Drug and Alcohol Treatment

I just saw a biography of former first lady Betty Ford, who, after hiding her depression and loneliness with alcohol and prescription drugs (and hiding her addiction), found that when push came to shove getting recovery and opening your own alcohol and drug treatment center worked wonders on the self-esteem, the self-worth, and the self-survival process.

Once Mrs. Ford (or is that Lady Ford?) outed herself, she gave license to other celebrities to acknowledge, get help for, and heal from their own private addictions. And at the same time that Lady Ford was establishing a drug and alcohol treatment center for the well-to-do, those of us who could not afford such expensive recoveries were using the longstanding clinics, therapies, and twelve-step programs that worked for millions.

In other words, when seeking drug and alcohol treatment, we have literally hundreds of options (as another show airing that same week revealed, for example, with its intervention efforts to get bulimics to clinics, speed freaks to intervention centers, and alcoholics to recovery facilities across the nation).

We are blessed with alternatives. I mean alternatives in the sense that for some, drug and alcohol treatment centers with tough love, confrontation-style approaches are the only things that will kick our butts into change, while for others the kid-glove treatment of therapists is necessary to our growth, and for still others the rough and ready rigors of a 12-step program such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA) or Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the only way to heal.

There’s no need to begrudge the upper class, the wealthy, the elite for having a “different” or “better” program than we peons and proletariats have. The fact that one type of drug and alcohol treatment program costs thousands and another drug and alcohol recovery system is cheap or free has nothing to do with quality of recovery. What works for the individual is what is important. And how one works his or her program is imperative.

That is, in one recovery system the premise is that an addict or alcoholic (or both) should go to the same lengths to get recovery as he or she went to get loaded. Following this formula of sorts, then, Robert Downey Junior will spend a few grand to heal from the extravagant binges he has fallen prey to, Joe Blow, the truck driver who succumbed to lifting TV sets and stereos to get a fix will now volunteer his time at a music school to get himself “fixed”.

In the end it all works out to reveal we are all similar; we all have a disease that needs to be squashed, and we all have to work at working it for it to work. Or to echo one sentiment (developed by way of Mr. Bill and Dr. Bob (founders of AA), “There are no big shots or little shots. One shot, and we’re all shot.”