All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [28]
Finally, Max was asked if he’d ever been unkind to one of his children. O’Connor called Max’s wife and she revealed a night when Max went in to have a few drinks with his buddies and left his daughter in the car in freezing temperatures. His daughter’s ears and fingers were badly frostbitten, resulting in the need for amputation of a thumb and permanent hearing loss. Max collapsed on all fours and began to sob, reduced to the ground of his lies and deceptions. O’Connor said, “Get out of here.… I’m not running a rehab for liars.”
But what I’ve never revealed about that story is how much I envied Max in that time. Let me try to explain. Max went through the eye of the needle in that experience, but he came out on the other side a different man. His demeanor changed, almost overnight, and I truly believe he found God. I had my own time in the hot seat with O’Connor, and he brought all of his skills to that moment, lovingly trying to break me. But I wouldn’t break. I was never receptive to the tough-love approach, even though I’ve applauded it in print. It’s easy to approve of something when it’s not being done to you.
I would love to tell you that one day in Hazelden I was on my knees in the center of the room sobbing hysterically, owning up to my drinking and lies. But that never happened. Max left the treatment center a broken man but also a changed man. I left the center known as “a tough nut to crack.” I was clean and sober but far from honest.
While at Hazelden, part of our curriculum was to give peer reviews. The purpose of peer reviews was, as Hazelden put it,
to offer our peers help in seeing themselves more specifically, their areas of dishonesty, their defense mechanisms, and their character defects. It takes courage to risk confronting. We have all traded our honesty for the approval of others in the past. However, if we care about our fellow peers, and if we want them to be honest with us in return, we will present them with our picture of them. Our disease is life-threatening. Recovery requires taking risks, learning about ourselves, and making changes.
Here is an example of a peer-review worksheet we all had to fill out. I’ve kept it as a keepsake of sorts, of how bad things can really get.
A. I SEE YOU DOING THE FOLLOWING TO PRESENT BARRIERS TO YOUR RECOVERY (circle statements which apply)
1. I don’t see you participating in group without prodding
2. I hear you trying to patch everyone up in the community
3. I see you feeling that you deserve special treatment
4. I hear you talking down to other patients on the unit
5. I see you full of denial (minimizing, explaining, justifying)
6. I see you hiding in anger
7. I see you acting like an “old pro” in treatment
8. I see you playing counselor
9. I see you being self-controlled
10. I see you trying to manage the unit
11. I see you not accepting your addiction
12. I hear you bragging about your addiction (war stories)
13. I hear you talking one way in group and another way in community
B. I SEE YOU USING THE FOLLOWING DIVERSIONS TO KEEP FROM DEALING WITH YOUR DISEASE (circle statements which apply)
1. Watching TV, playing cards or games, etc
2. Preoccupied with everything but treatment
3. Using self-pity (PLOM—poor little old me)
4. Getting romantically involved, flirting, etc
5. Preoccupied and talking about physical problems
6. People pleasing
7. Using humor/joking to keep from showing true feelings
8. Staying alone (isolating)
Out of all the Hazelden peers who filled out this form for me, every one of them circled all twenty-one items. I received a horribly perfect score. Then again, I’d had almost a decade of consistent practice, and practice makes perfect.
I don’t like to discuss my time at Hazelden. It was one