“You’re as sick as your secrets,” Janice says.
After 10 years in various 12-step programs, she ought to know. A recovering alcoholic, incest survivor and compulsive overeater, Janice , 48, lived her life in denial — emotional secrecy — until 12 years ago.
One day in 1984, Janice (who asked that her last name not be used) walked into a church basement and joined the ranks of 12-steppers — alcoholics, gamblers, sex addicts and drug addicts who admit powerlessness over their addiction and turn their will over to a higher power.
Today Esther credits Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Alanon for her emotional health. A lesbian living in Washington, D.C., Esther is a computer programmer who proudly announces her “healthy relationship” with a Jewish woman.
She admits walking into a church as a Jewish woman “wasn’t easy,” and that some of the 12 steps “seem sort of Christian, as does the Big Book [AA guidebook] and ending many of the meetings with the Lord’s Prayer.”
However, “I took it very seriously when I was told, `Take what you like and leave the rest,'” Esther says. “We live in a Christian world, so this wasn’t any different for me — being a Jew, in the minority. But there was enough real substance in the 12 steps that I could block out the Christian part. It taught me how to live, that it’s OK that life hurts a little bit.”
Not all Jewish alcoholics, chemical dependents and compulsive overeaters are so successful in their quest to translate the teachings of the 12 steps to recovery.
The seemingly Christian lessons of AA and the fact that meetings take place in churches turn some Jews off. Others struggle with the unwritten, unspoken rule of not questioning the 12-step program. And others, especially women, feel that the entire framework barely addresses their needs.
“Most women who have substance-abuse issues or food issues have low self-esteem connected to their using. AA was designed by and for upper-middle-class, white Christian men” who have different reasons for their addictions, says Karen Erlichman, a social worker and psychologist.
“Women need to feel better about themselves. Not to deflate their egos, but build them.”
The mental health and addiction field often focuses too heavily on people’s failures rather than their successes, she adds.
“I don’t know that it’s so helpful — especially for Jews and for women.”
Instead, she suggests Jews and women use their strengths in surviving sexism and anti-Semitism as tools for their recovery.
“Focus on the humor, resilience and persistence in our sobriety,” Erlichman says.
Erlichman will address the specific concerns of Jewish women in recovery at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, at Addicted Jews in Recovery Anonymous (AJIRA) at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St.
Erlichman will translate and redefine specifically for Jewish women each of the 12 steps — created by AA founder Bill Wilson in 1935 and credited with helping thousands of people get clean.
For example, Step seven reads, “Humbly ask [God] to remove our shortcomings.” But Erlichman says, “It’s hard to be humble and be one of God’s chosen people. This is the paradox.”
However, Erlichman adds, “If being humble means being one with everyone else and not whacking down oneself and others, then humility can be Jewish. Humility isn’t the same as humiliate. And a lot of traditional recovery programs have humiliated their clients.”
Erlichman isn’t the first to recognize the specific needs of Jews in recovery.
Jewish Lights Publishing prints “Twelve Jewish Steps To Recovery: A Personal Guide to Turning from Alcoholism and Other Addictions.” In New York, Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others Foundation (JACS) conducts Jewish recovery meetings.
Jewish Family and Children’s Services across the country offers individual and group therapy for addicts. And in San Francisco, AJIRA meets weekly.
Yet even today, Esther contends the shanda (shame) and the myth that Jews aren’t alcoholics (or drug addicts, or wifebeaters) remains.
“I walked into OA and Alanon and there were other Jews there. But not in AA. We are alcoholics. We just do it under the guise of nice dinners and country clubs,” Esther says.
“The stigma isn’t changing in the Jewish community. If it were I’d find more Jews in the AA rooms.”
And for Esther, “Walking into a room of Jewish women [alcoholics] would be like going home.”
But until Esther finds such a scenario, she’ll continue to go to more traditional 12-step meetings in church basements.
“I need to talk. I need the release, the community,” she says. “I need to hear other people too, so I know I’m not crazy.”