Recovery Day Festival, 6thand6th, New Westminster

I arrived early.  Everyone is setting up.  Great to see known folk, Already received a hug from a beautiful Orchard organizer.  Good chat with a Last Door fellow.  Actually spoke to a Cedars volunteer.  Recovery is all about connection. I’ve also got a t shirt, We are #evidence.  

I am always astonished at how good looking everyone is.  It’s a night and day experience with the active addiction folk in the DTES. The men and women here have substance. Considering addiction knows no boundaries.  Recovery is open to all.  I think the women are looking particularly attractive not just healthy but fashion conscious. I remember Avalon centre holding fashion shows for the women in recovery.  After months and years of obsession with drugs and booze they celebrate self care in recovery. An oft heard saying in AA is ‘we’ll love you till you can love yourself’.  The shame in addiction is replaced by the dignity of recovery.  

I remember Dr. Graham Cunningham, Homewood Treatment Centre, now the former director saying, “People begin to eat again and next they visit a dentist,”. Cocaine does horrors to the teeth.  Doug Lovely, my cosmetic dentist and all around great guy  has an office  right beside the bandstand.  I noted several booths representing various dental clinics.  

There’s more tattoos here than at a church picnic.  More piercings . The spirituality here is inspirational.  Addiction is its own religion with alcohol, substances or other addictions as the God that is worshiped. No surprise the old folk called it ‘demon drink’.   People in recovery say ‘religion is for those who don’t want to go to hell and spirituality is for those who’ve been and don’t want to go back.’

A couple of older guys stopped and talked to me.  Shaking my hand and making ‘connection’.  The recovery community is friendly that way.  Addiction is isolation in a bubble with predators trying to take whatever money or life you have.  No surprise they call addiction a country and western song where you lose your family, home, job and truck. Recovery is country and western song played backwards.  All the good stuff comes back.  Health and peace of mind. 

The band is warming up and the female singer sounds New Orleans.  Such a powerful voice.   Powerful drums. 

I always love the dances in recovery because the guys are so enjoying themselves.  The same guys who used to need to be loaded to dance now are having a great time without staggering into tables and starting fights in the parking lot.

There’s Harm Reduction represented here too.  It’s either Palliative Care or a stepping stone to abstinence the’cure’ for addiction, There are some who get recovery either by stopping completely or going at their own speed. All roads in recovery were heading slower or faster away from the abyss.  You don’t have to take the elevator all the way to the sub basement.  You can get off at any floor.  Dr.  Ray Baker’s research showed that recovery from addiction was like other diseases, the earlier the intervention the higher the success.  No one is judging.  The inclusivity in the community is the recognition none are perfect and no one is a saint.  Honesty begins with the recognition of a problem and asking for help. I loved the banner at the IDAA, International Doctors in AA meeting which stated, “We are not alone”.  Addiction is so lonely.  Egomania with an inferiority complex and such a load of lies.

Lots more people here, I’ve had a muffin at Waves with Cafe Latte.  Madigan loves the smells of all the other dogs passing by.  He insisted on a taste of the muffin.  

Well the bands gone funky with a raw rock and roll sound that’s telling me I’ve done enough writing and must get into the present.  One day at a time.  Practicing the presence of God. It’s called the present because it’s a gift.  Getting my head in the same room as my ass is.

I’m so glad I’ve come. Great weather. Great people.  Such a terrific vibe. 

Recovery Day

When I attended my first Recovery Day celebration in downtown Vancouver I was impressed with the slogan, « I’m in recovery and I vote ».

The history of abuse of the mentally ill but specifically those with addiction and alcoholism has been longstanding.  Being a doctor who works with the mentally ill population and especially with those with addiction I’ve had to literally take all the same abuse that my patients suffer routinely. Being in recovery myself for decades I know intimately the demeaning humiliating behaviours directed to those who have one addiction by those who have another. Closet alcoholics were the worst for the ‘holier than thou’ approaches to the addicts.  Tobacco smokers condemned pot smokers.   

All the while neuroscientific research exposed the  disease of the reward pathways of the brain lambic system with studies showing this not only in man but also in monkeys and rats. 

 No longer do we encounter the offensive name calling and dismissive arrogance that so dominated the social Darwinism of the eighties and beyond but still the neglect is palpable in this field.  Blaming and shaming are the principle approaches to those who suffer from addiction.  It’s no more a moral issue than the colour of one’s hair is a moral issue. It’s a brain disease which develops with exposure no different than the radium sickness that plagued the women who painted the numbers on watch’s with uranium paint so they glowed back in the day when radioactivity was just being understood.. 

A little of something may even be good but a lot is bad for you.  A brief exposure is tolerable but prolonged exposure is deadly.

Each person has a genetically defined level of tolerance for alcohol, for instance.  In genetic studies, 50% of identical twins who develop alcoholism will see their twin develop alcoholism even when raised in a different home. That’s powerful evidence of the disease basis of addiction.  

It’s not just illegal drugs or activities but increasingly with chronic illness people become ‘dependent’ physiologically on the substance that at first saved them. Medications like morphine and clonazepam which can result in dependence can lead to addiction just as food which can save a person can kill them in obesity with diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease. .

Addiction itself is not just the ‘drug’ but rather a characteristic set of behaviours and changes that occur once individuals pass the proverbial cucumber to pickle line of dependence. These changes included spending an inordinate amount of time involved in the seeking and use of the agent, moral and ethical changes associated with obtaining the agent, psychological changes, mood sswings, character lapses, work behaviour change,  relationship changes, all well documented and gloriously evident to observers all the while the actual sufferer is wholly incapable of seeing or doing anything about this, commonly themselves in denial. Most commonly they even react to any external approaches to place  restriction on their aberrant behaviour with mild to severe and outright paranoia.  These behaviours of extreme mental illness are uncharacteristic of the individual and yet those with the chronic disease will despite origins in society and estate end up in jails, institutions or death due directly because of the disease of addiction.  Skid row is well known to politicians, lawyers, professionals and the once very wealthy. It is no surprise that Alcoholics Anonymous was begun by a surgeon, stock broker and lawyer. Yet the average member of society would not likely associate the drunk or addict as one of their own.  

The greatest threat to the addicts and alcoholics are those who capitalize on their disease, the enablers and the outright psychopaths and sociopaths.  In Canada 10 % of the population consume 80% of the alcohol and this figure is the same for each of the most recognized major addictions whether they are mood altering drugs or so called process addiction like gambling and sex.  

A world reknowned addiction researcher declared at an international conference that his research is not funded in the millions to stop addictive behaviours but to identify those who are at risk for persisting in these behaviours which profit others past the point when they no longer have money to pursue their addictions and continue to embarrass the industry that some would say stole their livelihood.  

Today the principle culprit is the government ‘pushers’ who lie outrightly with forked tongue, claiming to want to help addicts while at the same time their salaries are paid for by the avails of this addictive process. So to this day the government approach is lukewarm at best to the purveyors of death, those disgusting members of tobacco boards and their recent cohorts the pushers of marijuana.  It’s all about money and you can’t make a killing of a profitable omelette if you can’t break a few eggs.

A tshirt of the Recovery Movement  is « ‘I’m evidence’.  For so long the lie that addiction was not curable prevailed yet as painful and difficult as it was millions have thrown off their chaîns.  The ‘butt out’ anti smoking movement under taken individually and at a public health level has been so successful that the very air we breathe in the work places and restaurants of advanced countries is no longer second hand smoke.  The evidence is even more powerful in the changes in life expectancy and the survival in lung and heart diseases.  Exercise programs are altering the food addiction obesity that had always plagued the richest of society whether in India, Africa or America. ‘Super size it’ is being challenged by information and exercise.  Just knowing the source of the disease in the compulsive behaviours protects individuals from the fad diets and countless other ineffectual approaches to addiction, a mental and physical illness.

Increasingly the anger so common with interruption of the source of abuse is being identified and the unconscious lies that go with the often psychotic rage that invariably attempts to form allies, and seek rescuers and ‘demand’ changes to ‘achieve’ what is some often simply  ‘ more’ of whatever.  These individuals  enlist those financially and politically themselves addicted or likely to profit from the addiction.  Addicted women are especially so seductive in enlisting men to help them persist in their addictions. 

 Dr. Paul O. , a great leader of the Recovery Movement, himself a recovered addict , paraphrased, said “I could find a problem with a blank wall and if you didn’t see the problem, then it was even a greater problems.”

So historically the pressure of the addicts with collusion has seen a variety of addiction issues phrased as civil rights concerns, bars being allowed to be open around the clock, legalization of drugs, man boy love decriminalization for the ‘8 is too late’ crowd, the right to candy bars, one armed bandits , the crack of gambling, showing up everywhere.  

The doctors who work with addicts, like the leper doctors before them are not only shunned but are covertly attacked by legal systems which discourage health care workers in this field and enable the disease while appearing as a rescuer of those who have descended to psychosis and will use any means to kill the messenger who ‘confronts their addiction’ or stands in the way of their disease.

Meanwhile  the overt and covert aggression, the shaming and blaming in the ranks of those who themselves are apart of the drug pushing profiteers continues. 

Originally the Washingtonian spiritual movement and other evangelical movements were the only effective forces against addiction.  Dr. Freud considered addiction worse than schizophrenia and Dr. Carl Jung said that he knew of no cure for addiction but had seen some who had a miraculous recovery. The original 12 step peer support movement was the first reproducible cure with 50 men maintaining  abstinence from alcohol for five years and more. This epidemic of historical proportion saw this ‘cure’ , a true miracle of the 20th century, even as billions moved forward financially and in terms of leisure time to having the means to develop and maintain addictions which in the past were commonly only stopped  by poverty,  disease, or death. Spirituality though not necessarily any religion per se remains a special part of the recovery process.  

Anonymity helped the early movements because of the stigma associated with this ‘behaviour’ labeled a moral failing much like ‘bed wetting’ was until it was found to represent a delayed bladder development.  Even homosexuality, a naturally occurring behaviour throughout the animal kingdom, was considered degeneracy but worst of all were  the alcoholic and addict. The joke might well be that a person could say, “I may be a bed wetting homosexual but at least I’m not an addict.” 

Thanks to the incredible success of the 12 step programs millions of alcoholics and addicts not only recovered but went on to be rich and powerful and influential. The consequence was that all manner of parasitic ‘fad’ approaches latched  onto  the body of recovery. Every charlatan ,now that addicts and alcoholics were no longer impoverished, wanted to get their new earned money for whatever positive or nefarious scheme.  Even the medical community got on board and with the help of governments all claiming the best intentions began to prey on those in recovery . A famous psychologist summed it up by saying that America had become a nation of ‘caregivers and victims’.  It was all about money. 

Now the Recovery Movement began with those who like the ‘friends of schizophrenics’ and the various ‘cancer societies’ was developed by those themselves who had  recovered from addiction or had family and friends who had recovered from addiction.  It takes an addict to know an addict was a saying that helped raise the awareness of many.  This grass roots movment which served not only to raise awareness and get private and government funding to the people and places of greatest need also served to protect fellow sufferers from the often ‘subtle’ abuse of the enablers and profiteers, private and public.   Some of the ‘do gooders’ were addicted to the deceit of political correctness and two faced  countered the real efforts to address addiction with smiling falsehoods and feigned half truths.   The power of the tobacco companies was never appreciated until those in the streets realized how much money influenced the government politicians and government regulation bodies.  The very men and women paid exorbitantly in government regulatory bodies  to protect citizens were themselves profiting by protecting the ‘pushermen’ of various ‘ilks’.  Thankfully those in recovery in their personal journeys had learned to recognize the hidden addicts and those profiteers who claimed to be helping.

The community of recovery was vast and coined  the phrase  “there is shame in addiction but there is dignity in recovery’. Carry the message.

 Recovery Day is an international celebration and coming together of all those who individually and together are working to address the disease of addiction and support those ‘cures’ and those ‘processes’ which truly work.  It’s a wonderful event.  It’s a fabulous day. It’s hope and inspiration in face of a centuries old epidemic.