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Recovery in the News
Why I Fight for Freedom
Jay P. Davidson
The Courier Journal
September 8, 2006
I've been fighting for freedom my entire life.
Some of my earliest memories are those of alcohol abuse and violence. When I was five years old, I watched my drunken father abuse my mother by cutting off the bottom of her dresses and then pushing her out of a first floor window. He left our home, and I never saw him again for 27 years. By that time he was in the advanced stages of alcoholism and soon died.
Whether by genes or by destiny, the disease took hold of me too. When I was 15, I was employed at an amusement park. There I began my drinking career, consuming glasses of leftover liquor from the patrons who partied the night before.
In 1965, I entered the Army. I saw combat in Vietnam and served as a Company Commander. I was stationed throughout the United States and Europe, training other soldiers. I received nine medals and numerous promotions, eventually becoming a Lieutenant Colonel. The Army taught me how to fight--how to identify the enemy, how to motivate and mobilize a team of people, how to develop strategies, how to achieve victory.
All the while I was losing a war of my own—my battle with alcoholism. Finally my commander told me that he would end my military career unless I sought counseling for my alcohol abuse. This would mean the loss of my retirement income. The Army was my life, and I was dying—professionally, physically, and spiritually.
I sought treatment and entered a 12 step program. I stopped drinking in 1983 and retired from the Army in 1986. I earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Louisville and was employed in 1992 by a group of Louisville physicians from the Jefferson County Medical Society to become Executive Director of a fledgling homeless shelter known as the JCMS Outreach Program, Inc. (the Morgan Center), now known as The Healing Place.
The doctors told me that they wanted to do something about homelessness. In the beginning, I lived at the shelter, and within 60 days I realized that the diagnosis was inadequate. These people weren't on the streets because they had no home. They were homeless because they had no freedom. They were trapped by alcoholism and drug addiction, and they could never find a home unless they were liberated from their disease.
The Army taught me how to know the enemy. In this case, it is addiction. The enemy is cunning, baffling, and powerful. It is so skillful and so adept that it convinces people there is no problem, no threat, no disease.
My military experience taught me that the best defense is a good offense, and so we began to fight. Gradually we forged a program of recovery where 65 percent of those who complete it remain sober for one year (five times the national average). It's cost effective, too — $25 per client, per day vs. $250 a day or more in most treatment programs.
It has always been a team effort. Men and women who complete our program stay to nurture and lead others along the road of recovery. In the Army, you never fight alone. You depend on others. It is the same in the battle against addiction.
The biggest weakness of the enemy is that there is no defense against a spiritual experience. Long-term recovery always means coming to terms with ourselves, other people, and our Higher Power (usually called God). It means change—altering our thinking, our behavior, and our relationships.
Change is frightening. What has to change? Everything.
But it can be done. The enemy can be defeated. It isn't hopeless. The real way to win the war on drugs is to eliminate demand. When there is no demand, the supply will dry up. How do we eliminate demand? We help men and women to become clean and sober. Victory is helping everyone to be clean and sober. Victory is helping everyone to be free.
That includes the children. Alcoholism and addiction are a family disease, transmitted genetically and socially. We try to help the children of the afflicted understand and combat addiction so that they will not be affected and carry the disease into their own adulthood and families.
This is freedom:
Freedom means lifting the lodestone dragging me into the pit.
Freedom means rising to see the blue skies and effortless flight.
Freedom means being honest.
Freedom means becoming the person I was meant to be but could not be.
Freedom means not having to be perfect.
Freedom means the opportunity to make mistakes.
Freedom means not worrying about being judged.
Freedom means being who I am without fear or retribution or pain.
Freedom means accepting love and giving it away.
Freedom: That's why I continue to wage war against addiction. When men and women arrive at The Healing Place homeless, helpless, and hopeless, some of them leave healthy. They are headed for new homes. They are filled with hope.
They are free.
That's the best gift anyone could give.
And that's why I fight for freedom.
Copyright 2005 The Courier-Journal.