Editorial Comment 10/29: On Recovery Speakers:

Role models and accomplishments in recovery have provided guidance to those who were ambivalent, assurances to those who were desperate, and a validation of shared human experience to those who felt alone, since the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). In fact, this is not unique to AA; the Temperance Movement and its predecessors relied heavily on personal testimonials to achieve authenticity, or at least the appearance of authenticity.  Reasoning from the abstract may be satisfying for a teacher but is seldom of much use to the pupil; even less so when the pupil is cognitively impaired. To reason more from example or even by analogy requires real skill from the teacher.  It is translation at its best. Translation is, after all, movement of the un-comprehended into the realm of understanding.

Robert (Bob) Earll passed away over a year ago, but he both directly and indirectly sponsored thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of alcoholics into recovery. He did so by not being overly strict in observing boundaries. This will take a little explaining, and if I was a really good teacher, I would have an analogy at hand. But simple examples of this are that he was both alcoholic and addicted to other substances; and thus felt comfortable in different settings speaking without regard to the particular substance of use.  He spoke rather toward the central issue of addiction as an illness. His intelligence encompassed recovery as meaning a great deal more than stopping use of a substance, and sometimes even more than reconstructing one’s character.  He would emphasize topics that are close to the addiction physician’s heart.  He included tasks or chores that were sometimes dismissed by his peers as unimportant, or at best peripheral. These included cessation of smoking, quality of diet, understanding the impact of caffeine, the necessity for - the absolute necessity, the emphatic absolute necessity - for exercise. He served decades as a circuit speaker, at local and regional AA meetings, and each time he completed exploration of one theme it became apparent that more awaited his discussion. He was unexcelled in his ability to bring about empathy among his audience through humor, audiences whose eclectic tastes ranged from the earthy to the erudite. …And, of course, many went away from his presentations or his recordings infuriated and indignant. Personality reconstruction is not a painless process, and the pain is commonly reflected in anger, fury directed towards the agent of change.

To Bob may be attributed the concept of the “vulture on the bedpost,” the evil superego surrogate that is the hidden voice of the alcohol, the drugs, the poker game, each of those expressions of addiction.  His description of a hovering creature arguing a philosophy of nihilism, cawing that there is nothing to be done and one may as well stay in bed, invariably produced roaring, shared laughter in the audience of recovering people. The emphasis here is on the shared element of the laughter; everybody knew what he was talking about. And thus in giving the experience tongue, he undercut its power to defeat.  Of the many online examples, one is provided here: [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qPMKqu-h1U  ]

The traditional model for telling one story is to follow a framework, what it was like, what happened, and what it is (or, we are) like now.  Certainly, that is the format seen in the personal accounts within the two texts Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. That framework is not so very unlike the history that we ask our patients to provide initially in an open-ended fashion.  It is in fact the format of all chronicles of all journeys.  In recounting the journeys, some folks are raconteurs, others bring alternate perspectives to the experience either of developing an addiction or recovering from it, and others from a foundation of humility and simplicity are remarkable for their clarity.  Regardless, relatively early in AA there developed a tradition of recording some of the speakers, so that those in remote places or simply inaccessible to meetings could gain exposure to a broader message of recovery.  Recovery conferences and conventions - including those for physicians - commonly make these available at cost, but many more are freely available through the internet.  When I am reviling my internet service provider, it helps to remind myself of such benefits.