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Authors: Olivier Ameisen M.D.
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that, and recalling John Schaefer’s advice to keep a low profile until I had at least five years of sobriety, I decided not to sue.
As part of keeping a low profile, I also decided that when I had to go to an ER to detox, I would no longer go to New York Hospital. Fortunately in a big city like New York there were many other options. Joan agreed that if she ever felt she had to intervene and call EMS again, she would make sure that I was taken to another hospital besides my own.
Another step I took at this time was to put all my expenses on automatic bill payment. I wanted to streamline things as much as possible, so that I could concentrate on getting well and not worry about having my phone or the electricity turned off because I was bingeing and forgot to pay the bill. People in AA told horror stories about things like that.
Hoping that it would help me break free of the binge-drinking cycle, my mother urged me to come to Paris for a visit. Liz Khuri agreed that this might be helpful, and she gave me the name of a Paris psychiatrist, Dr. T. I went to see him shortly after arriving in Paris, and I found a very congenial and sympathetic man with a thick beard who looked like the great nineteenth-century founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl.
Dr. T. made no secret of the fact that he had himself been a narcotics addict, and I felt it was a great help that he understood craving from the point of view of the addicted patient. He was also a child of Holocaust survivors, and on that basis he refused to charge me. He was completely nonjudgmental. He agreed to let me conduct an experiment, although he predicted it would be useless: I would drink before and during a session to see if that enabled me to talk more freely about emotional issues that triggered drinking.
My sister-in-law, Fabienne, drove me to the appointment; there was a bottle of Scotch on my lap. The experiment was a total failure. I certainly talked to Dr. T. freely, but we hit on no great insights or undiscovered issues.
Talk therapy in individual and/or group sessions is a standard part of addiction treatment. There were regular talk therapy sessions at Clear Spring, every AA meeting was a form of group therapy, and I had been seeing shrinks for anxiety long before I started drinking. But it is hard to analyze yourself and take appropriate action, if indeed there is any appropriate action to take, when you are in the grip of anxiety and panic or when your brain is pickled in alcohol. Later I learned that AA and CBT are most effective for addicted patients, although the results even then are not remarkably positive, after at least six to eighteen months of abstinence.
In the best circumstances, talk therapy can be a frustrating process of chasing symptoms. For those born with temperaments that include, or dispose them toward, serious anxiety, mood, or personality disorders, identifying triggers for anxiety and depression does nothing to address their biological origins and mechanisms. I don’t mean to say that talk therapy has no benefits, only to note its obvious medical limits.
During our talks Dr. T. repeated several times, “Addiction is a spiritual problem. Why can’t you get spirituality?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Please tell me how.”
“You’ll grasp it in time.”
“Meanwhile I’ll die waiting for spiritual enlightenment.”
Instead of brushing that off, Dr. T. said sympathetically, “Yes, that is possible. But we must try our best to get you well just the same.” He advised me to go into a private rehab clinic in Paris for the rest that had been cut short in my second stay at Clear Spring.
I had lived outside France for so many years that I no longer qualified for government-paid health care, and the private clinic was expensive, if not as costly as Clear Spring. Although I paid part of it, my mother bore most of the bill, which left me feeling bad. But I stayed there for almost four weeks in November and December,
As part of keeping a low profile, I also decided that when I had to go to an ER to detox, I would no longer go to New York Hospital. Fortunately in a big city like New York there were many other options. Joan agreed that if she ever felt she had to intervene and call EMS again, she would make sure that I was taken to another hospital besides my own.
Another step I took at this time was to put all my expenses on automatic bill payment. I wanted to streamline things as much as possible, so that I could concentrate on getting well and not worry about having my phone or the electricity turned off because I was bingeing and forgot to pay the bill. People in AA told horror stories about things like that.
Hoping that it would help me break free of the binge-drinking cycle, my mother urged me to come to Paris for a visit. Liz Khuri agreed that this might be helpful, and she gave me the name of a Paris psychiatrist, Dr. T. I went to see him shortly after arriving in Paris, and I found a very congenial and sympathetic man with a thick beard who looked like the great nineteenth-century founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl.
Dr. T. made no secret of the fact that he had himself been a narcotics addict, and I felt it was a great help that he understood craving from the point of view of the addicted patient. He was also a child of Holocaust survivors, and on that basis he refused to charge me. He was completely nonjudgmental. He agreed to let me conduct an experiment, although he predicted it would be useless: I would drink before and during a session to see if that enabled me to talk more freely about emotional issues that triggered drinking.
My sister-in-law, Fabienne, drove me to the appointment; there was a bottle of Scotch on my lap. The experiment was a total failure. I certainly talked to Dr. T. freely, but we hit on no great insights or undiscovered issues.
Talk therapy in individual and/or group sessions is a standard part of addiction treatment. There were regular talk therapy sessions at Clear Spring, every AA meeting was a form of group therapy, and I had been seeing shrinks for anxiety long before I started drinking. But it is hard to analyze yourself and take appropriate action, if indeed there is any appropriate action to take, when you are in the grip of anxiety and panic or when your brain is pickled in alcohol. Later I learned that AA and CBT are most effective for addicted patients, although the results even then are not remarkably positive, after at least six to eighteen months of abstinence.
In the best circumstances, talk therapy can be a frustrating process of chasing symptoms. For those born with temperaments that include, or dispose them toward, serious anxiety, mood, or personality disorders, identifying triggers for anxiety and depression does nothing to address their biological origins and mechanisms. I don’t mean to say that talk therapy has no benefits, only to note its obvious medical limits.
During our talks Dr. T. repeated several times, “Addiction is a spiritual problem. Why can’t you get spirituality?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Please tell me how.”
“You’ll grasp it in time.”
“Meanwhile I’ll die waiting for spiritual enlightenment.”
Instead of brushing that off, Dr. T. said sympathetically, “Yes, that is possible. But we must try our best to get you well just the same.” He advised me to go into a private rehab clinic in Paris for the rest that had been cut short in my second stay at Clear Spring.
I had lived outside France for so many years that I no longer qualified for government-paid health care, and the private clinic was expensive, if not as costly as Clear Spring. Although I paid part of it, my mother bore most of the bill, which left me feeling bad. But I stayed there for almost four weeks in November and December,
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