Motivational & Inspirational

DRAFT
7. Family Week

Family Week at rehab is a scary time. The patients are still in denial about the damage their addictions have caused, and now their families arrive to say: “You didn’t dent the car. You stole a car and crashed it and almost killed the other driver.”

One patient, an ophthalmologist from Florida, boasted to us for weeks how gorgeous his girlfriend was. He was right. In one of our couples’ sessions, when everyone began by “checking in,” she turned to him, starting softly: “Mark, I’m so glad you’re here. You need to be here. Please do what they tell you.” Then her voice rose, her face reddening. “Last month after you left home to come here, I was cleaning out the bedroom and saw something on top of the closet. It was an old shoe box. There were a bunch of videotapes inside. I took one out and popped it into the machine …”

Here, she paused, her voice rising another octave “… and I spent the next half hour watching you having sex in our bed with different women.”

He froze in his seat as she glared at him, an avenging Valkyrie. No one else in the room moved.

“When I got here last night, I gave a copy to your therapist,” she added. Then she then lifted her big purse from the floor, opened it, and pulled out three more tapes. “And if anyone here wants to see them, just ask.”

Hell hath no fury.

The term Family Week suggests you’ll ask members of your family to come to your treatment centre to support you and learn some tools so they can help you stay clean and sober when you leave. Addiction is, after all, a family disease, and yes, my mother was an alcoholic.

But when I heard about Family Week, the thought of inviting either of my two half-brothers or my half-sister never entered my head. They were fifteen and twenty years older than me, and we weren’t estranged, exactly, but we were distant. My parents were also long dead. As for my friends who’d intervened on me, I was so guilt-ridden I really couldn’t ask them to step up a second time.

But I had to have someone (though not all the patients did). I had to appear normal. I couldn’t be alone, my loneliness exposed for all to see. Looking back, I doubt I gave any of my family or friends a second thought. I called Jean straightaway and asked her. I explained that it wasn’t really for a week, but rather three days. She said she’d call back the next day with her answer.

I waited, nervous, unsure what her answer would be.

But in the end she said yes, I was desperately relieved.

Two weeks later, she arrived in Atlanta, checked in to the Comfort Inn nearby, and made her way to Talbott.

The first Family Week event was a welcome barbeque that evening. I introduced Jean to my room-mates and my therapy group mates and their families. It was like a cocktail party back home. Everyone was very light and chatty. But the alums, those who’d been in treatment elsewhere, knew what was to come the next morning.

Most Talbott patients were doctors and nurses, with some lawyers, judges, airline pilots, pro baseball players, and the odd admiral, priest, and orchestral conductor thrown in. Nearly everyone had a professional body that could withhold their licence to work — a powerful incentive to stay and “do the program.”

Talbott wasn’t one of these thirty days in and out facilities. This was long-term treatment, and since time itself is a factor in staying sober, and Talbott’s goal is not just to have you remain clean after you leave, but to work in the cockpit or the operating room, no one got out in less than three months. And if you were a relapsing anaesthesiologist, you could be there for up to a year.

All of Talbott’s eighty patients at that time lived in a low-rise apartment block within walking distance of the main building. I had three room-mates my first month: Ted, a defrocked priest who was an alcoholic and a sex addict; Gord, a kidney surgeon from Dallas who’d been one of the youngest colonels in the US Air Force; and Dan, a doctor from Ottawa who was a fentanyl addict.

On our way back to Jean’s hotel after the picnic, I asked her, “So, how did you like my friends?”

“Well …” she said slowly, “I don’t think I’ve ever met such a smart, charming, articulate group of sociopaths in my life.”

I guess she’d know. Before she became a doctor, she was the head nurse at what is now CAMH in Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

The next morning, after we were split into smaller family groups, the spouses introduced themselves. By the time Jean’s turn came, we’d heard all kinds of stories of spouses, generally wives, say that this was not their first Family Week, by any means. By this stage, they were just trying to hold the family together, keep the house, keep the kids from checking out entirely, either by disengaging or by raging, in order to cope with the chaos at home. They’d heard their husband’s promises before, and while they hoped this time would be different, painful family-demolishing experience told them likely not.

“So, Jean, tell us about yourself,” the therapist asked.

“Well, I’m a physician from Toronto and I …” She paused, “I don't really know why I’m here. I don't know Bob that well …”

What was she saying?!

My heart sank.

“Do you live together?” the therapist asked.

Jean laughed. “No, no.”

The fact was, our relationship was a huge secret, both to Jean’s medical colleagues and to her friends. And it was also not something she’d informed her ex-husband of, although their kids would occasionally see me when I stayed the night at their house. But they knew nothing about me or my situation, and they seemed not to care.

Over the next three days, Jean and I attended classes and groups and AA meetings together.

On the second day, just before an 8:00 p.m. AA meeting, Jean arrived at the assigned hall. “Bob, I can’t stay here. I’m going to go home tomorrow.”

“What?” I was overcome by a feeling of panic.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“No, no, you have to stay.”

“No, really. I'm going to go back to the hotel, pack my bags, and take the first flight out tomorrow morning. You’ll be fine without me.”

“No!” Why was she doing this? She couldn’t leave me.

“Jean, what’s wrong?”

At that moment, a female patient I was friends with walked by us with her partner in tow. She was about sixty years old, an alcoholic, and a nurse. Jean had met them at the picnic. “Shall we go in?” she said.

“Jean doesn’t want to.” I said, devastated.

“What? Why not?”

We all looked at Jean.

“Because I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’ve made a big mistake coming and now I need to get back to my children.”

I was completely undone. Panic tied my tongue.

My friend said: “Sure, okay. But you’re here now and we’re all going in, so let’s go to the meeting together.”

Jean acquiesced, and for the next hour I tried desperately to think of how to keep her there. If she left next morning, I was sure she’d never see me again. That she would convince herself I had just been a fling, a wild, risky, crazy boomerang after she’d taken her three kids and left their father the year before. That this entire episode, especially her coming here, had been insane.

After the meeting, I had to go return to my room in order to make curfew, as did my female friend. Her partner said she’d walk Jean back to the hotel, where all the family members were staying.

My last words to Jean were: “Stay, honey. Please stay.”

I had never felt as desperate as I did at that moment.

All she said was: “Goodnight.”

This was pre smartphone days, and our outside calls at the centre were very limited. So, when I awoke the next morning, I didn’t know if Jean was at the hotel, at the airport, or already in the air on her way back to Toronto. I called her hotel as soon as I could and was informed that she hadn’t checked out, but that she wasn’t in her room.

At breakfast in Talbott’s cafeteria, I saw my friend whose partner had walked Jean back to her hotel. I waved her over.

“Have you seen Jean?”

“No.”

“I guess she’s gone.”

“Bob, I think you should let her tell you.”

I’d pushed a boundary and got pushed back.

Despondent, I made my way from breakfast to our first class. What would I say to everyone? That we really weren’t that close? Or worse, that she didn’t like what she saw in our first day and decided to not waste another day of her life waiting to end this no-hope relationship?

Five minutes in to the class, the door opened and … in walked Jean. She apologized for being late, explaining that said she had gone for a long walk and had gotten lost on her way back. I couldn’t wait for the class to end.

When it did, I asked the obvious: “What happened?”

“Well, your nice friend’s friend took me back to the hotel and asked me to go for a coffee. Pretty soon … other women [arrived who were there for] Family Week — half a dozen of them. We all crowded around the table. I told them I had to leave. We talked in a way I’d never done in my life — even when I was counseling alcoholics. When the hotel closed the coffee shop for the night, we went upstairs and continued to talk in my room. We talked for three hours. Not just about me, but about all of us. They told me about their panic, their need to flee, their determination to stick it out. By the time we all went to bed, one thing was clear. My wanting to leave last night had nothing to do with you. It had everything to do with my failed marriage, and how I’d stuck it out long after it was over. Since I left him over a year ago, I’d never given myself the time to, as they say here, ‘process’ it all. I cried and cried when we were talking, and those women held me and hugged me, it felt like all night long. They were wonderful.”

“So, you’ll stay?”

“I guess I need to,” she said, smiling widely.

Acknowledge Your Role in the System
Say it with me: “My name is ________________ and I’m a tool of capitalism.” A vital first step toward an ethical practice is being aware of and owning our roles within a troublesome consumption-machine and the human, animal, and environmental consequences that come along with that. Being aware of the impact of the systems within which we operate can empower us with an enriched understanding of the work that we do and, hopefully, help us advocate for change. There is a fine line between being aware of issues and being crushed by the weight of the systemic problems we face. Aim for the former to stay in a headspace of action and empowerment, and remember, we can’t single-handedly save the world in one profound act. What we can do is implement some of the actions outlined in this book, and develop some of our own, to effect incremental change toward a more equitable world.
Help your Audience Live (Mentally) Healthily
Over the years there have been all sorts of sketchy ways the creative industries have been complicit in manufacturing needs. The practice of manipulating audience behaviour has become increasingly stealthy through the use of things like dark patterns (manipulative interface designs that trick users into doing things they may not have wanted to do), the repetitive hyper-targeting and re-targeting of ads and past-viewed products, and addictive experiences in digital product design. Aiming to identify and avoid these modes of practice is a key step toward an ethical practice.
I would argue that we can’t be conscious creatives if we’re exploiting self-esteem to sell a product, infusing fat-phobia into our marketing messages, advertising nutritionally void foods to kids, producing experiences that capitalize on a dopamine/reward response, selling high fashion using violent, misogynistic imagery, or promoting mindless consumption. These ethical pitfalls aren’t always simple to avoid, however mindful awareness, positive intentions, and advocating for the promotion of healthy behaviours in our audiences are steps in the right direction.
Make it Analogue
When creating with objectives toward developing strong and connected communities, consider that reliance on or defaulting to a technology-based solution might not serve our cause well. Social Innovation leader Ezio Manzini believes that a community’s reliance on digital connectivity can actually weaken a once-solid social fabric. This replacement of authentic, real-world connections with connections based in superficial, digital realms can, arguably, compromise a community’s resilience. If technology is necessary in your creative work, ensure it plays a supporting role and never replaces face-to-face human connection.
Acknowledge The Privilege of Ethical Practice
Let’s promise to stop judging the people around on us whose choices we don’t perceive to be ethical. Having the ability to make socially and environmentally conscious decisions can be steeped in a privilege not universally shared. For example: ethically made materials, resources, food, and fashion often come at a higher price point and are therefore inaccessible to many people. To have the choice to work for an ethical employer often demands earning a college education, which requires financial means and intellectual aptitude. Advocating for change can require long hours, emotional labour, mental fortitude, and a requirement for presence in collective action not always available to those whose safety, mental health, or physical health may be compromised. To be supportive allies in the pursuit of a better world, we must start with an understanding of the complex systems that can impact our abilities to act. When we withdraw judgment from other people’s choices, we can remember to do the same for ourselves. Usually we are doing the best we can with the awareness and the resources we have at the time.