The Truth About Your Addictions: A Holistic Solution

By Ellen Gardner

This book is about addictions. It is based on twenty-four-plus years of experience living and working with twenty clients at a time who were experiencing drug and alcohol addictions and other addictive and destructive lifestyles. Ellen Gardner experienced these individuals as both teachers and students. Many interactions and experiences with society, bureaucracy, friends, and family are shared.

Understanding that everyone is a child of God or an offspring of the creator is the foundation of this teaching. Nothing can ever change that truth. No one can ever be an addict or alcoholic. No one can ever be less! Anyone can and many do experience addictions that are destructive. We share what we have learned that allows people freedom from destructive lifestyles.

Information is provided to teach spiritual tools that work. Also, an honest appraisal of experiencing these negative addictions and how others are affected by them is shared.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524592110

Ellen Gardner

Ellen Gardner witnessed addiction in loved ones. In her work as an ordained minister and licensed independent substance counselor she founded a non-denominational church in 1991. She developed a holistic spiritually based residential treatment program believing that freedom from addictions is possible. It became necessary to close the center because she experienced a severe stroke and open-heart surgery in 2013. Ellen and her husband Daniel now live in Cottonwood, Arizona. Her two adult sons and their families live in the state of Washington. Feeling physically healthy again she believes that it is time to share what she has learned about freedom from addictions.

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Copyright © 2017 by Ellen Gardner, L.I.S.A.C.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017903997

ISBN:              Hardcover              978-1-5245-9213-4

                        Softcover                978-1-5245-9212-7

                        eBook                     978-1-5245-9211-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 02/14/2019

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CONTENTS

Preface:   Never Throw Out Anyone

Chapter 1     A Cherokee Legend

Chapter 2     The Evolution of Addiction Treatment

Town Drunk, Disease, and Finally a New Way

Chapter 3     Addiction Is Natural, Treatment Is Too

Addicts and Love

Addiction Is Natural

Treatment Is Continuous

Think on These Ideas

Chapter 4     The Path to Founding a Treatment Program

Funding Arizona Pathways

Personal Experiences That Prepared Me for This Work

Chapter 5     Experiencing Addiction

Never Give up! Troy’s Story

What It Is Like to Be an Addict

How Arizona Pathways Saw the Addict

Chapter 6     How to Recognize if Your Loved One Is Addicted and What to Do

The Challenge of Communication

Why Love Is Not Enough

Chapter 7     Twelve Steps and the Truth about Your Addictions Steps

My Response to Steps 1 and 2

My Response to Step 3

My Response to Step 4

My Response to Step 5

My Response to Step 6

My Response to Step 7

My Response to Step 8

My Response to Step 9

My Response to Step 10

My Response to Step 11

My Response to Step 12

Chapter 8   The Five-Step Prayer

Recognition

Unification

Realization

Thanksgiving

Release

Prayer versus Fear

A Look at Choices, Patterns, Beliefs

Chapter 9   The Power of Community

Chapter 10   Spiritual Tools

Written Dialogue

Seven Questions

Meditation

Being a Warrior

Words of Inspiration from the Father Within

Chapter 11   Being at Arizona Pathways

Success at Arizona Pathways

Chapter 12   Overcoming Obstacles to Freedom

An Opportunity to Detox

Losing Losers

Addiction Vocabulary

Fear and Faith

Chapter 13   Problems of Addiction Recovery Treatment Programs and Plans

Punishment as Treatment

Legal Drugs Are Not Safe Drugs

The Problem with Bureaucracy

The Arizona Pathways Solution

The Truth about Your Addictions Model versus Punishment

Chapter 14   The Truth about Your Addictions Solutions

This Model versus Punishment, Disease and Replacement with Legal Drugs

Chapter 15   Experiences That Confirmed I Am a Spiritual Being

Epilogue:   My Vision of the Future

HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP

Individuals Experiencing Addiction, Seeking Freedom

1. Presents a different perception creating options.

2. Reading about the experiences of others in similar situations provides confidence and enthusiasm.

3. Provides clear and hopeful information you can share with loved ones and others struggling with addictions.

4. Presents helpful spiritual tools you can easily use for yourself or you can use to create a support group.

5. Brings awareness and understanding that you are so much greater and more powerful than the experience of thinking of yourself as an addict/alcoholic.

Family Members, Friends, and Loved Ones of the Addicted

1. Provides a more hopeful and greater understanding of addictions.

2. Presents helpful spiritual tools you can easily use for yourself and to support others.

3. Helps you to recognize the addicted as so much more than their experience of addiction.

4. Frees you from guilty feelings knowing you cannot make anyone choose addictions or to choose freedom from addictions.

Criminal Justice System

1. Presents a different perception that creates options.

2. Provides a greater more positive experience when working with the criminal addict.

Medical Community

1. This is a more hopeful and helpful perception than treating only the symptoms of what is known as an incurable disease.

2. A more positive self-identity of the addicted creates positive experiences.

Church and Community Organizations

1. Share how the ideas presented in this book relate to your spiritual values.

2. Use this information to organize support groups, mentors, and meetings.

3. Include members and family members to focus on skills, talents, and positive traits shared by everyone. Everyone is welcome to participate.

4. Focus is on inclusive activities, not exclusive, because of negative traits, experiences, and histories.

DEDICATION

To all individuals experiencing addiction or destructive lifestyles and to those who love them.

I want to express my gratitude to all my teammates who helped bring this book to fruition. Thanks to:

Marie Jones and Kathy Smith for all the computer work, shared ideas, organization skills, encouragement, and friendship.

Each and every client of Arizona Pathways of Life, Unity and Love and their families who have been master teachers in the world of substance abuse and addiction.

A special thank you to my husband, Dan, who has stood by my side through all the years, even though he didn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it.

PREFACE

Never Throw Out Anyone

A UDREY HEPBURN SAID, People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone. This book is based on the belief that there are no throwaway people. What I say is that you gotta love ’em.

This book is a revision of You Gotta Love ’Em that I published in 2012. I have spent twenty-plus years living and working with those who were experiencing addictions to drugs, alcohol, and other destructive lifestyles. On November 2013 I experienced a stroke followed by open-heart surgery on December 2013. After many months of physical recuperation, I had to accept that I could no longer continue with the program at Arizona Pathways. I hoped to connect with someone to take my place but finally realized it was necessary to close the program and liquidate the property. During my recovery and experiencing many changes, I became aware that it is important to share what we had learned to address the epidemic of addictions in our society. God does work in mysterious ways! I believe that the world needs to know that there is another approach to the solution of addictions, a different perception. I have named this new perception the Truth about Your Addictions. I understand that it is time to spread the word, to help make this option available worldwide. This option should no longer be limited to twenty clients at one center at a time. It is very important for everyone, not just those experiencing addictions, to change their perception and understanding of the power of addictions. It is time to change from fear to faith, from bondage to freedom. The recently freed person needs long-term support from friends, family, legal, medical, and spiritual individuals who are understanding and expressing the true identity of everyone. No one is an addict/alcoholic. Everyone is a child of the Creator, the universe, or God, whatever you name it. Everyone is equal in value but unique in expression. We experience our life according to our beliefs and choices. This causes many people to experience very destructive lifestyles. But we can never be less than we are created to be. It is time to recognize the difference between what we experience and what we are.

The goal of this revision is to share this philosophy, the tools to use it, inspiration, and encouragement. It is a self-help book that can be used individually, in a support group, or in a treatment center. I will personally be available to consult with anyone that I might help. Arizona Pathways is an independent nondenominational church, a 501©3 nonprofit corporation. The physical form has changed, but the focus and goal of presenting the next step in the evolution of addiction treatment remains.

Some names of clients at Arizona Pathways in this book have been changed. May this book help readers who need insights about overcoming their own addictions or learning how to stop the damaging habits of people they love.

CHAPTER 1

A Cherokee Legend

O NE OF MY favorite legends comes from the Cherokee people. It is the one about the grandfather teaching a grandson about life through the metaphor of wolves. The elder describes two wolves fighting inside his, and everyone’s, spirit: the wolf of ego, pride, resentment, anger, superiority, greed; the other wolf of peace, joy, hope, generosity, compassion, and love. The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight, and the elder answers that the one who gets fed will be the surv ivor.

This story is about the inner conflict that all people experience. The fact that there are two wolves shows the duality with which we all live: peace and trouble. The peace wolf is symbolic of the truth of who and what we are: the perfect expression of our Creator. The trouble wolf is symbolic of the self-identity we create: our ego. This identity expresses our doubts, fears, and other qualities we accept as ourselves, our personalities.

Without clear awareness and understanding of these two entities that compose the human personality, people feed both wolves. This makes it very difficult to find freedom from struggle. Everything people think, feel, and believe is food that feeds both wolves.

The food for the peace wolf contains love, truth, kindness, intelligence, creativity, strength, and courage. It is impossible for the peace wolf to consume the foods of the trouble wolf. The trouble wolf has a diet of fear, anger, revenge, helplessness, hopelessness, cowardice, dishonesty, judgment, condemnation, guilt, shame, and illness. Sometimes a trouble wolf comes across and eats foods meant for the peace wolf, but it prefers the foods meant for trouble. The following is a list of wolf food that shows the contrast between the peace and the trouble:

It is easy to see how both wolves get fed without being consciously aware. Feeding both wolves provides them with endurance to continue to see, feel, and experience struggle—especially the struggle to face the limiting effects of addiction. When you become conscious of the wolf you are feeding, you also become conscious of the wolves you help others to feed. Take care to carry only food that will feed the peace wolf in your own heart and in the hearts of other people.

Humanity must learn to live with the duality of peace and trouble. The two wolves will always be with us. It only takes awareness to see what is happening with hunger and fulfillment. When the trouble wolf eats the foods of the peace wolf, a shift occurs. Be aware of the inner wolf being fed in order to feel the shift. After a while, the right diet of wolf food will make itself known as you learn to feed both wolves the food of peace. As this new pattern of feeding comes into view, faith builds.

At the foundation of rehabilitation is faith. Even just a small amount may be all it takes to get someone’s life going in a better direction. As Jesus said to his disciples, For truly I say to you, if there is faith in you even as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move away from here’ and it will move away, and nothing will prevail over you (Matt. 17:20). Regardless of your religious orientation or your concept of spirituality, faith is one of the strongest tools for healing human beings. You can’t see it, but when it is there, you can feel it with your heart.

CHAPTER 2

The Evolution of Addiction Treatment

Race consciousness means that there is one prevailing idea

of how something is or should be,

and that keeps people stuck in that idea.

—Reverend JoAnne McFadden

W E SEEM TO be stuck in the ways we treat addiction in our society. Any treatment is better than no treatment, but there has been an evolution in how addictions are understood and treated. This book represents the next step in that evolu tion.

Town Drunk, Disease, and Finally a New Way

In terms of evolution, this book can begin with the story of the town drunk. Most towns had at least one town drunk; big cities had lots of town drunks. The traditional way of treating them was to accept these people in their role as the town drunk, to protect them from themselves, and to try to help their families by providing food and shelter. My grandfather was a town drunk, so my mother and her siblings grew up on welfare. They grew up with the shame of their father’s role as the town drunk as various friends and neighbors gave them handouts. That was common.

Another example of the town drunk is the character of Otis on The Andy Griffith Show, a popular TV show in the 1960s and in reruns. A drunk Otis was picked up by the sheriff and was brought to jail. He slept it off, had a meal, and then went back on his way. Sometimes he arrived at the jail and locked himself in until he became sober. That is how substance abuse used to be dealt with on TV.

The next phase of evolution was when E. M. Jellinek, the father of alcohol studies, shifted