Owen Wilson s sobriety companion no sub for rehab
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Bill: Owen Wilson is the latest celeb to try suicide as an answer to drug addiction. After his recent attempt, instead of going from Cedars Sinai hospital to a drug rehab, Wilson hired a $750 a day sobriety companion. Imagine paying for what all the standard 12-step programs give away free - an older member who acts as a sponsor for someone new to recovery.
Dr. Dave: That's a base pay of $275,000 annually! A lot of old-timers in Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc., must be thinking that a whole new line of work just opened up. Except the 12-step guidelines - called "Traditions" - prohibit professionalizing the programs' volunteer nature. 12-step programs stress there are "no dues or fees for membership."
Bill: That sounds fine, but you know, Dave, some of our readers must be wondering about these new "behavioral modification" rehabs. They advertise in-and-out in 10 days! A lot a quicker than the traditional Minnesota Model 12-step programs.
Dr. Dave: The Minnesota Model begins with AA's first step - admitting and understanding your own personal powerlessness over booze and/or dope. What these aversion therapy programs do is let you have your favorite meal and booze, then give you medications to vomit uncontrollably.
Bill: Yeah, I have met a couple alcoholics who still drink after getting out of that kind of rehab, but haven't been able to stomach a plate of prime ribs. I think what you are saying, Dave, is that these rehabs don't let the addict learn the therapeutic skills for themselves. They remain passive in the face of their addiction. The "cure" is done to or for them. But AA members talk about their new "sobriety tools" or how they are "working" the program.
Dr. Dave: If you're a patient in one of these quickie places, instead of completing a self -inventory of the emotional pain you've had in life and the conflicts that drive your addiction, their non-AA approach is give you a shot of truth serum, interview you and then play back your answers when you come out of the drug fog.
Bill: Talk about buying 12-step therapy on the fast, nasty and cheap! And now Owen Wilson is paying for the emotional closeness and support of the recovery community by renting his own private sponsor.
Dr. Dave: Actually, emotional recovery is what is missing from all these shortcuts. Addicts, alcoholics, gamblers on a bender, binge eaters and all the other compulsive disorders are marked by shame and isolation. Reconnecting emotionally usually begins with finding others in the same boat as you, and especially with a sponsor who reaches out voluntarily to the newcomer because it is part of the sponsor's own recovery program.
Bill: We've been there ourselves. Who better to help each other come back?
Dr. Dave: Recovering friends, fellow members and sponsors have a bond built on fellowship, not a paycheck. Minnesota Model counselors voluntarily facilitate these connections. They don't provide them as part of paid health care.
Bill: The First Step self-assessment work I did in my own 28 days in rehab helped me face myself and my feelings. Sharing them out in the open with my fellow patients gave me a kind of secular absolution ... to decide I did not need to numb myself with booze. Those experiences are vivid to me still, not a videotape done under anesthesia.
Dr. Dave: And then you took all that information out to your new friends and sponsors, joining the community of recovery. Essentially, you began to renew your emotional and social growth - growth that addiction had stymied. It doesn't mean some people in recovery may not need therapy to address depression, or pay for legal and/or financial counseling to get out of the hole their addiction dumped them in. But they didn't try to buy "sober companions" in order to have a new sense of community.
Bill: You can't pay someone to "feel your pain." That's as smart as if you needed to lose weight and hired someone else to go on a diet for you.
Bill Manville and Dave Moore met when Dr. Moore was Director of The MacDonald Center addictions rehabilitation facilities at Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego, where Bill was a volunteer peer facilitator. Dr. Moore is a licensed psychologist and chemical dependency professional who conducts addiction prevention and treatment research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and, previously, at the Universities of Washington and Puget Sound. Dave also has a 20-year history of developing and directing youth and adult addiction treatment programs in Washington, Hawaii, Alaska and California.
Bill Manville's novel "Goodbye" (Simon Schuster) was a BOM choice. Sober now for over twenty years, the native New Yorker was also host of the No. 1 radio show "Addictions Answers." His most recent work, "Cool, Hip Sober," was published by Forge Press, New York.
Got a question about addiction? E-mail Bill and Dave at drdaveandbill@yahoo.
Related: Owen Wilson s sobriety companion no sub for rehab
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