ADDICTION'S
SIEPCH I 1.1) R EN
PEOPLE CROWD AN AA MEETING
IN A CHURCH BASEMENT.
SOME ARE
DETROI T J EWI SH NE WS
PHIL JACOBS ED OR
eslie remembers the rain
spattering against her patio
door. Somewhere, hi the dis-
tant part of her sleep, a phone
rings over and over again.
Damn phone, shut up. She
wills it quiet. Her head is too
heavy to lift. A throbbing ache
in the center of her forehead, though, will
not permit sleep.
It was supposed to be an average day.
She woke up to it, faced it, got Kenny,
her 8-year-old son, out of bed and set him.
in front of the TV. Coco Puffs, apple juice,
Nickelodeon, make his lunch — peanut
butter again. Back upstairs to shower, get
dressed and go. It's a cool Michigan April.
Kenny gets dropped off at school, and she's
on time for work.
She hasn't been late in ages for her job.
At 2 p.m., Leslie is scheduled to attend a
small conference 15 miles away. She has
some afternoon time to kill.
The names in this article have been
changed to protect the identity of those in
12-Step programs.
The rest she can't remember.
She failed to pick up Kenny after He-
brew school. He waited and waited. Ken-
ny stood next to the flagpole; he practiced
throwing stones at a stop sign. A custo-
dian called an assistant principal. The as-
sistant principal called Leslie's boss. She
didn't know where to find Leslie. Kenny's
father, who lived in a different part of the
state, got to the custodian's office at 8 p.m.
There, he found his son watching TV next
to a boiler room.
"I damn near lost it all," Leslie says now.
"My alcoholism was my little secret, my
demon. I didn't know whom to tell, though.
I was always the good little Jewish girl,
everybody's favorite. Drinking wasn't
something talked about at the sisterhood
meetings at shul.
"Four cups of wine for Passover? I re-
member one seder where I drank my four
cups of wine, plus the leftover cups that
the people left on the table. I was in col-
lege; it was 'cute.' I even drank Elijah's
cup."
After her fall from grace, and after al-
most losing custody of her son, Leslie en-
rolled in a 12-Step program at the sug-
gestion of a therapist. She didn't go easi-
ly, though. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
was a "Christian thing." 12 Steps? It was
someone else's program, not hers.
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by
Wall Street broker Bill Wilson and Akron
physician Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith in
1935. It had its early associations with an
Episcopalian religious organization known
as the Oxford Group. (See related story).
Now, after some three years of being
"clean," Leslie says the 12 Steps saved her
life. And while this plan of overcoming ad-
diction has Christian origins, it is "most
definitely" something Jews can learn from,
she says.
"The concept of 12 Steps is compatible
with Judaism," says Rabbi Abraham J.
Twerski, M.D., an expert on addiction re-
covery. A Chasidic Jew, Dr. Twerski is
medical director and founder of Gateway
Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa, Pa.
He agrees that "the 12 Steps have a
Christian origin. We as Jews are quite
paranoid about that. Maybe because of
past missionary activity."
Today, a small minority of AA meetings
are held in temples and synagogues. The
vast majority are conducted in church so-
cial halls. In some meetings, it is a matter
of custom to close a meeting with the
Lord's Prayer.
"There's a born-again feeling for the re-
covering addict," Rabbi Twerski said. "But
a born-again feeling is not [necessarily]
a Christian concept, either. When a per-
son does teshuvah, he says, 'I am not the
person who abused alcohol. I am a new
person.' "
"The 12 Steps emphasize spiritual and
personal awareness, taking stock, reach-
ing out to others in need," writes Jeff
Neipris, executive director of the New
York-based Jewish Alcoholics, Chemical-
ly Dependent Persons and Significant Oth-
ers Foundation (JACS). As noted in Twelve
Jewish Steps To Recovery, by Rabbi Ker-
ry M. Olitzky and Dr. Stuart A. COpans,
"These are basic Jewish values, and they
need to be exercised much more forceful-
ly by the Jewish community in dealing
with the problem of alcoholism and chem-
ical dependency."