Old 12-03-2008, 09:22 PM
  # 17 (permalink)  
Sugah
Om, Aum, Ohm...
 
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Punxsutawney/Pittsburgh
Posts: 4,797
Cassandra, let me tell you my experience with treatment centers "teaching steps."

I've sponsored women in half-way houses who were required by their counselors to "go get a sponsor." So, they'd ask when they were taken to outside meetings, and I did what my sponsor taught me to do--set a time to meet them and start working steps with them. With three different women on three different occassions, I got there, got out my Big Book and commenced working the first step with them, only to be told, "Oh, I've already taken the first step." And the second, and the third.

"I'm working on my fourth step with my counselor."

So, I ask, "Is your sponsor in the program?"

"I don't know. Some of them are, but some aren't, and they don't tell us which are which." (I guess they don't want the clients to be biased against "book taught" counselors)

Ultimately, I was asked to sponsor them so that they could say they had a sponsor, but for the life of me, I don't know what the counselors thought a sponsor was supposed to do. Be supportive? Chit-chat? A sponsor takes a sponsee through the steps. One alcoholic (addict) helping another.

I'm telling you this because I can't imagine an out-patient treatment center not suggesting AA or NA to a client. It then becomes his responsibility to attend meetings. I wouldn't be so upset about them not "teaching" him steps because from my experience, step work was treated as home work--something these women had to do to "graduate" from their treatment. In AA (or NA), there is no graduation. Besides, if he's "taught" steps, what happens when his treatment comes to an end? Steps are a design for living, and part of that design is it's continuity. The twelfth step directs us to carry that message to others. In the treatment setting, that means either staying in treatment or becoming a counselor.

I'm sure that logic is flawed (I'm tired), but I think you get the drift. Closed institutional meetings aren't meetings--in that sooner or later, one moves on. I don't lose my seat in my home group. This is what I try to get through to ladies in the jails. You can start there, but eventually, you have to be proactive and find your own place in the recovery community.

Something tells me I just doubled back on myself.

Cassandra, if it helps, I empathize with your desire to see him do well. I watched my mother trying to deal with my father, and though she had your desire, she had no one to talk to about it. If I could go back in time and try to help her, I would suggest to her that she do as you're doing, find Al-anon, and take care of herself.

Peace & Love,
Sugah
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