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Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 20 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

The Vietnam War was executed from 1965 to 1973, the period of time when U.S. troops were on the ground engaged in combat activities in Southeast Asia.  A total of 3.4 million U.S. men and women were in the air, afloat or ashore in the combat area over that time and over 58,000 died, nearly 10x the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. With the post-WWII generation coming of age and engaging in critical scrutiny of the American experience of the 20^th Century at that same time, it was also an intellectually and emotionally charged era.  Those of us who fought in the war were not given the license or honor of our service to the national community as were our fathers and mothers after WWII. It created a very dangerous place for the warrior archetype in all of us, veterans and otherwise, trying to achieve the peaceful transition that is accorded all warriors in the aftermath of war.

The warrior is a strong part of all of us, an archetype that is a critical part of being human.  Much of mythological stories and the literature and theatre of all eras deal with this element of our being.  When this element is suppressed, not given the ability to find the right outlet either in its combative state or in the process of recovering therefrom, there can be dangerous outcomes for all concerned.  The process of trying to regain a peaceful place in society after a wartime experience, when not accorded a proper recognition of service nobly performed, can be long and difficult.  For many Vietnam veterans, it never happened…and descent into addiction, homelessness and death has been an all-too-frequent outcome.

The story of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey is a wonderful compendium of various tragedies that can befall a warrior trying, unsuccessfully, to find his way home. Much of what Odysseus experiences on his journey, his odyssey, mirror the experiences of the Vietnam vet. The journey back to wholeness for these particular veterans, to a place of peace in society and our own hearts, has been long, conflicted and riddled with disaster.  It is, once again, a perfect expression of the hero’s journey and a parallel to the journey to Sobriety for us alcoholics. For many, like me, it has been the same journey…and it has taken the embrace of the recovery process of the 12 Steps to achieve any success at all.

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 19 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

In the 1960’s, the focus on the race to the Moon created a consciousness of the Cosmos beyond Earth and the spawning of a different, more elaborate culture of science fiction genre in the arts, TV and cinema.  Star Trek debuted on TV in 1966, and 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in 1968.  There were literally over a hundred movies in this genre in that decade, not to mention the dozens of books like A Clockwork Orange, Dune, and Slaughterhouse Five. What set the video material of this time apart from the much less elaborate Buck Rogers of the 1940’s and 50’s was the expansive and intricate detail and mechanisms of the space machines;  they created a deep felt-sense of wonder and awe, at least to me.  They also had profound story lines that fit the Hero’s Journey pattern we have been discussing in connection with our own Journeys to Sobriety.

But, for me, what always struck home in these pieces was the one tagline intro from Star Trek that said that the Enterprise’s five year mission was: “…to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  Many of us have come from a history of Alcoholism that goes back through the generations.  For some of our ancestors, it may have been just an imbedded culture of the time, but the abuse of the myriad of spirits was equally as voluminous and extensive.  So for us to pursue a sober life, free of the compulsion to consume any of those substances, required us to initiate a massive, cultural and spiritual break from a long familial past. We had to boldly go where none before had gone.

In  1995, Pete Hamill, a journalist in New York, published an autobiography of sorts called A Drinking Life: A Memoir.  It is a story of his Irish family drinking history, his own early life consumed with alcohol abuse, and his career associated with a community of people of some renown where the one defining constant was alcohol.  He hit a bottom one day and, recalling his familial history with alcohol, he said to himself: “The madness must stop.  The madness stops here,” and he stopped drinking forever.  It is precisely the recollection I have of that point early on the day after my last consumption of a molecule of alcohol when I made the commitment to stop, finding myself in that same abyss of “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.”

It is fascinating to see the science fiction genre over the years in somewhat the same light, where the exploration of the Cosmos beyond the gravity of the Earth is seen as just such a brave, new, exploratory journey into a world of unimaginable wonders alongside our very own higher power….within the Sunlight of the Spirit.