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Recovery in the News
Portrait: Personal experiences help Judie Didriksen in her efforts to assist recovering addicts
Angie Hutschreider
News Tribune
March 5, 2007
Judie Didriksen has been working with recovering alcoholics and addicts since she began recovery herself.
Didriksen is not a recovering alcoholic or addict, but her life has been impacted by the disease since she was 17 years old.
“I had my first personal experience with addiction when I was 17 years old. I grew up in a Southern Baptist home where the strongest beverage served was the morning coffee so I was totally unprepared for the reality of alcoholism and addiction,” she said. “I met a handsome young man who liked to have a ‘few' drinks but who promised me that once we got married he would stop.”
Like most people Didriksen believed what she was told, and thought changing the behavior of an alcoholic or addict could and would happen overnight. “Of course within a few weeks of our marriage I was beginning to be aware that was a promise he could not and would not keep. We proceeded for a period of time through the DWIs, car wrecks, financial problems and on and on. He did not get into any type of recovery and died at an early age as a direct result of his alcoholism.”
“For the next 20-plus years every relationship I had was impacted by both this first experience when I was very young and the later experiences which also dealt with the pain of alcoholism and addiction in someone you love,” she said.
“I fell into a pattern of ‘expecting the worst and getting it.' Every relationship I had was tainted with this history and I finally realized that I was allowing the toxicity of that first encounter with addiction many years ago to color my current relationships with family, friends and co-workers.”
Like many dealing with the pain of this disease in their day-to-day lives, it took Didriksen many years to get on her way to recovery.
“It was 16 years ago when I made a decision to forgive what had happened in the past and move my life in a positive direction,” she said.
After spending five years at Crossroads Recovery Center Didriksen has been appointed as the regional representative for Faces and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR). She is the representative for Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. She is also on the board for FAVOR.
“I try to convey the needs of the four states to the federal level and the findings of the federal level back to the states,” Didriksen said. In her position she lets the federal government know of the tools needed to assist not only addicts and alcoholics but their families.
The experience with her late husband may have been her first seeing addiction first hand, but it was not her last.
Through her personal experiences, Didriksen said it is clear that sometimes it does take a family member entering a recovery program of their own to help the addict or alcoholic realize they too need to take that step. “You never want to turn your back on a family member but if you are enabling them, you are not making it any easier for them to see the addiction as problem,” she said.
The experiences in Didriksen's personal life, like many in her field, help her relate to others in recovery on a more personal level, simply because she knows where they have been.
“I recently heard a comment which I believe to be very true - being unable to forgive is like taking poison and expecting the other person to get sick,” she said. “Forgiveness is not for the other person; it is for you. This allowed me to move my life forward and pursue healthy activities and begin to help other people do the same thing."
All Contents Copyright © 2007 News Tribune Co. All rights reserved.