FRiends...if you or anyone you know is suffering the darkness of addiction...Celebrate Recovery is the real thing. It's free and there is one near you. Google it for location.
For those needing residential treatment... Teen Challenge should be considered. Despite the name, it's for adults. Google it, there is one near you.
“Celebrate Recovery is a biblical and balanced program that helps us overcome our hurts, hang-ups, and habits. It is based on the actual words of Jesus rather than psychological theory. 20 years ago, Saddleback Church launched Celebrate Recovery with 43 people. It was designed as a program to help those struggling with hurts, habits and hang-ups by showing them the loving power of Jesus Christ through a recovery process. Celebrate Recovery has helped more than 17000 people at Saddleback, attracting over 70% of its members from outside the church. Eighty-five percent of the people who go through the program stay with the church and nearly half serve as church volunteers.”
Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church? No thanks. Not for me. But if it helps some people, great! I am certainly not opposed to whatever works.
But the problem as I see it with this and similarly Bible based and Christ centered recovery programs is that unless you are already a member of that church or are already of a similar mindset religiously it might be a turn off. This program also helps people with “hurts, habits and hang-ups”. But understand an alcoholic who has reached rock bottom, has just come off a bender after losing their job, family, friends and can’t stop drinking, may not identify with someone who is not an alcoholic and simply has a “hang up” or a bad habit like shopping too much or smoking or eating too much or is just “hurting” because they can’t get a date, their marriage broke up, their kids aren’t turning out right, their dad just died and that makes them sad…. whatever that “hurt” is.
The beauty of AA is its single purpose * and simplicity; one alcoholic who has been there and done that, gone to Hell and back and is now living a happy sober life and helping the new comer.
I understand that some have issues with AA and the “Higher Power” being too inclusive and not Christ centered, but again that is why AA works for so many. AA doesn’t preclude a Christ centered recovery or membership in a church like Saddleback but it also welcomes the Catholic, the Jew, the Buddhist, the Mormon, Hindu the agnostic or Atheist - any alcoholic seeking help without pre-conditions.
A program like Celebrate Recover might work wonders for someone who is already a follower of Rick Warren’s preaching and books, but probably not so much for someone who is not; a Catholic or Jew (or someone raised in many other faiths) for instance or someone who has rejected organized religion, an agnostic, someone who has tried religion to “cure” them and it didn’t work or was told it was because they were sinners rather than suffering from an addiction. The last thing many want is to be beaten over the head with a Bible. I’m sorry to say that but in my experience, that is true for a lot of alcoholics.
* Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
The problem with AA and the “secular” program is Step 3 and Step 10, where they talk about “God as we understood Him”. Members drive a truck through that loophole, so much so that if M someone says that Jesus is God then they are very likely to get keyed up on for “bringing religion to the forum”.
I used to attend a lot of AA meetings with my husband and many Al-Anon meetings on my own before and after his recovery and I never witnessed anyone being admonished or shut down for talking about their Higher Power being God or Jesus or for being a Christian.
But I was at a meeting once where the person was celebrating 10 years of sobriety but hadn’t been going to AA or Al-Anon meetings for last 4 years, had no longer been involved in AA at all and this person didn’t talk very much about her “drunk a log”, what happened and how I got here, what life is like now”, she didn’t share her experience, strength and hope, but instead used the meeting to proselytize her rather new found faith and go on to tell those at the meeting that unless they accepted Jesus Christ exactly in the way she did, follow the preacher she was following, be a member of her church, that they would not only not stay sober but in fact they would go to Hell and told the group that while AA was her beginning and opened the door to her God, that AA was not the answer.
But while this made quite a few of us uncomfortable and a few that she called on to share, tried to get back on point, nobody tried to stop her from sharing or tried to shut her up. But after the meeting a few old timers had a talk with her; explaining to her and reminding her of AA’s sole purpose and asking her to remember what she was like when she attended her very first AA meeting as they remembered her then, and if she, someone BTW who used to be an agnostic, a former non-believer but a suffering alcoholic and a IV drug and coke addict, how she would have felt and how she would have reacted if at her very first AA meeting she had heard someone say the things she said that night, they asked her to honestly ask herself if she would have walked out and never came back. She had no answer and waked out and didn't come back for a long time. And that was a shame because she had a powerful story and message to share without all the proselytizing.
The last I knew of her through some mutual friends, she had divorced her husband, a fellow recovering alcoholic because he wasn’t sufficiently religious when he came to find that the church they had been attending was not Christian and Bible based but rather cultish. She then cut off all ties with her family and former friends and had accused her father, brother and uncle and husband, even her teenage son of sexually abusing her because her preacher told her she must have been, that that was the cause of her alcohol and drug abuse and implanted in her “false” memories through some sort of “regression” therapy combined with demonic exorcism. She finally left that church but the damage was already done, she went back to drinking for a time and eventually came back to AA a much more humble person and while still a believer in Christ as her savior, not so quick to judge others.