Addiction treatment is changing, and a significant part of this change is the shifting role of support, both professional and 12-step, as the drug addict-alcoholic wades through beginning abstinence. According the author, Shelly M., best known for her first meditation book Day By Day, the 12-step support offered years ago to drunks seeking help, dwindled as treatment centers took over the job. That is what moved her to recreate a type of 12-step support through prayer and meditation for the newcomer in her most recent book, Hour to Hour-the first thirty days.
“You see,” Shelly recounted, “members of AA used to be told it was their duty to help a drunk trying to get sober.” Before the success of Alcoholic’s Anonymous, hospitals and other professionals generally thought of alcoholics as hopeless cases and often refused to treat them. Sponsors in AA and NA instructed their “pigeons” how to help the drunk come off the booze or drugs, help him find a job, escort him or her to meetings, and counsel them through the first few months of sobriety. This very protective and nurturing support in beginning recovery was part and parcel of joining a 12-step group.
However, once the professional community realized that alcoholics could sober up, treatment centers proliferated and quickly took over the care of the newcomer. Twelve-step members soon stopped teaching their sponsees it was their duty to nurture a newcomer through the first 30 days. It was simply no longer necessary.
“In the eighties,” Shelly continues, “managed care came into the picture and the 30 day plus program came to a grinding halt. Now detox lasts a few days, often with little or no post-detox counseling and 12-step members are not there like they used to be for the sobering up drunk or addict.”
"Hour To Hour, The First Thirty Days" is designed to take up this slack. It contains 720 simple, yet powerful, meditations and prayers for every hour of the day for the first thirty days in recovery. It’s meant to be read at the HALT moments (don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) and to counter cravings.
“This is an incredibly healing book,” Toby Rice Drews, author of Getting Them Sober, states, ”it is bound to be as legendary as Day By Day. Treatment centers and therapist’s should give a copy to every patient.” It contains the phone list in the back for counselors, sponsors and fellow members so that the newcomer has a total support system in his pocket.
“Giving Hour To Hour to someone trying to sober up is one way to help the floundering newcomer,” said Shelly M, “You can’t be with the newcomer for 24/7, but Hour To Hour can.”
