A MESSAGE FROM DR. LONG

The editor interjects: This article appears to be for the use and edification of the professional staff at the Donwood Institute. However since it was given to this newsletter for publication, your editor deems it quite useful and beneficial for the layman (alcoholics, families of alcoholics, employers of alcoholics etc.). Read it and reach your own conclusions. Don Felstead.

You are involved in the treatment of a very important person (the alcoholic) who suffers from chemical dependency. I should like to present some thoughts concerning this treatment program with emphasis on the concept that alcoholism is an illness. As is true of any illness, the course of this one has phases which characterize it. Of course, given any illness you find that there are variations in the signs and symptoms which any one person who is suffering from it will show. However, to the extent that it is similar, we may suggest remedies which have in the light of experience appeared to help recovery.

First and foremost, we must recognize that chemical dependency involves a continually increasing self destructive process; physically, mentally, socially, and in terms of one's attitudes toward life. In order to treat this condition, abstinence must be complete for one to be able to fully exchange decline for growth and attainment. Generally, when we treat diseased conditions we remove the causer of poisoning by killing off the germs which generate the poison. In the case of chemical dependency we must remove the chemical which is the poison.

Whether we are dealing with illness caused by germs or caused by chemicals, we administer to ourselves, recovery is a project in itself once the cause of the illness has been removed. For those who have become chemically dependent the issues of recovery are perhaps more clear and also more closely related to the chance of relapse than in other illnesses, but only in this manner do they differ. The ravages of any serious illness leave one's body in need of special care, in terms of nutrition, exercise, extra rest. These treatments contribute to physical improvement. The person has suffered socially as well, since he has been out of action and in some illness, social re-entry presents extremely difficult problems. Often social adaption involves getting along without a part of the body or with an appalling disfigurement. In the case of our patients it requires learning how to interact with people without feeling some support from a chemical.

The psychological problems usually related to illness involve lowered feelings of usefulness or of acceptability to others. With chemical dependency, one has the additional negative feelings of remorse, lowered self-esteem, loneliness, defensive thinking and, in about a third of our patients, rather extensive emotional disturbances which preceeded the development of their particular habituation. These conditions require determined action and help not only by the patient but by his family and friends and often by professional psychotherapists. The conditions related to any illness often generate depression and anxiety and even despair.

Finally, consequences of an illness challenge anyone's faith, but especially when the illness has strong moral implications, be it a social disease, the biblical attitudes towards Hansen's disease (leprosy) or habituation to chemicals.

In summary, I present chemical dependence as an illness to you to underline the extreme necessity for those recovering from it to do so with careful attention to all levels of human experience. The patient must provide well for himself physically, emotionally, interpersonally and in terms of a philosophy of life. Those who care must keep in mind that part of our contract in loving others is to support them in accomplishing their goals to the best of our abilities.

DOCTOR LONG