Depth Recovery and "Things I Must Earn"
Last weekend I attended a fantastic workshop introducing "Depth Recovery," an approach developed by presenter Corey Gamberg, LADC. Gamberg shared his lived experience with addiction and recovery and, like me, has been working in treatment for a long time. Unlike me, Gamberg also has credentials in Jungian psychotherapy, dreamwork, and spiritual direction. I took this as a promise of more "depth" than we usually get in professional education, and was not disappointed. This post will summarize what I gained from the presentation and conclude with some underlying questions that remain for me.
What is Depth Recovery?
Gamberg conceptualizes addiction as a loss of imagination. In active addiction, life becomes black and white– "either I'm suffering, or I'm high" –and the person loses access to their own psyche, including the kind of abstract thinking they would need to envision anything else. This is a Jungian perspective in its focus on symbol and meaning. And if addiction is the absence of such capacity, it can be regained in recovery.
The 12-step model stands for what Gamberg calls collective recovery, which helps people achieve abstinence (from substances), stabilization (of their lives), and interdependence (with peers in the program). This is no small thing, and countless people credit 12-step participation not only for their sobriety but for their survival– Gamberg included, if I understood correctly. However, he suggests that collective recovery is in fact just one initial phase in a longer process, rather than the entire solution in and of itself.
In what he calls post-recovery, symbol and meaning have been restored to the psyche. At this stage the individual is ready to, and perhaps even needs to, find their own understandings beyond answers provided by the collective. This is part of the lifelong process of Jungian individuation, by which we discover who we are and find unique meaning in our lives– and it doesn't fit well into 12-step philosophy. Gamberg described an experience I have heard from many clients: when he began to raise questions about meaning beyond collective recovery and the 12 steps, they were dismissed as fear, resentment, denial, or the like. Peers and mentors in the recovery community typically become defensive at any suggestion that recovery might have any other horizons, even just for some individuals, beyond the collective model.
I find all of this very convincing– conceptualizing addiction as a loss of the imaginal, the notion of recovery as its restoration, and the idea that collective recovery can be a dramatically healing process without necessarily being everyone's final destination. I meet many stable, fulfilled people who say they used to be involved in 12-step programs. If the 12 steps were really necessary and sufficient for everyone, they wouldn't have so many grateful former adherents.
Who is Depth Recovery for?
But since I spend so much time thinking about how various approaches to addiction fail people– all the things we do in treatment that don't work– I started channeling objections from people who (to my knowledge) were not in the workshop. For example, when the presentation posited abstinence as a "threshold" one has to pass in order to reactivate the psyche's potential, I immediately thought of drug user activists, harm reductionists, and everyone I have worked with who has struggled to achieve or maintain sobriety. These people would likely say: we don't need yet another modality that excludes everyone actively using.
So I asked if Depth Recovery could be accessed while some substance use was still happening, and Gamberg answered yes– if you're not an alcoholic/addict. But it is not compatible with ongoing use if you have a chemical dependency. So although Depth Recovery is for breaking out of the rigidity and dogma of the collective model, it still seems to retain some of its precepts. Two fundamental qualifiers for Depth Recovery from substance addiction are apparently still "black and white": 1) whether you're sober or not; 2) whether you're an addict or not. (See Addiction Essentialism for my exploration of the addict identity.)
Gamberg had also mentioned that critical questioning of the 12-step model, which he sees as a sign that the person is ready for post-recovery, tends to come after five or more years of 12-step participation. I shared in the course chat that I've heard people much earlier in the process raise similar concerns– and in addition to the defensiveness that always comes (discussed above) they are also dismissed for their inexperience. How could someone possibly criticize AA [i.e. collective recovery] when they're barely even sober? Who are they to be looking for something "deeper"?
I've put it harshly, but it seems that the Depth Recovery philosophy would more or less support this response. If collective recovery is only an initial phase, and abstinence is a psychic threshold, then Depth Recovery is not really an alternative to the 12-step model for working with addiction. It's an advanced, rarefied experience that must be earned through years of abstinence, step work, and immersion in collective recovery. I am reminded of the 12-step slogan that "TIME" stands for "Things I Must Earn." Time, in the recovery community, generally means sober time: the period of continuous abstinence since last substance use. How much time someone has is a crucial measure, both personally and to their role in the collective. And everything must be earned with time.
In Reflection
I'm a big believer in delayed gratification. I respect that there is no substitute for time or for sustained effort– ever more so as I've gotten older, in fact. Things and experiences that one has earned have a singular value from what it took to earn them. For everything we have earned, and for rich depth we have found without necessarily enjoying what it took to get there, we can and should be proud.
But not everyone earns things. Some people simply do not operate on an earning paradigm! In fact, addiction itself can be seen as a refusal to earn: "I want what I want when I want it" (another 12-step saying). We can resent this all day. It can make a person unlikeable. But I don't think it should be a death sentence– and when all our models of recovery come down to earning it, that's what it is. I dream of a cure for addiction to which everyone would be entitled, with no questions asked, no sober time required, and nothing to earn.
ICYMI: Registration is open for my next Moral Injury CE class on June 22. Click here for more info and to register!
