With the opioid epidemic becoming a community-wide problem, The Council on Recovery teamed up with KPRC Channel 2 during its October 6th broadcast of “Opioid Nation: An American Epidemic“. The Council sent five of its licensed counselors to staff a live phone bank throughout the one-hour program, as well as during KPRC’s afternoon/evening newscasts. Continue reading “The Council Teams Up with KPRC Channel 2 to Fight Opioid Addiction”
The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 15
Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 15 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.
Dante and Virgil, in the opening to the medieval epic poem, The Inferno, have begun their journey into the bowels of Hell. There are nine concentric, descending circles they must traverse, each dedicated to a certain group of sinners, each one more frightening and severe than the pervious. Dante, beginning a desperate search to find God, is extremely afraid. Virgil, the Latin scholar, is his guide. The characterizations and descriptions of the groups of sinners in all the Levels, and their forever, eternal torment in Hell, provide stark and terrifying reminiscences of the events of our own lives in the acting out of our addictions. Dante’s and Virgil’s descent into and through Hell is necessary to get them to the recovery stages of Purgatory and eventually Heaven.
The sins and sinners of the Circles of the Inferno are organized generally in line with the Seven Deadly Sins, as promulgated by the medieval Church leading up to Dante’s time. Dante is using them both in a spiritual, political, as well as mythological sense. They are dealt with by Dante according to the Church’s view of increasing severity: lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence and fraud.
Forgetting about the nature of these offences for purposes of our analogy, it is interesting to see the horrific nature of the eternal punishments Dante describes for these sins. From the point of view of pain and suffering, it is a vivid analogous journey of us in our addictions, before recovery, conveying the horror of what we all experienced in our disease.
In the descent, for example, they see souls wallowing in putrid muck and slime, others encased in frigid ice, or boiling in oil and pitch (“enormous bubbling boiling pitch”). Many are on fire. Those whose lives were engaged in endless violence “are steeped in a river of boiling blood.” The greedy, those whose lives were lived as hoarders or wasters of money, are chained together “straining their chests against enormous (opposing) weights with mad howls,” railing at each other’s lack of restraint in life.
Finally Dante and Virgil reach the bottom of Hell, and come face to face with the Devil. They then courageously claw their way over him to a hole in the earth and eventually emerge into day, on the other side of the world. Here begins their journey to Purgatory. This confrontation and emergence, the subject of the next note, could be seen as a very vivid, if symbolic, inflection point for our own initiation into recovery.
Addicted to Comedy 2017
Celebrate National Recovery Month with The Council on Recovery at Addicted to Comedy 2017. Performers from previous years have included Shayla Rivera, Jose Sarduy, Kristin Linder, and Jamie Lissow. This year, comedians Jay LaFarr, Mike Vance, and the headliner, Rich Vos, will be serving up laughter all night long. This event will be the ninth fundraiser hosted by The Council on Recovery for the Sober Recreation Committee (SRC).
The annual Addicted to Comedy show will take place on Saturday, October 7th from 8 pm – 10 pm. The event will be held in The Hamill Foundation Conference Center at 303 Jackson Hill St., Houston, TX 77007. Premium seating (first four rows) will be $30 and general admission is $20. To register, please visit www.councilonrecovery.org.
The Council on Recovery Deploys Social Workers to Area Shelters to Help Evacuees Deal with Emotional Impact of Storm
The Council on Recovery, the area’s leading non-profit provider of addiction and mental health services, has rapidly deployed many of its counselors and social workers to area shelters to help evacuees cope with the emotional impact of Tropical Storm Harvey. The Council has also sent recovery coaches and volunteers to shelters to help facilitate on-site support groups for flood victims who are struggling with addiction in the aftermath of the storm.
The Council’s president & CEO, Mel Taylor, said the immediate deployment of counselors and social workers is vital to the physical and emotional well-being of storm evacuees. “Our shelters are full of people who have experienced physical and mental trauma as the result of the storm,” Taylor said. “When the reality of their situation sets in, many may experience emotional anguish and our professional social workers are there to help them deal with it.”
Taylor said that among those at the shelters may be individuals suffering the effects of withdrawal from alcohol or drug use, especially after several days without those substances. “People with substance use disorders, such as opioid addiction or active alcoholism may be suffering from symptoms of withdrawal or detoxification,” Taylor said. “We trust medical care will be provided to those who need it, but our clinicians, who are highly-trained in these matters, will help will seek out resources for and provide counsel to shelter residents who need help with alcoholism, addiction, or co-occurring mental health disorders.”
“Our recovery coaches and volunteers are on-site at area shelters to facilitate support groups for people who need to process what’s currently happening in their lives,” Taylor said. “The importance of participating in these 12-Step meetings during this difficult time cannot be understated,” he added, “and we’re doing everything we can to make sure people have a safe and confidential place where they can share their experience, strength, and hope.”
In addition to providing services at area shelters, The Council on Recovery’s main campus at 303 Jackson Hill is open and providing counseling services to the entire community.