Standing On the Firing Line of Recovery at the Allumbaugh House Detox Center

If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after many years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them. -William D. Silkworth, MD

At 7 o’clock on the second Friday of every month I visit the Allumbaugh House, presumably to bring in an AA meeting.  The thing is most of the people in a county detox center have made multiple attempts at getting sober.  Most, if not all of them have been to meetings before; sometimes hundreds of them.  I went to hundreds of meetings before I ever got sober.  I had vast sections of the book memorized.  I knew what to say in meetings and I knew how to act and I knew what I was supposed to look like so that I would fit in.  I was good at doing that.  Standing on the firing line of recovery has very little to do with attending meetings.  It has to do with carrying the message.

Because these folks have been to meetings before and because they haven’t managed to stay sober in spite of it, I like to do things a little differently.  I like to go back to the very origins of the fellowship.  I like to go back to the first meeting between Bill W. and Dr. Bob.  The real power of what the program is lies in the space created between two addicts or alcoholics honestly sharing their stories with each other.  That isn’t something you can do at a meeting.  And let’s face it, who among us understood what the steps meant when we were two or three or even ten days sober?  What is the point of even reading it?

Tonight, just as I do on the second Friday of every month, I sat down with a small group of friends, recently and badly beaten up by the disease, and I shared some of my story with them.  I told them how life had been.  I asked what had been going on with them.  I told them about the night my heart broke and I realized I had no answers and how badly I wished I could die.  I told them about the moment I got the crazy idea that it might be possible to change and what I did.  I asked them if they had any hope that their lives could change.  I shared with them what my life is like now.

I listened to the things they thought had been barriers in the past and I told them mine and how I got around them.  When they told me about how they knew the program and they knew that they just had to to it, I let them know how long I had known the program and was unable to do it – and how I came to experience it.

Two of the five people there really didn’t want to hear anything.  Either they just wanted to go back to sleep or they just wanted to dry out long enough to make drinking or taking pills fun again.  The other three had a lot to share.  They had a lot of questions.  They were fully engaged in the conversation.

It would have been very easy for us to, as Bill and Dr. Bob did, go on for hours, but I only had an hour with them so I spent 90 minutes.  I came away even more grateful for being sober today than I normally do, and I think they came away with some hope that this might work for them.  I think they felt understood and accepted.

I remember some old Carly Simon song that says there’s more room in a broken heart.  I believe that.  I also believe that in the space created between two broken hearts there is grace.