Dealing with addiction

By DAVID YOUNT
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

More than 10 percent of American men and six percent of American women are chronic drug abusers. Fifteen million are dependent on alcohol. In the space of a year 1.3 million Americans are treated in hospital emergency rooms for drug abuse, one in four of them for a combination of drugs and alcohol.

Despite the common depiction of addiction as part of a lively social scene, its effects are suffered personally, destroying individual lives. Supermarket tabloids revel in the party antics of celebrities, marking their frequent trips to posh rehab centers, and leaving the impression that addiction is simply a bad habit that can be kicked once and for all.

Its victims know better. Addiction is a lifelong, lonely disease. Recovery is elusive, sobriety an everyday ordeal.

The latest cautionary tale is related by rock guitarist, alcoholic, and heroin addict Eric Clapton in his best-selling autobiography, "Clapton." In 1982 he flew from London to Minnesota's Hazelden Clinic for treatment "drinking the plane dry," acknowledging "the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink anymore if I was dead."

Five years later, having relapsed, he returned to Hazelden. "I now had two children, neither of whom I was really administering to, a broken marriage, assorted bewildered girlfriends, and a career that, although it was still ticking over, had lost its direction. I was a mess."

One day in 1987, "absolutely terrified, in complete despair...I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room, I begged for help. I had no notion who I thought I was talking to...but I knew that on my own I wasn't going to make it, so I asked for help, and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered."

Clapton's recovery from addiction is little short of astounding. Although he attends 12-step programs wherever he happens to be on tour, the rock scene is not conducive to kicking the habit. Indeed, the relapse rates for addicts are abysmal: 90 percent for graduates of short-term treatment, 40 percent when treatment is comprehensive and long-lasting.

Little wonder, then, that those who seek to turn their lives around are inclined to surround themselves with other recovering victims. Jane Gross, writing in The New York Times, describes how a Florida town has become a Mecca for the afflicted. Delray Beach "is the epicenter of the country's largest and most vibrant recovery community, with scores of halfway houses, more than 5,000 people at 12-step meetings each week, recovery radio shows, a recovery motorcycle club, and a coffeehouse that boasts its own recovery group."

Today's victims, many of whom have lost jobs, marriages, and custody of their children, elect to start new lives in a warm, welcoming place among people who are similarly afflicted. There are plenty of low-wage jobs for them in Florida's tourist economy, 1,200 halfway house beds for modest rents, and supportive churches. Clapton himself founded Crossroads, a treatment center in warm Antigua.

(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)

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