Addiction, Treatment and Recovery

Traditionally, treatment for alcoholism and other drug addiction was all about – and for – men. Almost all the research conducted on addictive disease was based on male patients. The famous Jellinek Chart describing the progression of alcoholism was based solely on its effects on men.

And then along came Betty Ford — and the entire thinking about this disease underwent a sea-change.

Betty Ford founded her famous Center not only as a state-of-the-art hospital devoted exclusively to the treatment of addictive disease, but also as an oasis, a refuge for women alcoholics and addicts who often had no place to go for help. To say, 27 years later, that Mrs. Ford is proud that 50 percent of the nearly 100,000 alumni of the Betty Ford Center are women, would be an understatement.

The key barriers that get in the way of a woman accessing care are: family, money, shame, denial. There is no agreement on the rank order of these four key factors, but there is agreement that they are all interrelated – and important.

Overcoming denial, and shame, and family and financial issues, and actually entering a treatment program can, of course, be life-changing – in fact, life-giving.

For women in treatment, says Dr. Nancy Waite-O’Brien, “it’s the most wonderful and scary time imaginable. Scary, because problems are addressed, head-on. Wonderful, because most women who come into treatment have never taken any time for themselves; they’ve spent years balancing the demands of others with the demands of their disease. Caught in a trap, they’ve lost sight of who they really are. They’ve become lonely, isolated, and separated from their real self.

“In treatment, the focus is on discovery and reconnection: with the self, the soul, with hope, and with others. Recovery allows a woman to learn to act with courage, to connect with those around her. It is in connection with others, with women who have walked the path of recovery, that the alcoholic/addict learns to trust, learns to value herself, learns to create a life closer to the one she once dreamed of.”

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