THE COURAGE TO GIVE IT A NAME

BY DR. GEORGE BIRTCH

Those who attend AA meetings regularly grow accustomed to hearing a speaker begin by saying, "My name is Joe Blow, and I'm an alcoholic."

The startled visitor may wonder, "is it necessary to be so blunt? What is the advantage of calling one's self alcoholic? Well, what is the advantage? A New York psychiatrist, Dr. Rollo May, tells of how, some years ago, after weeks of undetermined illness, he went to a specialist. He was told that his sickness was tuberculosis.

"I was" he writes "distinctly relieved, even though I was fully aware that this meant, in those days, that medicine could do nothing to cure the disease." He was relieved when his sickness was given a name. After weeks of fretting and conjecturing, now at last he knew where he stood. The chaotic and undetermined took on shape and meaning. He knew what he had to contend with.

This is our experience at Donwood too. The first long stride toward recovery has been taken when the horror of existence that goes with addiction has at last been identified, called by name, and accepted for what it is. Honesty and courage are required to face the fact. Naming the illness takes away the fuzziness, the waffling, the defensive thinking.

It nails down the reality of things as they are. It gives a person a place to stand. When the AA speaker stands up and says "I am an alcoholic" he identifies himself with a whole host of other people who have the same problem as he has. His listeners may murmer, "O.K. brother, join the club!"

When a person comes into the Donwood and recognizes that he is addicted, he has the assurance of knowing that he is entering a treatment program that is tried and tested. He is not alone and his case is not hopeless. There is an answer to his illness. There is a road to recovery.

There is, of course, the possibility that giving this condition the name "addiction" may be seized upon by the patient as a convenient way of getting off the hook. He is not responsible any more. The sickness rules his behaviour. "Look Ma, no hands!" There is a measure of truth in this.

Addiction, as we know so well, does result in distorted behaviour patterns. As long as you are depending on your chemical and using it in a sick way, you are in fact n0t responsible for your own behaviour.

But responsibility enters by another door. "You are and must be responsible for your own recovery". Once the illness is identified and named, the enemy is seen for what it is. It is not invincible. It can be conquered. "And you can conquer it." There are resources available. There are people to support you. It can be done, and is being done by thousands of people.

The starting point is to give the addiction its proper name. If you then overcome the disease, you become in a real sense a new person. You are initiated into a new community!

Don says: The hardest thing I had to do was to tell those I loved that I finally saw myself as an alcoholic. My wife, kids, and parents all knew this fact all along, so were very happy to see that I acknowledged, but they said, "what are you going to do about it?" I knew in my heart that, as well as telling my family, I would have to tell my friends and associates. It was terribly difficult, but to my surprise they all said that they knew it all along! And I thought I was so smart!

After a while it became easier to acknowledge my affliction, and over time it became a sense of me, I was an alcoholic! I did not drop dead on the spot, or break out in hives, in fact I became very proud of myself for being a much stronger man than I had ever thought I was. I had become honest, reliable, and of all things, likeable. It was great!