|
| print this
 Unite
and Conquer-Newsweek, February 5, 1990 |
Magazine
and Newspaper Articles |
| Magazine
and Newspaper Articles |
|
THE
NEW ‘EST’
by
Kathleen Neumeyer
At
AA, OA, CA. NA and PA, you can not only lose
an addiction, you can network yourself silly-
even find a spouse
It’s
a well-dressed, Westside kind of group: boutique clothed
women with serious hair and Rolex watches. Most of the men
look as if they’ve come straight from the office without
even loosening their ties. Standing at the end of the first
few rows is a group of earnest-faced guys in blazers, gray
slacks and well polished loafers. They look like agents.
This could be a weeknight screening at the Directors Guild.
In fact, this regular Wednesday-night gathering of about
1,100-at Brentwood’s University Synagogue-is, if anything,
even trendier than a Hollywood preview. And certainly more
star-studded. Ever since Betty Ford, Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth
Taylor made drug-addiction recovery-and the endless discussion
of it-trendy, self-help programs, and their cookie cutter
offshoots have become not only acceptable but almost hip
badges of courage among celebs and make-it-urban-professional
crowds. And this one, the Pacific Group of Alcoholics Anonymous,
the largest AA meeting in the world, is no exception.
No question, abstinence is in for the ‘90s. Recovered
substance abusers from Margaux Hemingway to Tony Curtis
have hit the lecture circuits to describe their battles
with the bottle and/or drugs-and they're grabbing fees ranging
from Hemmingway'’ lowball $5,000 a shot to Stacy Keach’s
$25,000 for his cocaine-to-prison tale. ”There’s
a Cocaine Anonymous meeting in Santa Monica where you’ll
see more celebrities than at Spago,” says a Westwood
psychiatrist.
“You’re
nobody in Hollywood these days unless you are attending
one of these groups,” says Dr. Dickson Young, a past
president of the Alcoholism Council of Los Angeles County
and one of only 3,000 doctors in the country certified as
an addictionologist, medicine’s newest niche.
In a cover story last month, Newsweek estimated that the
number of self-help support groups have quadrupled in the
past 10 years. An estimated 16 million Americans-more than
one million in the Los Angeles area-are in some kind of
recovery program. But only a small percentage goes to the
trendy private detox, counseling or weight-loss clinics
that are making megabucks on the new asceticism. Most opt
for one of the many anonymous groups. Most opt for one of
the many anonymous groups. There are at least 27 such groups
in L.A., all using some spin-off of AA’s tried-and-true
model. Groups range from Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers
Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Pills
Anonymous, Divorce Anonymous, Prostitutes Anonymous and
Debtors Anonymous to Artists Anonymous, Sex Anonymous, Parents
Anonymous, Impotents Anonymous and Depressives Anonymous.
There’s Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics and
Codependents Anonymous for the spouses, children, sweethearts
and friends. There’s even a Diazepam Support Group
for people trying to kick a Valium addiction. And almost
all of them began in Los Angeles.
There are groups that meet at members’ homes for recovering
doctors and attorneys, and there’s one for actors
and agents. Both ABC and CBS have weekly in-house meetings.
Every Tuesday at 8a.m., there’s an AA meeting in the
United States Capitol for members of congress and their
staffs. There’s a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous-for
nudists-every week at Elysian Fields. KIEV-AM radio airs
a thrice-weekly talk show, The Recovery Show, aimed at addiction
and dependency. Executives with recovery problems are ducking
out during their lunch breaks to go to exclusive meetings
attended by other execs and managers.
“Nowadays,
the assumption is that if you aren’t recovering from
some addiction or another, you must be still practicing
it,” says Dr. Judith Stevens-Long, professor of psychology
at California State University, Los Angeles.
“I
tell my patients that abstinence is chic, they they’re
right in step,” says Young, who treats alcoholics
and other addictive personalities in private practice and
serves as medical director of New Beginnings at Century
City Hospital, where patients undergo a one-month detoxification
and rehabilitation program. “Recovery is especially
hot in Southern California, where everyone is so health-conscious.
It fits right in. Everyone is drinking Evian.”
Ironically, the anonymous meetings themselves have become
social events, places where you work out your problems and
also meet new friends and do some serious networking. For
many, the groups have come to replace singles’ bars.
“Half of the guys here don’t even have a weight
problem,” confides Gordon R., a longtime member of
Overeaters Anonymous. “They just come to score.”
“These
groups are like any club,” says an AA member. “During
breaks, you start talking about what you’re doing,
sharing ideas-the kind of conversation you might have had
at a cocktail party, except you’re discussing things
that really matter to you. Eventually it gets around to
business.”
It’s not exactly the Knights of Columbus, but there’s
the same ripe environment for opportunity. “In many
instances, members use their group connections much the
same way guys used to attend church just to sell insurance
policies,” says the friend of one AA member. “I
saw two people pitch an editor a story just last night,”
says a member of an AA meeting for writers. “I’ve
seen guys show up with scripts in their hands. But even
though these things happen, they’re not the point
of the group.”
The
first AA meeting in L.A. was held on December 19, 1939,
four years after a New York stockbroker who called himself
Bill W. and an Akron surgeon known as Dr. Bob Smith found
that discussing their problems help to overcome them. They
published a book called Alcoholics Anonymous-now known within
the organization as the Big Book-in 1939. A nonalcoholic
woman hosted the first West Coast meeting in her home on
Benecia Street in West L.A. A second group was formed in
South Pasadena, a third in a Masonic hall on Pico Boulevard.
By November 1941, the L.A. chapter of AA had a post-office
box, a listed telephone number and a newsletter. Soon, California
had more members and groups than any other state, a distinction
it has held ever since.
The AA formula had been proving itself successful for a
decade before it spawned its first copycat group. Narcotics
Anonymous was started in 1953 by four addicts and originally
run out of a Sun Valley home. Then, also in keeping with
the AA model, a compulsive gambler who called himself Jim
W. (nobody uses last names in anonymous groups) formed the
first chapter of Gamblers Anonymous in L.A. in 1957. In
November 1958, an L.A. woman known as Rozanne S. and her
husband escorted a friend they thought needed help to a
GA meeting.
“I
was a world saver,” Rozanne says. “Although
I didn’t have a gambling problem myself, what I heard
at that meeting made me realize that I was not alone, that
the anger and resentment I felt, the lying and the cheating
and the self-pity, that I was not the only one who felt
that way.”
Rozanne’s problem was that she weighed 161 pounds,
even though she was only five-foot-two. She realized her
compulsive overeating and the resultant self-loathing was
akin to what compulsive gamblers felt. “I went to
GA founder Jim W. and asked him to help me form a group,”
she says. Thus, it was Rozanne and two friends who held
the first meeting of Overeaters Anonymous on January 19,
1960-again based on AA’s basic program and again based
here in LA.
Initially operated out of Rozanne’s dining room, Overeaters
Anonymous has grown to 200,000 members attending 9,400 meetings
each week in 50 countries. In contrast to Weight Watchers
and other diet programs, Overeaters Anonymous does not promote
any particular diet or eating plan. For years, OA did distribute
a “gray sheet” diet plan but gave it up in the
late 1980s when diet clubs and weight-loss plans such as
Jenny Craig, Nutri/Systems and Optifast proliferated. They
decided that OA’s primary mission should be to free
its members from their obsessions, rather than whittle off
their excess pounds. “We try to get at the heart and
soul of the compulsive nature more than we try to get thin,”
Rozanne says.
During the ‘60s and ‘70s, a variety of “consciousness-raising”
self-help groups emerged, but most returned to AA’s
model to face the problems of the ‘80s. The first
meeting of Cocaine Anonymous was held in rented space at
the motion-picture health clinic on La Brea Avenue. Today
there are more than 400 CA meetings a week in L.A. Codependents
Anonymous is one of the newest spin-offs-and one of the
few not founded in L.A.
Chris A. founded Divorce Anonymous with a friend shortly
after a long-term relationship ended. Believing that the
same 12- those in the throes of a failed relationship, step
program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous could offer comfort
and support to Chris held the first meeting at the Council
House for Jewish Women in April 1987. Thirteen people showed
up. Today, she is holding four DA meetings a week, averaging
as many as 50 participants, throughout Southern California.
Like
AA, all the anonymous groups stress a practical approach
to maintaining good habits, a rational lifestyle, as well
as spiritual renewal and a pride in self free from obsessions.
And
though all anonymous meetings are run by the members themselves,
with no professional therapists or facilitators in attendance,
they follow strict routines and adhere to rigid rules.
There are two principles common to anonymous groups: the
acceptance of individual responsibility for the problem-meaning
readily identifying one-self as addicted-and the assurance
of anonymity. Although within the group, members sometimes
identify themselves by their full names-and frequently give
identifying information about their lives and professions-it
is a cardinal rule that nothing said inside the meeting
be carried outside.
Oddly, in this day of tell-all reform, one of the reasons
for the anonymity is to prevent anyone from using the group
for their own self-aggrandizement. “it’s really
not so much to protect the reputations of the members-because
often belonging to AA is the aspect of their lives for which
they can be most proud-but to prevent them from exploiting
the group,” says one longtime member. And going public
can backfire. When a Kitty Dukakis or Elizabeth Taylor backslides,
it reflects poorly on the organization they have been touting.
But what really makes AA and its kin unique is the utilization
of a 12-step recovery program called “12 Steps and
12 Traditions.” Though the wording varies to fit the
thrust of each group, the basic precepts are the same. The
first of the 12 steps, for example, always involves admitting
powerlessness over the addictive agent-whether it be alcohol,
food or a relationship. Members are urged to find a sponsor-a
mentor whom they can call if they feel the old temptation
rise-and to choose one “home group” to attend
on a regular basis, while visiting others as often as they
feel the need.
New members are asked to take a personal moral inventory,
to confess to their higher power and to another human being
their past sins and to ask the higher power to remove all
shortcomings. They are required to make amends where possible
to anyone they have ever harmed. And just as important,
they are charged with carrying the message to others who
suffer the same addiction.
The only criterion for membership is the desire to join.
There is no fee. Unlike many of the recovery clinics and
diet programs so popular today, the anonymous groups are
not run as money-making enterprises. Groups are supported
by voluntary contributions that are placed in a collection
basket passed at each meeting-know as the seventh tradition.
Donations from outside organizations, corporations or government
agencies are not accepted.
Similarities to a religious organization are not coincidental.
As many point out, the anonymous groups function much like
a church, and for many the 12-step program becomes more
than a lifestyle: it becomes their religion.
Meetings are opened by a leader, who identifies himself
and asks if there are others present who suffer from the
same addiction. Those attending their first meeting are
asked to stand and give their first name-“not to embarrass
you but to allow us to get to know you during the social
hour,” says one member. Those within their first 30
days of abstinence are asked to raise their hands. Each
time a person introduces himself by first name, the whole
crowd calls out, “Hello, -------.”
The 12 steps and the 12 traditions are read aloud, and portions
of the Big Book are sometimes read. At so-called open meetings,
there are speakers who tell what it was like when they were
drinking or using or overeating or gambling-kind of a witnessing.
The formula basically boils down to “Amazing Grace…..that
saved a wretch like me.” Good speakers are in demand
and often speak at many meetings. They become quite polished,
and their accounts are larded with humor.
There is a common argot-much talk of “working the
program” or “working the steps.” Members
say they “stuffed their feelings” or “played
old tapes” when they lapse into unproductive patterns
of relating. At a West Los Angeles meeting of codependents
Anonymous, a young man says, “Like many of you, I
lived in my head for years. But since I’ve been working
the program, I’ve become much more present in my feelings.”
Everyone nods. They know where he’s coming from. “Sayings
such as ‘We have to feel it in order to heal it’
or ‘The only way out is through’ helps people
express what recovery is all about,” says member Janet
M.
At the open meetings, members are encouraged to bring spouses,
children or friends to hear the speakers and to share in
the fellowship. There are dances, picnics and other social
events for members and their families, as well as weekend
conferences at resorts and hotels. “When you come
into a recovery group, you have to make it the focus of
your life,” says Rozanne. “It replaces whatever
activity you are trying to eliminate.”
“A
lot of people were reared with a strong religious background,
and then as they grew up they got away from it, "says
Young. “For those people, AA can be like a rebirth
of religious experience. The diagnosis of chemical dependency
allows them to come back to their old spiritual roots. In
other parts of the country people may go to church on Sunday
and then go to AA, but in Southern California I think a
lot of people use it for their church. They make AA their
religion.
Although some members of Anonymous groups insist they are
not religiously oriented, Cal State L.A.’s Stevens-Long
says that, on the whole, one of the reasons the 12-step
programs have been so successful is because of their similarities
with religion.
“Twelve
–step programs emphasize forgiveness,” she says.
“All successful religions forgive their followers
for their wrongdoings, because if they didn’t, there
would be no reason to belong. Twelve-step programs allow
for confession and atonement-basic premises in every ancient
religion.”
It is the dependency on the program that bothers some critics,
who feel the groups can come to function as a cult. “Another
factor the two have in common,” says Stevens-Long,
“is the feeling of members being helpless without
the program, that they need it in order to combat their
problem-that those who belong are in a state of grace and
those who don’t are not. They are urged to bring in
other followers. And there is a provision of community and
fellowship, a major tenet of most religions.”
Tarzana psychiatrist John Hochman, however, says the groups,
while “quasi-religious,” do differ sharply from
organized religion. “They talk about a higher power,
they have a code of conduct, a kind of scriptures-they read
the 12 steps at their meetings and they read from the Big
Book-but they don’t worship their founders. They don’t
impute miraculous powers to them. It’s like people
studying the teaching of Martin Luther King.”
Hochman says anonymous groups “differ from cults in
that cults are shrouded in secrecy. You don’t know
where the money is going. These groups are completely open.
You can go in and check them out. Sure, they do pick up
people who are helpless and demoralized, and they do make
them dependent on the group, but that’s better than
whatever these people were dependent on before.”
“In
a very real sense, AA does the same thing as the church,”
says Clancy I., who founded the Pacific Group 26 years ago
when there was a free night at the Ohio Avenue meeting hall
in West Los Angeles. “Like the church, AA gets people
to change their lifestyles so they wind up in a more comfortable,
spiritual way of life. That’s the goal of religion,
and the goal of all movements. But the difference is that
most don’t work. What makes AA unusual is that it
works.”
Nevertheless, addiction is not an exact science, and long-term
success can be problematic. Doctors now know it takes the
brain three years to recover from a chemical dependency,
and during that time the brain is changing, Young says.
“The patient is going to have ups and downs. At predictable
intervals-for five days every 4 to 6 weeks during the first
year, every 6 to 8 weeks in the second year and every 10
to 12 weeks in the third year-the patient is more susceptible
to relapse.”
According to a survey of AA members in the United States
and Canada, an alcoholic with less than a year of sobriety
has less than a 50-50 chance of making it through the next
year without a drink. With one to five years of sobriety,
he has an 86 percent chance. If he can stay sober for more
than five years, he has a 96 percent chance of not drinking
during the next year.
“Most
of you here won’t keep coming back,” an AA speaker
at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church at the corner of
Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard told a Friday-night
group recently. “Most of you will go back to drinking.”
Clancy
I., with 31 years of sobriety, is a member of the University
Synagogue AA group and a coveted speaker at recovery meetings
worldwide. His group had only 250 members when it moved
to the temple 12 years ago. There are usually some celebrities
in attendance, given the convenient and highfalutin location.
Names are never dropped, of course, but actors and rock
stars, some of whom have made their newfound sobriety or
abstinence known, frequent the meeting, where the riffraff
quotient is low.
“We
have a lot of sobriety at our meeting,” Clancy says.
“There are other trendy groups in town, but they don’t
have a great deal of sobriety”
One meeting fitting that description is held Friday nights
at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. The attire is
indeed trendy-leaning toward leather and chains. Unlike
at the pristine Brentwood meeting, no one seems to be able
to sit still during the proceedings. “This is certainly
a busy meeting,” the speaker finally says. “Why
didn’t you all just buy my motivational tape?”
Though all the anonymous groups follow the same precepts,
they don’t necessarily see eye to eye. Clancy was
asked to speak at some of the early meetings of Overeaters
Anonymous. “I was suppose to talk about obsessions,
as if all obsessions were alike,” he says, “I
weighed about 140 pounds then, and I just kept thinking
that all those fat old ladies should just quit eating so
much. Unless you have the obsession yourself, it just doesn’t
track.”
Some AA members look askance at groups such as Adult Children
of Alcoholics and codependents Anonymous, which they see
as fundamentally different from groups in which members
themselves take direct responsibility for their problems.
Members of ACA and CODA believe their problems stem from
dysfunctional families in which they were raised but that
they can overcome them through the 12-step method.
“The
son of [AA founder] Bob Smith, who may be the original adult
child of an alcoholic, has been quoted as saying he wouldn’t
join a group like ACA because he refuses to be frozen in
a state of adolescent victimization,” one longtime
AA member says. “What I find different about the groups
for adult children and codependents is that nobody looks
happy when they walk out. I’ve never been to an AA
meeting where I didn’t walk out feeling uplifted.
“I’d
rather debate against AA than for it,” he says. “The
arguments against AA are far more intellectually satisfying.
I can easily prove that AA is a singular piece of sophistry
for maladjusted misfits. The argument for it, on the other
hand, simply boils down to, ‘Well, it sure does work.’”
(Source:
Los Angeles, March 1990)
|
GO
BACK
GO
BACK