You know those holiday movies about Thanksgiving, the ones with all the drama and in the end everything ties up so nicely?

Sheer fantasy. 

A couple of Thanksgiving tales from the archives of my brain.  I’ve changed all the demographics, and the plots, but you’ll get the basic idea.  And you’ll probably say, “I know these guys!”

You do, but you don’t.

Scene One:

The parents have come to the children for Thanksgiving dinner.  Dad has a degenerative disease, one that is slowly killing him.  Mom is the insufferable martyr who handles him alone, wants to put him in a residential setting, but he’s on a waiting…

First, apologies for being so slow to respond to the thoughtful comments on the post Work is Your Playground.   This is the link, if you’re interested in that conversation.  

Now for something completely different. 

The Therapeutic Agents of the 12 Steps  

I’m not sure how much real therapy people get when they’re in a 12-Step program prior to a hospital stay, or even after a hospital stay.  And not everyone gets a hospital stay.  

But my guess is that the 12-Step meeting or recovery group becomes the only source of therapy for most people.  And the therapeutic agents of the group experience include:

(a) purging bad experiences by talking about them;

(b)…

Family therapists and addictions therapists tend to part ways when it comes to whether or not to cut off, in the name of not enabling, the “sick” member of the family, the one who steals the silverware to pay for the cocaine, the alcohol, the heroin.  Pick your substance, none of them are free.

Not that we’re naive.  We understand that an addict will do anything to get substances, and will exploit the family, in all kinds of ways, as a coping strategy under stress.  Object?  Get drugs.  Drug seeking. 

But family therapists like to keep the door cracked, the lines of…

Boy, that sounds severe. Especially from someone who thinks of concentration camps, “Work Will Set You Free” propaganda, Hitler’s design to convince Jews to work themselves to death.

But some people who work the Steps tell me that they don’t get five minutes off. No time to play. They’ve played for as many years as they used and abused drugs and alcohol, and want to make up for time lost. The world needs them. People need one another, and as a person, they’ve joined the human race.

So people in recovery work when they work. They don’t cheat the boss, and when…

It’s too late for that, but I do have memories of Mr. Franken running as a joke on Saturday Night Live.   But maybe I’m dreaming.

I have grown children, political creatures, strangely enough, since I tend to be very apolitical. Maybe not so strange.

One of them is also in “the business” which is not a family business at all. The “business” in California is television and movies, and he plays around in this world. The only reason we let him watch so much television growing up was that he swore he would go into the biz.

You can’t deny a…

Sometimes I try to give people who are struggling with addictions a little chizik.  Chizik (rhymes with whiz-ick, hard “ch”) is the Hebrish (Hebrew/Yiddish) word for strength. 

I tell them a quick story a patient told me a long time ago, but the message still works.

I imagine the old-timers in the 12 Step programs tell annecdotes like these over and over again.

An abused teenager cuts school to get high, with or without her friends. She’s severely depressed. At some point her family garbage has worn her down. She used to get good grades. She used to care about people.  No longer.

She’s only 15 and already has a…

OR CAUGHT IN A STAGE OF EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Which is it? How about both.

It’s been said that people with substance abuse and dependency disorders are stuck in the stage of development they were in when they started using, depending, or both.

And it makes sense, really because when that happens, when a person’s first true love, first reliable source of coping and satisfaction is a drug, then psychological development, something that depends so much upon socialization, meaning, depends upon people and healthy relationships, is going to suffer.

So a therapist gets a good psycho-social addictions history and at some point in the treatment…

I’VE SEEN 28 DAYS, AND TALKED TO ENOUGH PATIENTS WITH ADDICTIONS TO KNOW THAT WHEN THEY’RE IN RECOVERY and can keep a plant alive, it’s a very good sign.  A person who can keep a plant alive is getting better.

And vice versa, if a person is trying to get sober but fails, so will the plant.  A very bad sign.

I think it’s so cool how this works.  A person’s going along, controlling the desire to drink or get high, then it happens, there’s a slip, a binge.

For addicted people, you know, a slip is generally going to be a binge.  People who…

AT THE GATE I EMAIL MY KIDS, ALL ADULTS, TO TELL THEM ABOUT MY TRIP.

Why would I bother texting with thumbs on a cell phone when in only a few hours I’ll be home? The anxiety. It’s the anxiety. Maybe I won’t make it home. Maybe the plane will go down. Who knows? So I email them. I say:

The trip was great, a real vacation. Four days I didn’t make a single meal. People fed me. This is what it must be like to be a child. It is a very good deal. Kids shouldn’t complain so much if there’s food…