Alcoholics Anonymous fails another celebrity- Philip Seymour Hoffman is now dead after the 12 steps filled his head that he had a disease and a ton of other Bill W. Mantra.
Philip Seymour Hoffman spotted at AA meeting shortly before his death
By Jana Winter
Celebrities including Annie Leibovitz and Bobby Canavale paid their respects, as O’Donnell made preparations to hold a private wake and funeral this week.
A few blocks away from O’Donnell’s house, and a few blocks further from where Hoffman died, sits the 50 Perry St Workshop, which hosts AA and NA meetings, many of which Hoffman attended. Daytona NA and AA Meetings in Port Orange and Daytona Beach.
In fact, an AA member told FOX411 he spotted Hoffman at a meeting just about a week before the actor died. The source told us the actor came to an 8:30 p.m. meeting and didn’t appear to be drunk or high.
“[Hoffman told the group] ‘I’m doing OK. Little situation in life. Life still shows up,” the source recalled.
Eddie Donohoe, 58, said he used to see the star at meetings as well.
“He used to come to meetings, I guess he was trying,” Donohoe said. “Usually people don’t come to meetings if they pick up, because people will know if they’re high.”
Donohoe, who said he was in meetings with Hoffman at least a dozen times, said the actor seemed like a nice guy when he came to the center.
“He was regular guy, he was polite and well dressed, very sociable with people,” he said. “He would come in daytime or evening. Last time I saw couple months ago. People surrounded him. He had his own clique.”
Donohoe said you don’t have to say anything in the meetings, but Hoffman would often speak to the group. Smart Recovery online meetings for courts and probation.
“He would speak. Sometimes he would share. He might raise his hand and say something, what he was going through that day,” Donohoe said.
Hoffman’s death hit the group hard, according to Donohoe.
“Everybody [at the meeting] was sad about him dying,” he said.
Hoffman, 46, was found dead in his apartment Sunday of an apparent heroin overdose.
What Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Sponsor Could Have Done for Him
As part of Twelve-Step programs, they act as support, friend, mentor, and advisor—but they’re also former addicts and shouldn’t be treated as experts
By Maia Szalavitz @maiaszFeb. 07, 2014
A haunting writeup in The New York Times Thursday detailed how actor Philip Seymour Hoffman spent his last days after relapsing back into heroin addiction and leaving the home he shared with his partner, Mimi O’Donnell, and their three children.
Though he was surrounded by people as the end drew near, the Times piece describes how Hoffman was ultimately “a man who died alone”—which is sadly not uncommon for addicted people. Notably included was a quote from a member of the Twelve-Step program Narcotics Anonymous (NA) regarding what the actor said at a December meeting. Though speaking about what was said by a specific person meeting is an unusual breach of protocol, the incident has got people thinking about what goes on in NA meetings and the idea of members “sponsoring” each other to support recovery.
As a former heroin and cocaine addict who has covered addiction and recovery for over a quarter century, I’d like to stress that I am writing here as someone with knowledge of the field and not as a member of any program. There are many routes to recovery and Twelve-Step programs are just one.
Although touted as an essential element of Twelve-Step recovery, the guidance given to sponsors is extremely vague. There is no requirement for having a certain amount of time drug-free, although at least 90 days is typically required and, most commonly, at least one year. Moreover, there are no specific guidelines related to the amount of contact people should have with their sponsors and the type of advice that should be given at any particular time. An NA pamphlet puts it this way:
Sponsors share their experience, strength, and hope with their sponsees. Some describe their sponsor as loving and compassionate, someone they can count on to listen and support them no matter what. Others value the objectivity and detachment a sponsor can offer, relying on their direct and honest input even when it may be difficult to accept. Still others turn to a sponsor mainly for guidance through the Twelve Steps.
From the outside, the idea that a more experienced member should sponsor someone who is new or has recently relapsed looks like a way to help the newcomer. But, in fact, Twelve-Step literature explicitly says that this is not the purpose, although it is obviously a welcome result. The sponsor-sponsee relationship is predicated on the assumption that “‘the heart of NA beats when two addicts share their recovery,’” and “sponsorship is simply one addict helping another. The two-way street of sponsorship is a loving, spiritual, and compassionate relationship that helps both the sponsor and sponsee.”
In practice, of course, this means that sponsors do give advice and support to newcomers—and anyone who has spent time around people in recovery knows that they will often go to enormous lengths and spend much of their time to try to help.
But the pamphlet also notes that a sponsor is not “a legal advisor, a banker, a parent, a marriage counselor, or a social worker. Nor is a sponsor a therapist offering some sort of professional advice.”
Unfortunately, many sponsors do provide medical advice, which can pose a problem for people whose issues are complex and who require psychiatric care, not just group support, which is at least half of all people with addictions. Both NA and Alcoholics Anonymous have had to warn [PDF] members not to “play doctor” in this way since suicides have occurred when people stopped taking needed medication. While recent years have brought greater acceptance of medication use, the issue of clashing advice from sponsors and professionals remains.
This issue is most acute when it comes to the long-term use of medications like methadone or Suboxone to treat heroin and other opioid addictions, NA sponsors have traditionally viewed this practice as “not recovery” and as violating the program’s basis in complete abstinence because these medications are themselves opioids. But research shows that these medications can cut death risk for people with heroin addiction by around 70% [PDF]—and some have argued that the stigma against maintenance is part of what killed Hoffman.
NA has struggled for years to address the controversy, traditionally not permitting those still on medication to share in meetings, be sponsors, or hold leadership positions. In many NA groups, such people are seen as having no days in recovery until they stop maintenance. As of 2007, however, the organization has taken the position [PDF] that it is up to individual groups to determine whether people on maintenance have equal status.
As all of this illustrates, addiction and recovery are complicated. There simply is no one true way to get better. Consequently, the humble stance advocated in the Twelve Steps (and perhaps practiced more in the breach than in the appropriate spirit) is a good recommendation both for those who act as sponsors and for anyone else trying to cope with addiction.
Read more: Philip Seymour Hoffman: Twelve Step Programs and the Role of a Sponsor | TIME.com http://healthland.time.com/2014/02/07/what-philip-seymour-hoffmans-sponsor-could-have-done-for-him/#ixzz2uqCsj4B7
Kinda sad to see what steppers have to say about Philip Hoffman’s death and how they use it to perpetuate the fear that AA loves to hammer over and over.
His Death, Their Lives
For Some in A.A. and Other Addiction Recovery Groups, the Death of Philip Seymour Hoffman Hits Home
By JACOB BERNSTEINFEB. 7, 2014
In the first hours and days that followed Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death from an apparent overdose of heroin, there was an outpouring of grief on Facebook, on Twitter and in columns by recovering addicts and alcoholics like the journalist Seth Mnookin and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin about their own struggles with sobriety and the rarely distant fear of relapsing back into the throes of active addiction.
There was also a palpably visceral reaction in the meeting rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, where, according to some in attendance, many discussions since last Sunday quickly turned from the death of a great actor to the precariousness of sobriety, and the fears of many sober people that they could easily slip back into their old ways, no matter how many years they have been clean.
Mr. Hoffman’s overdose after what had been widely reported as 23 years without either drugs or alcohol, years in which Mr. Hoffman talked openly of his addictions, was discussed in meetings in church basements downtown and in the attics of synagogues uptown. Around Times Square, and the nearby Theater District, creative types in recovery debated what his death meant to everyone else.
“I’ve been to three meetings since it happened,” said Rita, who was sitting in a restaurant on West 10th Street on Monday following a recovery meeting, and who, like others interviewed for this article, requested that her last name be left out in accordance with A.A.’s tradition of anonymity. “There hasn’t been one meeting where I haven’t heard about it. People in the public eye see it as ‘We lost a great talent.’ People in recovery see it as ‘We lost a brother in arms.’ ”
A woman who attended an A.A. meeting in Los Angeles on Sunday said that Mr. Hoffman was “all anyone could talk about,” though she added that none of the participants, mindful of the second “A” in A.A., actually spoke Mr. Hoffman’s name aloud.
The 24-hour cable news coverage of a celebrity’s death is not new, of course, nor are the impromptu memorials created outside the dead person’s home, or the editorials about the apparently self-destructive natures of those who seem to have everything going for them. It happened with Michael Jackson. It happened with Heath Ledger. It happened with Whitney Houston. It happened not too long ago with Cory Monteith.
But there was something different in the circumstances of Mr. Hoffman’s death that seemed to make it resonate more deeply with people who are sober and struggle every day to keep their own addictions at bay.
Their talk quickly turned from sorrow and shock over Mr. Hoffman’s death to one of a more personal nature: What does this mean for me, the recovering alcoholic or drug addict? Can all my years of sobriety, years I have fought hard to maintain, slip away more easily than I acknowledge? If it happened to someone universally respected by his peers, and one who had been open about his own years of sobriety, could it also happen to me?
“I cried when I heard about Philip Seymour Hoffman,” Mr. Mnookin wrote in an essay in Slate last week. “The news scared me: He got sober when he was 22 and didn’t drink or use drugs for the next 23 years. During that time, he won an Academy Award, was nominated for three more, and was widely cited as the most talented actor of his generation. He also became a father to three children. Then, one day in 2012, he began popping prescription pain pills. And now he’s dead.”
Mr. Mnookin then wrote about how his own years of addiction — first alcohol and then heroin — began when he was still a teenager, and how, no matter that he was now clean, and a husband and the father of a young daughter, he worried almost every day about the kind of temptation that seems to have snared Mr. Hoffman.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about alcoholism and drug addiction,” Mr. Mnookin wrote, “but one thing is clear: Regardless of how much time clean you have, relapsing is always as easy as moving your hand to your mouth.”
Mr. Hoffman seemed to be an ideal role model. “He was a tremendously talented actor and everybody knew he was sober,” said Gregory, who said he worked on a play with Mr. Hoffman and cites the actor as a person who helped him get clean. “But he wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, I’m in A.A., man.’ ”
By being so casual and understated about it, Gregory added, Mr. Hoffman was a “power of example” to him rather than some sort of “program-pushing spokesperson” or someone who “seemed to get off on the idea of being publicly sober in the vein of a celebrity rehab cast member.”
“I remember hearing him speak at a meeting,” said Chris, another person in recovery. “My understanding is that he sponsored a ton of actors, and I thought then: I’m so glad he is getting famous instead of yet another pretty face. He got sober young. He really got his life together and was able to cultivate this nascent talent even though he was not your leading man. It was over 20 years he was sober, and in that time, he was super present and accounted for. There are other people who are in and out [of recovery] with the seasons. But he was there.”
I have little knowledge of this in my life, just someone I worked with who unbeknownst to all of us was a heroin addict. He functioned well…
For people who have relapsed after achieving long-term sobriety and struggled to come back, Mr. Hoffman’s death hit especially hard.
“He is me,” said Jim, an addict who said that he relapsed after more than two decades in recovery, and who has been sober again since 2006. “His story is so similar to mine. I had 21 years [clean], I had terrible back pain, I was on Martha’s Vineyard and somebody said, ‘Would you like a Fioricet?’ It’s mostly a migraine medication, and I took that little blue pill and I became perfect in a way I hadn’t been in 21 years. I had that wonderful feeling you don’t get sober. Suddenly, I’m at a party and someone says, ‘You want a hit of rock?’ I didn’t even know what crack was. The next day I was calling that guy’s dealer.”
As Jim tells it, his relapse lasted four years, and required four months of rehab, including an extended stay at the Betty Ford Center. He remains mystified by the fact that he didn’t die; that he was able to make it back to Alcoholics Anonymous when so many others do not, among them Mr. Hoffman.
“Why did I have a moment where I could get back and he couldn’t? That’s just mysterious,” Jim said. “I’m sure we were doing comparable amounts of drugs. I was trying to die as fast as I could, and I’m here and that guy is gone.”
Henry, another person who has been sober for a long time, said, “We all know of close friends who after many years have for one reason or another been unable to hold onto this lifeline.
“I knew a great actor,” he continued, “who had 20-something years sober and went out and basically disappeared off the face of the earth. When he came back, his brain was shriveled. And he died sober, but the damage done was debilitating. And he was somebody who had never stopped going to meetings. He sponsored people in A.A.
“All of us know people that this happened to. It’s exceptional, it’s unusual, but there’s also a rattling frequency to it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/fashion/Philip-Seymour-Hoffman-AA-addiction-recovery.html?_r=0
How sad…how tragic this whole thing is and continues to be. I have read more and watched more than I really want to on this. The thing that is most draining is how ignorant and lacking in all human compassion so many, many ignorant people are. And with heroine use on the rise–they are too stupid to realize that their own family members and perhaps their children are at great risk of harm due to substance use and if they do not die from that, AA and NA can come in supposedly to the “rescue” and probably to HARM…possibly even kill.
People are heartless ass holes far too often.
Really, this is a double edged sword. I will have to refrain from reading any more of their inane, ignorant comments to stave of a bout of misanthropic disgust…
Anyone with a brain just ought to be able to make the CONNECTION after seeing this video: (One can only hope!)
Philip Seymour Hoffman & Celebrities Lost to Faux 12 Step Rehab
http://illbefreeordie.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/philip-seymour-hoffman-celebrities-lost-to-faux-12-step-rehab/
There hasn’t been anonymity in 12 step groups in over 20 years.
Just about all the people I personally know in “the program” do promote openly their membership and claims of being “diseased” and feel compelled to “shout it off of the mountain”.
The only true anonymity is when most members that use feel too ashamed or scared to bring up in a group or talk about it with other members because of the fear of being judged and the installed automatic guilt that seems to be the norm in 12 step circles.
The total abstinence concept teamed with religious components of 12 step programs attributes to 12 step deaths.
It is always a great shame when a relapse turns into a binge and then somebody dies. A friend of mine overdosed on the 10th anniversary of his mothers death, after being clean for some time. For many staying clean is pretty much impossible at times even though they have managed it in the past. I think people should be aware of the methods talked about in Harm reduction which can save lives. The 12 step world is all or nothing, but when there is a problem it often goes really wrong.
I totally agree, AA not only does not tech harm reduction techniques, but they actually instill in people that if they have one drink or any amount of substance they have to start their time over, and they will not be able to stop because your addiction is “doing push ups ” the whole time one is sober. Which is so totally false. For many it becomes a distant memory, or when they use again it is in moderation. Yet trying to moderate with AA dogma floating around in your head telling you that it is impossible, well they kinda set people up for failure.
So much for anonymity. AA gossip lines running wild.