On this Veterans Day, the Recovery Time Machine blog focuses on the effect war has on the occurrence of the disease of addiction in veterans.  Ninety-two years ago today, an armistice went into effect between the forces fighting World War I, marking the end of the “war to end all wars.”  Sadly, the Treaty of Versailles did not end all wars.  Within twenty years, the world was at war again, and today our country is engaged in wars on two fronts.  Among all the other devastating effects of war and violent conflicts around the world, one that is often overlooked is war’s ability to contribute to addiction in its veterans.

This Major League Baseball postseason, the Texas Rangers brought their respect for recovery into the spotlight.  Following major series wins this season, the Rangers respected star slugger Josh Hamilton’s recovery by celebrating with ginger ale as opposed to more traditional champagne.  Hamilton has come a long way from the minor leagues and his failed drug tests of 2004.  This year alone, he lead the Rangers to the franchise’s first ever World Series and was named Most Valuable Player of the American League Championship Series.  Even more impressively, however, Hamilton is not shy when talking to the media about the miracle of his recovery from addiction.

Image from nytimes.com

Fifty-seven years ago today in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, the Narcotics Anonymous (NA) organization that we know today held its very first recovery meeting. 

In the middle of the twentieth century, more and more people with multiple addictions were going to Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meetings to seek help getting and staying clean.  Rather than giving full support to these addicts, however, Alcoholics Anonymous was becoming increasingly opposed to the involvement of drug addicts in its fellowship.  Some groups even explicitly forbade recovering drug addicts from becoming full members of A.A., allowing them only to attend “open meetings.”  Realizing that addicts needed more support than A.A. was able to provide, a group of former drug users in Southern California decided to take their recovery into their own hands and form a Twelve Step fellowship specifically for those addicted to habit-forming drugs.

Hazelden Publishing recently announced the imminent release of The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous.  After seventy years of privacy, the original working draft of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” will now be made available, complete with hand-written notes, edits, and marginalia.  While the manuscripts for A.A.'s Big Book have been a mystery for the last 70 years, the Foundation for Recovery Library, Archives, and Museum has several different versions of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic Text" manuscripts in its collections.  Come check them out in the exhibits at the Foundation for Recovery Store!

Anyone who doubts the impact of twelve-step recovery on our society need only look as far as the 2007 Newberry Medal winner, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron.  The guidance of the program originally developed by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous has become such a pervasive part of our culture that it even plays an important role in what was voted by the American Library Association as the best children’s book of 2007, now available for purchase at the Foundation for Recovery Store.

Seventy-five years since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, many of the basic principles of 12 Step programs are well-known throughout American social and popular culture. One of the most recognizable aspects of 12 Step programs is the complete abstinence from alcohol and other drugs when in recovery from chemical addiction. It may come as a surprise to learn, then, that various intoxicating substances historically were often used in the medical community to treat addictions to other substances. Even Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, bought into this theory, prescribing cocaine as a treatment for his morphine-addicted patients, ultimately becoming a cocaine addict himself.

Sunday, July 11th marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Told from the viewpoint of six-year-old Scout Finch, the novel tells the story of Scout, her brother, Jem, and their lawyer father, Atticus, as they deal with the reactions of their neighbors in Maycomb, Alabama to Atticus’s defense of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. While most people recall the book as an examination of racism in 1930s Alabama, the novel’s compassionate view of addiction and recovery is often overlooked.