find out who I really am.

M

y roommate is a loud, snoring, middle-aged cross-dresser. I melt wax and put it into my ears to sleep at night. I’m gonna be here for thirty days, and I’m not gonna make it without sleep.

Unlike in some rehabs of today, there are very strict ground rules here. Whereas now a rehabbing starlet can check in and still swan around the Malibu Country Mart to get a frappuccino and a copy of Us Weekly to take to her mani-pedi before her photo shoot, we have no reading materials, TV, privileges to leave, or even caffeine. It’s for serious folks only, the Harvard of treatment centers.

I am under the care of a hip, young counselor named Mike. And being hip is a big plus for me because my greatest fear is that being sober means being boring. And that, to me, would be worse than cirrhosis of the liver.

I am also worried about people finding out I am in rehab. When I share this with Mike he says, “You don’t think people know you party too much? You should hope they hear you’re getting help!” But it proves to be a moot point as by the third day I have to hide in the pool to escape the helicopters from the National Enquirer. They tell me that there is a wonderful program that’s helped millions get sober called Alcoholics Anonymous.

I wouldn’t know. My level of anonymity consists of being on the Enquirer cover, dressed in my underwear (they used a movie still), with a headline about rehab for sex addiction, which in hindsight is an improvement from my last national media exposure—at least this time I have underwear—but it pisses me off because the sex addicts in the center have much more interesting stories and treatments than my group of drinkers did.

But my relationships with women (and every other relationship in my life) are a big part of the puzzle that was worked on each day in therapy. I dig into my issues with my mother, her illnesses, my father and abandonment, and my relationship with being famous. I am surprised by what I learn about myself. I assumed that since I love “the scene,” I also love crowds and people and small talk and the like. Free of alcohol, I learn that while I do love people, I hate small talk, am bored by idle banter, and am wildly uncomfortable in big rooms with people I don’t know. I want a real connection, not a surface one, and in its absence, I will medicate my discomfort and boredom.

Being in treatment lets my real self emerge. But first, it will have to gradually strangle the good-looking, successful, charming poster-boy pod person that stunted its growth many years ago. There is a school of thought that believes your emotional maturity is frozen at the exact age you become famous. My experience tells me this

is more true than not, and I got famous as a teenager. So, if I want to be a fully functioning, sober adult, I had better get busy.

S

heryl is the only person other than family I let visit me. And showing her true colors, she works from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. on location in Seattle, drives an hour and a half, catches a plane, flies three and a half hours to see me for the one hour allotted on Thursdays, makes the return trip, and is back at work that same night.

I am never happier to see anyone than when I see her mane of blonde hair in the window of the arriving cab. We hold hands in the dayroom (anything else was grounds for expulsion) and walk along the trails through the enormous cactus.

“I’m proud of you. I love you,” she says.

And I feel better already.

Fridays are graduation days. I’m standing in the large circle we form to surround those who are leaving this cocoon to try their hand at a new life in the real world. Some won’t make it ninety days; most won’t make it beyond a few years. And for some, this is not their first time in treatment. Some come back again and again, more broken and yet more brave each time. It’s painful to watch.

I don’t want to do this again. Not ever.

I know two things: I take direction for a living and I’m competitive. This gives me great advantage. If they tell me to stand on my head to stay sober, I’ll do it. And I won’t let anyone get the better of me while I try.

So as I slowly gather my days free of alcohol or any mind- altering substance, I know that I won’t give up my string of days, my time, for anyone or anything. I can be so extraordinarily self-centered, now I will try to use that for a greater good.

I would kill for a cup of coffee. I would drown puppies for a Big Mac. I would really also very much like to get laid. Forget not drinking for thirty days, how about not having sex! I mean, I hadn’t gone thirty hours previously! And what would that be like stone cold sober? Without even a glass of wine to loosen me up?

Will I really never drink again? No toast on New Year’s, no celebratory sip at my wedding (if I ever have one), no beer with the boys—if I ever father a boy? Not even a sip? Not ever?

After days and days of therapy, discussion groups, watching some very shattered people pull themselves together, tugging at the frayed strands of their lost lives, it is time to leave. I’ve been to “sober school” and as always was the first to sit in the front row, ready to learn. And I loved every inspiring, painful minute.

But now, as I stand in the good-bye circle, I’m filled with shaky apprehension. In three hours I will be back in L.A., in the bachelor pad, right back in the middle of life designed by a man I hope I no longer am.

But Sheryl will be with me. Over the four weeks of treatment I earned her trust and another chance for us to be together. I hug my counselor, Mike, good-bye. He looks me hard in the eye.

Together - A Voice for Health & Recovery

“Remember. You can be one of those celebrities who go in and out of rehab or you can just stay sober. It’s completely up to you.”

Sheryl and I slide into the cab for the ride

to the airport and back to our lives. We pull onto the beautiful, winding desert road, the scenery extraordinary on all sides. I try to look ahead, to see where the road is leading, but I can’t.

After rehab, Rob and Sheryl were married in 1991 and now have two sons. Among other career successes, he won an Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations for his role in the TV series “The West Wing.” This article was adapted from Lowe’s book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, published by Henry Holt and Company. © 2011 by Robert Lowe. Lowe has been sober for 21 years.

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Teen

(Continued from page 10) expectations to live up to -- can make life easier for everyone. As an adult, imagine the boundaries in your daily life and the chaos that would ensue without them.

Research shows that young people are more likely to engage in positive behaviors and attitudes -- and less likely to practice high-risk behaviors -- if their families set clear rules and consequences and monitor their children’s whereabouts. Only about 42 percent of our high school students surveyed see their families as having clear rules and consequences and parents or guardians who regularly monitor their whereabouts. Nearly 6 out of 10 lack this crucial support structure.

The irony is that Ridgefield is a family town. It spends huge sums on its schools.

Parents flock to football, baseball and soccer games to support their youngsters. Many families have the wherewithal to give their teenagers nice cars and send them to the best boarding schools and colleges. Yet our surveys show that what I consider more important – a structure of boundaries and expectations – is lacking.

We can we as parents do? As a family, set clear, concise, and consistent boundaries based on your values and expectations.

Make sure everyone -- not just the children -- is following the same rules, although there may be some differences depending on ages and maturity. Be sure to establish clear con-

sequences for family members who break the rules. And make it clear that everyone must always let the rest of the family know where he or she is.

Young people look up to adults. They see you, especially if you’re a parent, as the type of person they want to become someday. They want heroes.

Restraint Restraint is one of the most important of the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets. From the survey of Ridgefield High School students, we know there is a low level of restraint to begin with and a dramatic decrease in restraint with each succeeding year. Among freshmen, only 35 per cent believe it’s important not to be sexually active or to use alcohol or other drugs, and this falls to a mere 12 per cent by senior year.

The question clearly arises: from the low level of restraint among high school freshmen, what is the level among middle school students? We expect to survey the middle schools before this year is over.

Sex, alcohol, drugs . . . these are subjects many adults would just as soon not discuss with young people. But if parents and other caring adults don’t step up and talk to them about these things, who will? Make it easy for young people to come to you and talk

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about the temptations in their lives. Avoid judging. Listen, and educate.

Communicating with young people about the risks of sex and the use of alcohol or other drugs is important. Labeling them as bad

is not necessarily helpful. Instead, explain the dangers: having sex can lead to pregnancy and disease; using alcohol or other drugs causes you to lose control over your functions, which can lead to serious, even fatal, accidents; substance use can also damage the developing teenage brain. Work with young people to focus on long-term outcomes -- not just on the moment. Helping them to internalize and stand up for their personal values also makes it easier for them to practice restraint and withstand negative peer pressure. If they do get in trouble with these issues, though, make sure they know they can come to you for help. Let them know you’re here for them -- no matter what.

Positive Adult Role Models The institute has found over the years that the assets are invariably clustered and most likely linked overall. One of the assets is having positive adult role models, and only 30 percent of our kids said they had them – including a parent, a teacher, a coach -- which I think is alarming. This is, however, not greatly different from what the results are nationally.

Sometimes adults do things they aren’t proud of -- swear, watch too much television, argue. Making mistakes is understandable, but remember: young people look up to adults. They see you, especially if you’re a parent, as the type of person they want to become someday. They want heroes. That’s why it’s so important to be the best person you can be.

Research shows that young people are more likely to exhibit positive, responsible behavior when they have parents and other adults in their lives who model positive, responsible behavior. Having good role models is one of the greatest desires of most young people. However, only 31 percent of nearly 1,300 Ridgefield High School students who completed the Search Institute Survey said that their parents and other adults with whom they interact, or observe, model positive, responsible behavior. Stated another way, this means that 7 out of 10 of our high school youth lack adequate positive adult role models -- by their own measure and expectations.

According to experts, what most young people need more than anything else in their lives is positive social interaction with adults.

These interactions expose young people to real-life guides. Be a role model for the young people around you, and help them find other responsible adults to be part of their lives as well. The more positive role models young people have, the better!

Leave it to Beaver?

I can’t say that in our six years the coalition has turned the town around. The experts we

consult say it’s a long, difficult road. We have made progress in educating parents of children in transition, from grade school to middle school, for example. These are vulnerable times, and parents are grateful for the help.

The biggest problem is that we are wrestling with a culture and a mindset. The whole 40 Asset model sounds like something Ward and June Cleaver would come up with for The Beaver. It’s just not cool.

Society has certainly changed since I grew up in a home with very strict boundaries and very high expectations. I changed with the times. I’m not sure how my boys would rate me on strictness, but I tried to adjust my own experience when I felt it was heavy-handed.

I felt I could soften up a bit but keep the basic structure in tact. When I was young I had curfews. With my boys, I don’t remember calling them curfews, but there were understood times when they had to be in.

I enjoy the heck out of my grown children today, but I think for many of us the temptation when the children are young is to attempt to be a friend to them, not a parent providing values and discipline.

Where are the front porches?

It is hard for parents who care to escape the culture we live in. There are some lovely old homes in our town with front porches, but the truth is our society has become a back deck culture. When people had front porches they knew what was going on in the neighborhood. They watched each other’s kids. Now we’ve turned inward. No one involves themselves in other people’s lives.

Even teachers are under serious restraint from making comments that in any way are critical of a student. Indicating that a child is disruptive or working under his capacity isn’t done and is open to challenge by parents and lawyers, so that their perfect records aren’t besmirched. We live in a time when every kid gets a trophy even if his team loses. There is little sense of reward for excellence or consequence for poor performance.

By the time their children enter high school a parent has little sense of having any influence over them. They don’t think they can make a difference, and they basically give up on the kid. That flies in the face of the work of developmental psychologists who observe that parents have a potential for a strong or influential role in values and behaviors of their teenagers, even though they believe that’s not the case.

No one says it’s easy This new/old view of being a parent has to start when the child is very young – talking about difficult issues, setting boundaries, establishing expectations. Instilling these assets in children can’t begin in high school or even in middle school. It should begin in primary school or before and be consistent throughout. It’s not a framework that can just be dropped into place when your child becomes a teenager.

Parents tend not to be consistent. Teenagers are tough to deal with. They’re striking out to be independent. It doesn’t mean they don’t respond to loving guidance. We’ve got this syndrome of parents getting no signals from teenagers that their efforts are working, and at the same time, the parents don’t feel worthy – they somehow think they lack the life experience and life lessons that qualify

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SPECIAL•REPORT them to teach their kids.

From my days as a parent and as a volunteer studying these surveys of our town’s children, I think parents have the sense that their kids are living in a different environment than they did. The parents grew up in a permissive environment, in which some of those firm roots and belief systems got lost.

And because of that they’re less likely to challenge their teenagers or come down hard on them, because “nobody else does.” These values tends to slip away not in a couple of years but over a couple of generations.

Permissiveness is the flip side of a civilized value system. Permissiveness is more like anarchy: the “me” generation, just do your own thing, don’t take others into consideration.

These excesses are the luxury of a well to do culture in which we can afford a wide latitude of behaviors and where trendy ideas can hold sway without anyone challenging them.

The kids in high school today were born in the late 90s, and so their parents were born about 1970, and that was very much the “me” generation. Those parents grew up with parents who‘d been through the 60s, when anything was okay and no holds were barred.

So we’ve had two generations of loosening of the reigns. We’ve developed a false sense of equality. Every student isn’t a good student.

Every athlete isn’t a good athlete. Concern for bruised egos and psyches has outrun the traditional sense that capabilities differ.

It has been clear to developmental psychologists for a long time that children grow up to be more resilient and better self-directed and self-disciplined if they grow up in an environment that has some boundaries and

expectations expressed with clarity, consistence, and an underlying rationale. And care and love. Without a sense that placing boundaries and expectations is going to break the spirit of the child.

Our current style of parenting is very indulgent. It takes the easy road. It’s hard work for parents to set standards and stick by them. It’s not easy to discuss their expectations with their kids or discuss anything that is contentious or delicate.

What to do However, I’m going to suggest that is the first thing you should undertake if you want to make a difference in your child’s life. It will be easier when they’re young; they will think such a conversation is normal. It will be harder when they’re in middle or high school, but do it anyway. Let yourself feel awkward. Don’t expect cheers from your teenager. They will hear you, even though their likely reaction will be silence.

The second thing I suggest, based on our experience here, is to talk to the counselors at your school, the ones who get involved when there are problems. They can tell you what the environment is like – you may not want to know, but you have to. And they might connect you with other concerned parents.

That is my last piece of advice: reach out to other parents. Find them at PTA meetings or soccer games. Or just call them up. The odds are you’ll find someone as concerned as you are. Network. If your child is headed to someone’s home for a party, call the homeowner and ask if they will be home and if

liquor will be served. Find other parents whose children are going. Ask you child how he or she will get there and get home.

Awkward? Yes. But you’ll be surprised by how many parents are thinking the same thing and will be grateful to hear from you.

Your adult life is lived within boundaries and with expectations. And it’s awkward – think about confronting the auto repair guy who can’t seem to get it right or the co-worker taking credit for your work. But you do it.

Your child is far more important. You know what to do.

Rudy Ruggles has over forty years’ experience in scientific research, strategic plan-

ning, management consulting, political/ economic analysis, and national security affairs. He was a physicist and a senior member of IBM’s corporate planning staff and later president of the Hudson Institute. He is past chairman and current board member of MCCA (a $10 million treatment center for alcohol and substance abuse) and a recent board member and treasurer of the National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Dependence.

He is chairman of the Danbury Hospital Biomedical Research Advisory Council, which directs leading-edge genetic investigations of cancer. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University.

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COVER•STORY

Serving Others (Continued from page 1)

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dependence. “Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on the belief that to keep it, you have to give it away. That means that if you want to remain sober yourself, you need to reach out to someone else and give service to help them get sober.” Indeed the sponsorship model is based on the notion that the act of helping someone else recover is fundamental to maintaining your own sobriety.

The helper’s high What many in recovery have discovered to be true is now being recognized by science, with new research showing that giving back has far-reaching health benefits, and can influence recovery success rates. It can lower stress and depression, and is associated with higher levels of satisfaction in life. A number of studies show that giving affects our brain chemistry. Scientists believe that altruistic behavior releases endorphins in the brain, producing a positive feeling known as the “helper’s high” or the “glow of giving.”

A 2010 online study by United Healthcare found that 78 percent of respondents said that volunteering helps with recovery; 89 percent said it improves their sense of well being; and 96 percent said it makes them happier. “Volunteers have less trouble sleeping, less anxiety and less helplessness and hopelessness,” says Post. “It would be

Research shows that giving back has farreaching health benefits, and can influence recovery success rates. It can lower stress and depression, and is associated with higher levels of satisfaction in life. difficult to identify a pill or vitamin with such a pronounced self-reported impact on so many lives.”

The connection between helping others in AA and improving rates of recovery was the focus of research by Maria Pagana, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In her study of people with 16 to 25 years of continuous abstinence from alcohol, helping others in general was rated as “significant” in maintaining sobriety.

Rating even higher was the benefit that came specifically from helping other alcoholics in AA. This 2010 study was an extension of her earlier research showing that AA-related help dramatically cut the risk of relapse during the year following treatment. Pagana’s interviews with AA members with more than 20 years of sobriety showed that

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COVER•STORY AA-related helping was very important during early and long-term recovery. Among the service opportunities measured in her study were both concrete acts of helping in AA meetings, such as being the coffee maker or door greater or handing out the daily reading from the Big Book, as well as personal giving, such as being a sponsor or sharing your recovery experience, strength and hope with the group. The study found that the likelihood of recovery from alcoholism over the course of a year was twice as great if you helped others. Among those who helped other alcoholics, 40 percent avoided taking a drink in the year following treatment. Only 22 percent of those not helping were able to abstain from alcohol.

Give it away to keep it “For alcoholics and addicts who are in programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, there’s a special urgency about giving,” says John MacDougall, director of spiritual guidance at Hazelden, a not-for-profit alcohol and drug addiction treatment center based in Center City, Minnesota. “My own recovery is a gift, not an achievement. If I don’t care enough about the next alcoholic or addict to share the gift with him or her, then my own gift will probably slip away.”

The impact giving can have on recovery is so powerful that one of the first things Rebecca Gladding does when she meets patients struggling with addiction is ask if they have a service commitment. “It’s one of the best predictors of success in recovery,” says Gladding, M.D., a clinical instructor and staff psychiatrist at the UCLA Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

“It means having to show up. It gives you a sense of community. You know that even if you’re struggling, you can still help others.” Gladding encourages her patients to give their time in a way that’s meaningful to them, whether it’s at an animal shelter or at a local food pantry. The result is greater serenity as well as a sense of purpose. “It can give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” she says.

If you had to hit bottom to go into recovery, giving back can serve as a lifeline to regaining your sense of self, Resnick says. “Individuals suffering from alcoholism tend to have low self-esteem and feel that they have caused problems for themselves and others,” says John Rooney, emeritus professor of psychology at La Salle University in Philadelphia. “Giving back provides the confidence needed to succeed. If, as is the case in AA, they’re aiding others who have problems associated with alcohol, they have the additional incentive of wanting to set an example for them.”

Hard-wired to give Why does it feel good to give? It turns out our brains are hard-wired to want to give to others, says Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., a scientist who has examined how and where altruism originates in the brain. “Those brain structures that are activated when you get a reward are the same ones that are activated when you give. In fact, they’re activated more,” says Grafman. In one study, Grafman, director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Research Laboratory with the Kessler Foundation Research Center in New Jersey, used MRIs to study the brain structures of people who were giving to charities. The volunteers could either donate and it wouldn’t cost

them personally or they could donate and it might cost them some money, explains Grafman.

The researchers weren’t surprised that when people received money, it lit up structures deep in the brain associated with the release of the chemical dopamine, which is known to trigger feelings of pleasure and reward. But it surprised the team to see that when the volunteers donated to charities, it lit up the brain’s reward circuits even more

like alchemy.”

Post writes about how his own job loss forced him and his family to relocate from a city they loved to unfamiliar territory in his new book, The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times. Feeling out of place and uprooted when he took a job in a new state, he and his family put into practice the principle of giving. “My wife volunteered at a little school across the street, our

“Giving is one of the best predictors of success in recovery,” says psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding than receiving cash. “The regions of the brain associated with rewards and the good feeling you have when you get something, like money, were the same areas that were activated when you give,” says Grafman. “In fact, they were even more activated when giving than receiving.”

Giving also affected areas of the brain that are not activated by receiving. These areas are rich in oxytocin, often called the “cuddle hormone,” that induces feelings of warmth, euphoria and connection. It’s released when people bond. “If these brain activations can be a guide, you’re going to get more pleasure when you’re giving than when you’re simply receiving,” Grafman says. He thinks this activation has something to do with the delayed nature of altruism. The result of giving doesn’t manifest itself right away--there could be a time delay of minutes or weeks or even years. “The part of the brain that’s activated, the prefrontal cortex, helps store knowledge,” he says. “It shows people have foresight about how their gift will be used and the benefits others might get down the line.”

Grafman sees in this research evidence of an opportunity for people in recovery to break old habits and substitute new, healthier behavior. “Our findings suggest that you have a temporary advantage when giving, since for most of us, it’s rarer than receiving,” he says. “As a result, the brain activity when you give will also be greater.” Grafman likens this time of giving to a door being opened.

“It’s a time when you have an edge into those brain structures to modify their affiliation with behaviors,” he says. “Brain structures that were a slave to drinking, for example, can find a substitution, another reward, such as being of service and giving.” Indeed, our brain is wired in such a way that good behavior will want to be repeated. “We’re hard-wired to repeat behavior that’s rewarding,” Grafman says.

son volunteered at a hospital, and I helped build homes,” he says. “We did things to create meaning and get our minds off our own anxieties. It really worked. One of the best ways to get rid of anger and grief is to actively contribute to the lives around us.”

For some, taking the step to give to others is part of a journey to recovery since empathy is not fully developed in many people who drink or use substances, says Wick of the Freedom Institute. “Part of the disease is that it’s difficult for an alcoholic who is active to imagine anyone else’s world than their own,” she says. “They’re deeply engaged in a relationship with an addictive substance and there’s very little room to see someone else’s experience, to have a deep human relationship or to feel someone else’s pain.” As a result, an active alcoholic or addict typically gets more and more isolated.

This can change during recovery, when the act of reaching out and helping someone can help build skills to reconnect to the world of human experiences and relationships, Wick says. “Bill W started AA by reaching out to someone because he felt he needed to help another alcoholic so that he wouldn’t slip and start drinking again. You stay sober by sharing your story and recovering your sense of self.”

Though the body and brain can recover from the effects of alcohol in about a year, the psyche can take longer to recover, Wick says.

“Most addicts have a great deal of shame about their experience and typically think of themselves critically and harshly. They don’t have a lot of self esteem.” As you help other people, you start to rebuild a sense of who you are and of your value, she explains.

“When you’re in recovery, you give back to stay sober,” Wick says. “Once you’re sober, the act of giving service helps people start to build healthy relationships.” She notes that building nurturing relationships is fundamental to anyone’s sense of self worth. “You start to see yourself in someone else’s eyes as helpful,” Wick says, “and as you internalize your new sense of who you are and your value, you get better at having relationships.

You realize you are worthy of being loved.”

Suzanne Riss is a writer and editor who specializes in women’s issues. Most recently she was Editor-in-Chief of Working Mother magazine. Her first book, The Working Mom Survival Guide, was published by Weldon Owen in October.

A message of hope MacDougall, the director of spiritual guidance at Hazelden, puts the giving practices he preaches to work in his own life. His wife of 35 years, who has retired, often travels for weeks at a time to visit family. “After two weeks, I start to get lonely, down and irritable,” he says. “Nothing perks up my own recovery like a service commitment.” For MacDougall this often involves paying a visit to a local detox facility housed in an old jail.

“The people there were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, or were passed out some place,” he says. “They are there to detox safely.” MacDougall shares his own story of recovery, and gets an immediate lift. “I carry a message of hope, and the people there really appreciate it,” he says. “Nothing works as effectively in giving me a boost in mood. It’s

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Serving Patients, Saving Families®

s

ility

Sex, Drugs & Rehab (Continued from page 13)

With older adults a very effective tool is using people’s stories of addiction and recovery from substance abuse to point them to a direction of health. With the Baby Boom it’s not as effective. It’s not completely ineffective, but rather than being moved by stories Boomers require a more solid, a very tech savvy, scientific base of information.

Of course, hearing other people’s stories is a hallmark of 12-step programs.

Another Boomer problem: the peculiarities of their experience have to be talked about openly. Talking about how that culture impacts you, what it’s like coming into treatment, and having a sponsor and listening to those who have gone before you.

When Boomers talk about that in treatment it’s easier for them to engage in Alcoholics Anonymous later. This is part of my mindset, they acknowledge: I’m going ahead with it.

Those who don’t talk about it, who say I have a problem listening to other people, I’m a self made person, I’m going to do my own thing, they will go to one or two AA meetings, not say a word and then won’t go back.”

zes in buse/ auma,

o ever s ur com, r erself ietly ually iness o ourand ents redrug

Aging bodies Although they plan on remaining youthful forever, the realities of aging exacerbate the effects of substance abuse. Boomers will not be cheered by this list of physiological changes experienced by those who don’t suffer from addiction: • Changes in gastrointestinal tract function; • Total body water percentage for men declines from 60% to 54%; • Total body water percentage for women declines from 54% to 46%; • Muscle mass decreases by 30% for men and women; • Taste bud sensitivity decreases by 70% for men and women; • Cardiac reserve decreases from 4.6 to 4.4 times resting cardiac output; • Maximum heart rate decreases from 195 to 155 beats per minute; • Lung vital capacity decreases by 17%; • Renal perfusion (blood flow to the kidneys) reduces by 50%; • Cerebral blood flow reduces by 20%; • Bone mineral content reduces by 25 to 30% in women and 10 to 15% in men; • Brain weight reduces by 7%; and • Amount of light reaching the retina diminishes by 70%.

is a alizes lor at orders escent

e as e of nd osrebasic ood es to

oork. in 30: he covl. 15 on of of rvous

Now add these effects from alcohol and drug dependency: • Less volume distribution/decreased renal clearance; • Cognitive impairment; • Stroke; • Cancer; • Atrial fibrillation/flutter; • Insomnia and problems with restorative (REM) sleep; • Disease interactions; and • Psychiatric disorders.

hed a eative vioral iction , and s is a urring and

Chronic pain plagues many Boomers. In one study people now aged 55-60 reported having more pain, chronic health problems, drinking and psychiatric problems than those surveyed earlier at the same age. In a comparison of cohorts born in the 20th century, substance dependence was highest for Rancho Mirage, California

Together

20

17

those born between 1953 and 1964.

What all this means is that having a drink does different things to a Boomer’s body than to a younger person.

“It’s more complicated when you’re in your 50s or your 60s because your metabolism isn’t as fast, not like when you were 20,” Peter Delany, director with the Office of Applied Studies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said in an interview on NPR. “At the same time, people who are in their 50s and 60s tend to have other things going on with their bodies, hypertension, they may have another chronic illness. And with the drug use happening at the same time, the drug use can exacerbate any other conditions. If that condition comes on, it tends to sometimes mask it.”

Drugs make the bad things of aging even worse, Delaney says. “Any drug may take a little bit longer to metabolize out of your system. So if there’s significant cognitive impairment, it may take longer for that to improve. So you’re at higher risk for other complications. You might fall. You might have bad judgment. A number of things happen.

So it’s a risk factor for other things happening to you.”

Not to mention driving a car.

Muscle has more water content than fat, and as a person ages, the body has more fat, so it has less water content to dilute, say, alcohol. A person could be honest in saying they were having just one drink a night, but that one drink is really knocking them on their butt. We call this “reverse tolerance. A little goes a lot further as they age, which increases the potential for addiction. This applies to medicine, as well. A dosage can be therapeutic in a younger person but almost toxic for a leading edge boomer.

But something more than physical is happening to this generation. They feel their power fading, their control over their lives diminishing, their sense of purpose withering. Dr. Barbara Krantz, Hanley’s CEO, reports a significant increase in dual diagnoses (drug abuse plus a mental problem) in the 50 to 65 year old group -- anxiety, depression, and bipolar conditions. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of Boomers have a dual diagnosis.

“Are bipolar disorders on the rise in this age group as a result of better diagnosis or because of poly-drug and illicit drug use?” she writes. “We can’t be sure, but with better diagnosis we can more effectively treat the individual holistically.”

Better living through chemistry When Boomers knock on Hanley’s door they are quite experienced with meds. Alcohol is still the drug of choice, often in combination with drugs. The most popular psychotropic, addictive prescription drugs for Boomers are benzodiazepines, commonly prescribed for anxiety and sleep disorders.

Opioids such as OxyContin are often prescribed for pain relief. Boomers in treatment have taken an average of 4.5 prescription meds and 3.5 over-the-counter medications.

Entrenched patterns of substance abuse seem to be a more prevalent trend than that of late onset addiction. Boomer patients often started drinking and and/or using illegal drugs when they were in college or in the service. They really never stopped. The drugs have often changed from illegal substances to prescription pain pills and other prescribed psychotropic drugs.

Very often what happens is people abus-

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

Together Welcomes Together AZ I N • T R E AT M E N T

Relapse Dreams

What made the difference this time for Eling alcohol start experiencing falls or start forgetting things. Alcohol keeps them from len? She describes a personal, spiritual rekingetting a good night’s sleep. So they ask their dling in treatment. “They tapped into my heart and soul,� she doctors for drugs like Ambien, Valium and said. “I found a spiritual Xanax to help them sleep path and began to pray better. When you mix consciously.� She conthese meds with alcohol, nected with peers who she one plus one can equal and typical scenarios theycommunicate will be confronted could with, five. That’sBYwhen you get chArLES giLLESpiE with in waking lifefound after leaving treatment.

In a trusted sponsor the falls and the forgetfulthese cases, the importance is not placed on and a Twelve Step support ness. ean, a patient in treatment for group.

Her 38-year marTo the physical and the individual dream but the manner in which substance abuse, came to my group riage has survived. mental challenges, we dream content shifts over time.

If clients like about the following In about recovery, has must adddisturbed what we might Jean continue to dream usingEllen substanc“using� dream she had the night before: learned how to separate call the spiritual. Boomers es, they should be encouraged to record their “I dreamed I was in the cafeteria teaching her emotions from alcohol are suddenly realizing for dreams and note any content.I This use.shift “I in realized was usthe timehere thathow they’ve otherfirst patients to chop lines of process may instruct clients and counselors ing alcohol initially to take lived more years than cocaine and snort them.� Though she laughed about significant triggers that need to be adthe edge off the adrenaline they’ve got left.

They’ve at the dream because of its ridiculous rush and latertoonexamine to blunt got two minutes left in dressed, while challenging clients plot, Jean also wondered what it might my anxiety,� she said. “I the third quarter and the their readiness to change. mean, ifisanything, and drank alone to fourth lookingabout kindher of recovery.

One particularlydrank useful study of drug-using relieve the unease of my short. They’re facing mordreams demonstrates that a client’s personal THE VALUE OF DREAMS tality.

What’s my legacy? At this point they emotions and a terrible sense of loneliness response to theNow dream is more important than isolation.

I can place my anxieties get serious this recovery busi- and Thepretty purpose of this about article is to briefly outline dream content when it comes to predicting outside of myself and give my worst fears to ness. some of the clinical research that’s been a positive treatment outcome (Brown, 1985).

God. The Third Step really helped me.

I feel conducted about the occurrence, meaning and I’ve a long nightmare.

The The awakened study finds from that clients who dream about value of drug-using dreams. It is my intention curtain has lifted.� using substances fall into two main categories: to Consider demonstrate drug-using dreamscocktail can be thethat story of Ellen, whose one group experiences frustration that their useful in counseling when clients and clinicians John Dyben, a mental health and addiction driven life as a high level Wall Street execudream isn’t real and the second group experiare informed about the denial, possibleeven function this tive was fraught with when she counselor, program supervisor and chaplain, relief theirCenter. dreamHe isn’tis reDirector ofthat Hanley checked into serves. a treatment center that she is Clinicalences type of dream real.

The first group is described as sponsible for supervising all residential and understood offered a “cure.�

After an almost One study, a classic in the field of subhaving relapse-pending dreams.

This outpatient treatment as well as Spiritual Care immediate relapse, several more different stance abuse treatment, demonstrates programs.

Juan Harris, intoxia certitreatment stays and a descent into secretive and Wellness group longs to re-experience that alcoholics who dream about drinkis Program Director drinking, Ellen is now in successful recovery fied addictions cationcounselor, and feels triggered toward ing during course treatment of the Center for Older Adult Recovery. and knowsthe there is noofquick fix. tend substance use.

The second group to achieve longer periods of sobriety is described as having recovery(Choi, 1973). This finding suggests that affirming dreams. This group wakes clients like Jean who dream about the up disturbed by their dreams and substances they are attempting to abfeels repulsed from actual substance stain from may be more engaged in the use. Clients like Jean clearly belong treatment process than those patients to this second group and often need who don’t report drughelp perceiving their using dreams. In other using as a rexperience has taught us that last minute gift shopping can cause us to dreams be irritable words, these clients take and unreasonable even though we know it! So, we put our heads covery-affirming together to comeprotheir struggle with subup with a dozen ideas that might help you find a special present forThey a friend cess. may or find it stance abuse seriously family member in recovery. Here are a few: helpful to inventory enough to dream about their motivations for it at night. As Freud For the fashionista recovery and review observed, only matters The Serenity bracelet – a really stylish and their unique bracelet action plan. The of greatest importance designed and made by Lisa Stewart, $110 online. using dream can be are permitted to disturb lisastewartonline.com/collection/bracelets.html harnessed as a “wake our sleep. In this regard, up call� challenging Jean’s drug using dream For the one with the sweet tooth clients like Jean to may be understood as a Zabar’s set of 6 chocolate bars, amazing chocolate re-examine their positive sign, dreamed and we are told the dark chocolate with sea salt is assumptions about by ainspiring. person who is seri- www.zabars.com $19.99 recovery. ously concerned about the consequences of relapse.

DREAMS’ RELEVANT A more recent study For the ones who need inspiration and congratulations MESSAGES fascinatof crack cocaine addictsA recovery milestone memento from Milestone Coins; Clients awith relapseing selection of coins that are hand made into wearable art who dream about drug pending dreams will www.milestonecoins.com/catalog/ use demonstrates that also need help in the content of using regard to receiving a Foristhe dreams alsoreaders important relevant message from in predicting treatment Gift Certificate to Choices Books & Gift Shop, one of the most the reactions they have valued(Reid, recovery resources book seller intothe NYC area. outcomes S. and Simeon, and D., 2001). their using dreams. Counselors can direct Overwww.choices-nyc.com/ a ninety-day period, clients who report these clients back to interventions that address their dreams changing from using cocaine to the contemplation stage of change. These cliactively refusing cocaine tend to gift achieveideas, longer please ents may benefit from a review of the costs and For more great go to our website: periods of abstinence. This finding suggests consequences of their substance use. www.together.us.com that readiness for change is reflected in dream The relapse-pending dream may bring content that dream-life can provide light theirtoimpoverished view of sobriety.

Andand don’t forget, everyone on yourclients list wouldtobe happy get a one year subscription withtoanTogether opportunity rehearse change.

Thesemailbox!

Counselors can challenge these impoverished NewtoYork, arriving in their www.together.us.com/subscribe/ dreams provide clients with an exposure to views and direct clients toward new becravings, interactions with “using friends�

(Continued on page 17)

A hidden Message?

Something more

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than physical is happening to this generation. They feel their power fading, their control over their lives diminishing,

Trauma Treatment in a Safe, Healing Environment

There is hope

Photo courtesy of Jim Garner, Seattle, WA

E

Holiday Gift Ideas from the Together Staff

90 Days to One Year Extended Care 'PDVT 0O 5SBVNB 154% t 4UFQ #BTFE )PMJTUJD "QQSPBDI t .VMUJ %JBHOPTJT $ISPOJD 3FMBQTF t 4VCTUBODF "CVTF $PEFQFOEFODZ t 1SPDFTT "EEJDUJPOT 4FYVBM $PNQVMTJWJUZ t &BUJOH %JTPSEFST 4FMG )BSN t 'JOBODJBM %JTPSEFST $PNQVMTJWF (BNCMJOH t (BNJOH

The using dream can be harnessed as a “wake up call� challenging clients to reexamine their assumptions about recovery.

www.TheRefuge-aHealingPlace.com 3&'6(& r "ENJTTJPOT

Together - A Voice for Health & Recovery May/June 2011 | www.together.us.com

Together

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A look at gambling

W

RESOURCES

by bobbe mcginLey

hen you read the words “gambling addict,� what is the first image that comes to mind? A mob type male, puffing on a cigar in a dark room playing poker with shady looking people as we often see depicted in crime movies? Or maybe it’s a woman in a bold dress that is Together’s mission is to serve the extended community of individuals and families seeking information too tight, with heavy makeup in the weeto lead healthier and happier lives. Here is a partial list of about relief from addiction-related issues hours of the morning in a casino? Because referrals with a more comprehensive list on together.us.com. Together is not affiliated with any 12-step or organization, although support them all. One essential of recovery is knowing you ofprogram the stigma all addictions carry, we anddothe don’t have to walk alone. fact that gambling addiction is so well hidden, rarely do we visualize someone national problem gambling 12-step organizations Telephone Website struggling with gambling addiction as an Awareness week Adult Children of Alcoholics 562-595-7831 adultchildren.org average looking person about life. isnycalanon.org March 6-12, 2011.

Al-Anon & Alateen Familygoing Groups 212-941-0094 Like other addictions, gambling doesn’t disthis week is to educate the Alcoholics Anonymous

212-647-1680The goal ofnyintergroup.org criminate and studies show that between 2%general public and health care Chapter 9 | Couples in Recovery 888-799-6463 chapter9couplesinrecovery.org 3%Cocaine of theAnonymous U.S. population will have a gambling professionals about the warning signs of

212-262-2463 canewyork.org problem in anyAnonymous given year, thereby affecting646-289-9954 problem gambling and raise awareness Codependents

codependentsnyc.org millions people in the United States alone.212-642-5029 about thenycma.org help that is available both Crystal of Meth Anonymous

Gambling addiction has devastating nationally. Please visit Debtors Anonymous 212-969-8111 locally and danyc.org effects on family and friends, destroyhttp://www.NPGAW.org/ Gam-Anon 718-352-1671 gam-anon.org ingGamblers lives as Anonymous well as livelihoods, and today 888-424-3577 for ideas and more information.

gamblersanonymous.org gambling addiction is not only found in Marijuana Anonymous 212-459-4423 ma-newyork.org

Do You Need Help?

Resources & Links

Narcotics Anonymous Overeaters Anonymous Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous Nicotine Anonymous

212-929-6262 212-946-4599 212-946-5298 212-824-2526

newyorkna.org oanyc.org slaany.org nicotine-anonymous.org

National and institutional organizations

Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse casacolumbia.org Center for Substance Abuse Treatment csat.samhsa.gov National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers naatp.org National Clearinghouse of Alcohol and Drug Information health.org National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. ncadd.org National Eating Disorders Association nationaleatingdisorders.org in the Hamptons National Institute on Drug Abuse drugabuse.gov Alcohol & Substance Abuse Treatment National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism niaaa.nih.gov Where the healing begins..... drugfree.org Partnership at DrugFree.org

SEAFIELD

Contact

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Adults - Adolescents -Letters Family - Men &letters@together.us.com Women General information: info@together.us.com to the editor: Editorial submissions: editorial@together.us.com General correspondence: news@together.us.com advertising@together.us.com distribution@together.us.com subscriptions@together.us.com

1-800-448-4808

Drugs Food Smoking Gambling Video Games Internet Sex Shopping Work

Addiction is too hard to go through alone.

Are you or someone you care about drinking too much?

Would you like to talk about it?

We would.

Together we can make a difference.

Call 212-532-1640 Monday – Friday, 10 am – 6 pm

If you are looking for answers for yourself or a loved one, The Together Warmline can help. It’s a free service staffed by addiction professionals and lay people who share their experience and knowledge about addictions. We are a non-emergency, non-crisis support and referral service not affiliated with any treatment program or service.

6

those over the age of 21; kids underage have discovered ways to gamble as well.

Pathological gambling is believed to be a progressive behavior disorder that has the trademarks of out of control thinking about gambling and urges to gamble.

This leads to gambling beyond limits, which in turn leads to more and more problem gambling, as the gambler tries unsuccessfully to get back that first3) dol(Continued from page lar ever lost, and every dollar in between.

For many people gambling is not a problem. Gamblers are natural risk takers, and many begin with simple activities such asWhat sports betting, perhaps to trading to I meanturning by “being committed stocks and commodities of â€?the something bigger thanbecause oneself ishigher being excitement and impression thatone’s they being are committed in athe way that shapes and actions soskill. thatPathological those actions are in the applying great gambling, service beyond one’s however,ofisrealizing describedsomething as an impulse disorder, personal concerns for oneself – beyond one that mimics addiction to alcohol and a direct personal drugs, with thepayoff. most important traits being As they are acted on, such commitments emotional dependence on gambling, loss of create something to which others can also control, and difficulties with normal activities. be committed and have the sense that If alives family suspects a gamtheir aremember about something bigger than bling problem, or has experienced the of great themselves – an important aspect consequences of problem gambling, the leadership. best recoursethe is to seek counseling withfrom beWithout passion that comes ing committed something a trained gamblingtocounselor. âœş bigger than yourself, you are unlikely to persevere in the valley of tears that is an inevitable experience in the lives of all human beings and certainly in the lives of all great leaders: Times when nothing goes right, there is no way, no help is available, nothing there except what you can do to find something in yourself – the strength to persevere in the face of impossible, insurmountable hurdles and barriers.

When you are committed to something bigger than yourself and you reach down inside you will find the strength to continue and joy in the labor of it.

And finally, being committed to something bigger than yourself leaves you with the passion required to empower the brain’s executive function to “not eat the marshmallow.�

Integrity

Committed to Something Bigger than Oneself

The Mid-Life Crisis At some point in life we all stop measuring time from the beginning and start measuring time from the end. It shifts from thinking about “How far have I come?� to “How much time and opportunity do I have left?� – the difference between, “I’m 30 years old� and “I have about 30 years left.�

No matter how good you look, no matter how good you’ve gotten your family to look, and no matter how much wealth, fame, position or power you have amassed, you will experience a profound lack of fulfillment – the incompleteness, emptiness and pain expressed by the commonly occurring question:

Is This All There Is? Let’s be clear: There is nothing inherently wrong with wealth, good looks, fame, position or power, but contrary to almost uni-

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Tony Murphy

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there's help

he National Council on Problem Gambling (ncpgambling.org) is a national advocate for problem gamblers and their families, with a 24-hour confidential national helpline (1-800-522-4700). In addition, Gamblers Anonymous (gamblersanonymous. org) is a 12-step program designed for problem gamblers and Gam-Anon (gam-anon.org) is a support group for family members and concerned persons affected by a gambler’s behavior.

Without the passion that comes from being committed to something bigger than yourself, you New York State, if you think you areInmight unlikely to persevere in have a gambling problem call the Helpline at 1-877-846-7369. the24-hour valley of tears that is an inevitable experience in the Bobbe McGinley MA, MBA, CADAC, LISAC, NCGC is aall nationally known speaker, livesII,of human beings. author, presenter and trainer, consulting many different industries about problem gambling. For more information call 602versal belief wealth, good looks, fame, posi569-4328 or visit tion and power willwww.actcounseling.com. never be enough.

And facing up to that fact leaves people (Adapted fromdisturbed an article that disoriented, andappeared lost, and in in Together AZ Feb. 2011 edition) search of meaning.

At this point in life many men start buying red convertibles (or their equivalent) and women have their own ways of dealing.

No matter how good you look or how much you have personally amassed, it will never be enough to avoid this crisis. Dealing with the crisis of “Is this all there is?� lies in having a commitment to the realization of a future (a cause) that leaves you with a pasAddiction Specialists sion for living.

This principle applies to corporate entities as well as to human beings. Value creation for both is the scorecard for success.

Value creation is not the source of corporate or personal passion and energy. Being committed to something bigger than oneself is the source of that passion and energy. And every individual and every organization has the power to choose that commitment -there is no “right answer.� We all have the opportunity to create what lights us up.

This is the actionable pathway to Committed To Something Bigger than Oneself.

The following quote from George Bernard Shaw’s play “Man and Superman� (the epistle dedicatory to the play) captures this idea of being committed to something bigger than oneself: “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.� www.together.us.com | March/April 2011 Michael C. Jensen is Jesse Isidor Straus Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and Chairman of the Social Science Research Network, Inc. (SSRN). This article is adapted from his commencement address at McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, in May, 2011. It is based on eight years of research into leadership with colleagues Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron and Kari Granger. Links to the talk and other work on which this article is based are at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1850544

www.together.us.com | November / December 2011

F IWelcomes N A L • W Together ORD Together AZ

Mommies Who Drink Too Much

the grieving process. Clients sometimes need encouragement to talk about their painful experiences so that healing, forgiveness and acceptance can ultimately be achieved. Working with a counselor who understands the grief process can help the griever address these issues so that resentment and shame are not suppressed for fear of being disrespectful to the dead.

In my work at Cottonwood and in my private practice, I begin any grief counseling with a consultation to assess the client’s need and to fully hear their story. Developing a strong and trusting therapeutic relationship with a client is essential to a successful outcome. In some cases the death is a sentinel event that has y July Butler Evans profoundlyBdisrupted the life of a client. Prior to the loss the client may have enjoyed a fairly n the summer of 2009, Diane Schuler contented Understandably, spedlife.drunkenly downtheir theworldTaconic view assumed that their children would Parkway north of New York outlive City -them, that would a long life with her the they wrong wayenjoy -- tragically killing daughter, herself. their partner and six thatother theirpeople, parentsand would live The ensuing outrage, bewilderment, over to a ripe old age.

Deatheven results in the bursting mothers who drink farSuddenly too muchthe detonated for of these expectations. world is no weeks. longer as safe and predictable a place as it had Mothers have sought relief and solace in earlier seemed. We are propelled into a strange alcohol for a very long time; Diane Schuler and put terrifying Nothing is the same just a verylandscape. public face onto it. as“My before. kids are driving me to drink!” many moms exclaim at times, followed by a laugh.

TOOLS AND SUPPORT It is not uncommon for mothers of young One of the-tools I have found to be helpful for children infants, toddlers, preschoolclients whose beenand, ers -- to get presumptive together forreality play has groups shattered an exercise called a Loss Characwhile the iskids busy themselves with one another, the The mommies sip a glass of is wine. terization.

Loss Characterization basi-Or two. on occasion, a mom may make it cally aAnd character sketch the client composes aabout chardonnay hat trick. thenintucks her him or herself that isShe written relation child into his or her car seat, and drives. to a loss. The client writes this in the third person from the perspective of a close and loving personal friend who knows the client intimately.

When the assignment is completed I Full disclosure: I am not judging nor beask that they share it with me. Together webeen can ing holier-than-thou.

Because I have exploreNot what meaning the author perceives of there. there-there watching this happen to others, but there-there as in participattheir experience of loss. ing, one mom Inby onebeing recentthe session a clientwho hadenjoyed expe- the alcohol a little much.

ByAtalso rienced the deathbit of too a teenage son. the being the mom who would eventually pick up her conclusion of sharing the loss characterization preschooler and kindergartner (her third with fourth me she expressed at God forattakand children, anger respectively) aftering her care child at from sheafternoon, was a religious school fiveher. inAs the with a woman, thecan thought Diet Coke full of ofanger whitetoward wine,God or was beer. a difficult one for the her to express.

Shecar, felt merciinAnd get behind wheel of her fully -- guilty and amazingly never driving the tensely about being--disrespectful toward wrong way down a one-way street.

Or into God. I gently encouraged her to dialogue with a pole or a tree or a ditch.ofIan amempty the mom God using the technique chair who very shortly after a number of these trips gestalt. After some initial reluctance, she was with her wine roadie -- my “mommy juice” to goitwith it. Along Iable called -- put downwith theexpressing drink forher good. anger, she was able to ask questions “Why This was over 12 years ago. Thelike, strongest did youI do this tonow me?”isand, “When will you thing drink pure, unadulterated Diet Coke. give me the strength to go on?” Concluding I am far and awayreported not thefeeling only mommy this exercise the client comwho too much. you visit athat local forteddrank and relieved.

In fact,Ifshe reported 12-step meeting be surprised afterwards she feltyou that might her relationship with to observe the number of mothers of young her Higher Power was healing. children. And they aren’t the bedraggled, Onincome several occasions I have suggested people low or perhaps uneducated that my grieving clients write a letter to their to that society often stereotypes alcoholics deceased.

I provide these clientsyour withsmall a format be.

They are your neighbors, and large business thewhat onesis missed, with the that cues them toowners, write about master’s the multi-volunteering what is notdegrees, missed, regrets, and appreciation. I moms ... even friends.

I amapproprialso deencourage clientsyour to write what feels scribing the still actively drinking mothers, ate and authentic. When the letter has been the ones you notice imbibe a tad too much completed, I ask my clients to share it with me. socially, and those who fly under-the-radar; Thiswomen is also awho time couldn’t when I have used the empty the possibly abuse alchair technique with positive results.

I begin cohol because they -- what? -- seem too perthe gestalt by askingtoo thenice? client to describe the fect, too together, physical appearance of the deceased including their posture, clothing and expression. Sometimes a photograph is available and we use it.

I then ask them to determine what distance between the chairs is comfortable. The client then begins to read the letter. At the conclusion of the reading I will ask the questions to assist the client in getting further in touch with their feelings. If I feel it is appropriate, I will ask them to speak in the voice of the deceased, telling the client what they need to hear from their loved one. We conclude the exercise by processing what has happened. Clients often report feeling relieved as a consequence of doing this exercise.

Activities in a grief-specific group setting are also helpful in assisting clients in addressing their losses. One exercise involves identifying a person’s greatest pain by giving it a name, By all accounts Diane Schuler was the pershape, color and sound.

After sharing their fect mother, the responsible one, and there descriptions of pain, clients are then asked to is controversy today over whether she was give their pain a new sound and medicating the painshape, from color, an abscessed tooth name.

I encourage them to use this as a tool into when her red minivan crashed head-on in reducing the intensity of the feelings when another vehicle.

Let me tell you, although I am far from overwhelmed. perfect and my have-it-all-together days don’t Sometimes during the mourning process necessarily equal headless-chicken days, I one has to deal withthe well-wishers who somewas and still am, well,that nice. didn’t look as times make statements areIthoughtless though my body and my mind had begun to and inappropriate. An example of this might crave alcohol. I lived in a decent-sized house, be, “Don’t cry. Everything will be okay.”

I had the ubiquitous Suburban, I had Anjust sold other remark might be, founded.

“They are in a better the magazine I had My drinking place.” s okay if the griever chooses to believe hadn’tIt’destroyed my marriage, hadn’t made me lose my house, nor my children. this.

Sometimes, this my kindjob, of thoughtless stateWhatisitjust had made mewell-wisher’ lose was Julie.

I had ment a sign of the s anxiety lost Julie and the thought in experiencing grief ofperhaps others. I could find her in a bottle, that maybe, that drink Recovering people need to givetoo, themselves would help me feel less overwhelmed and permission to cry if they need to. For so long stressed about suddenly being a stay-at-home we medicated Some us were mom to four our kidsfeelings. under age 15.ofThat being a raised in environments where crying was conlittle bit buzzed would make the kids’ fighting, sidered unmanly or childish. of us have screaming and needing me Many less intense.

Thethe drink did none those up things.

The heard expression “Pullof yourself by your drink just made drunk mommy, bootstraps.”

Whenme thedrunk. world isAfull of sorrow, not a betterlike mommy. statements these can be cruel and insensitive. What I found to be helpful is the presence of people who care. Support is always available at 12-step Sometimes words of to I wasn’tmeetings. a daily drinker.

One the doesn’t need comfort are not but the drink every dayneeded or evening to hugs be anare. alcoholic.

It’s a disease that is cunning and baffling and DISCOVERING TRIGGERS insidious. And it begets denial. Which is why In recovery we learnprobably to identifyshould triggers thatsimmany people who stop, could lead us to relapse. Grief has its own ply don’t. triggers.

They cantwo arrive warning, My younger kidswithout have never seen me reminding usthey of our pain. Photos, films, drunk (that remember).

I was able to be presentsongs and accounted for during my older articles, and anniversaries can prompt sons’ teenofyears, andAt ofthese course for the the pain present thoughts our pain. times ones.

Getting sober was the best thing could brought on by these reminders of our lossI can have ever done for my family. elicit thoughts of using substances. In relapse Many people casually observing me didn’t prevention that I have facilitated think I hadworkshops a problem.

Although some memwe address the grief-related risk Diane factors that bers of her family thought Schuler can precipitate return toproblem, using substances. didn’t have ana alcohol either, toxicology these reports that her blood alcohol Among arefound difficult emotions, conflict levelothers was 0.19 the equivalent with and — testing control. of 10 drinks —There and are alsoways found considerable amounts of for alcoholics and addicts THC marijuana. to copefrom withsmoking loss so that the experience can Let it not take another tragedy like this to be meaningful. We have learned to value a instill a spark of recognition in a mom who relationship withgoing our higher Turning has everything for herpower. but needs a car to to God of ourher understanding can provide getthe herself and child to the safety of home. comfort even express only There’s no when shameour in prayers admitting to a problem and seeking help. I know.

I felt more ashamed anger and confusion.

Journaling has proven tobe keep on drinking; it can tookbecourage and on love to beneficial.

Writing therapeutic to stop. both a physical and emotional level. After the death of my mother I returned to the twelve Julie Butler Evans, and author and joursteps. Completing a fourth step inventory and nalist, writes a column about parenting for sharing it with anewspaper. sponsor proved helpful. of her a Connecticut A collection There are many books related to columns, Parenting From the bereaveTrenches, is ment.

Someon may seem to reinforce the idea available Amazon.com. that grief is a predictable process. I tend to suggest other books that recognize the unique(Continued on page 17)

While the little ones are enjoying a play date, their mothers are too often enjoying a glass, or two, or three

I

Mommy juice

Cunning and baffling

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