I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I showed up for the orientation to earn an Alcohol and Drug Abuse Studies Certificate at UCLA one Tuesday evening last year. I wasn’t entirely certain why I was doing it.
I was only there because the previous Sunday, I’d been with a friend who owns a Sober Living house. We were casually discussing new projects when he said to me, “Hey, you should get your CAADAC.”
“I should?” I asked, buying time. Like many, I’m immediately impressed and intimidated by acronyms I don’t know.
“Sure,” he said. “UCLA has a great program. And more and more treatment centers are requiring their counselors to have a CAADAC.”
I had no plans to become a counselor at a rehab. But he shrugged and said that a CAADAC program would be a way to learn more about addiction and recovery than I could even imagine.
Now, I’m someone who doesn’t read the directions to appliances or the fine print of contracts. This has gotten me into more trouble than I’d care to admit. I’m also someone who believes the universe speaks to me through the people in it, so when somebody suggests I try or do something, I take that as a sign that I’m meant to do it.
I didn’t suspect that my views about recovery would change; I didn’t know that my views about recovery even needed to change.
This has also brought on its share of problems.
I looked up CAADAC on the UCLA Extension site and learned what it was (California Association of Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Counselors). Then I discovered that orientation was in just a few days and decided this was all meant to be.
I expected to either learn some new information or to discover that my ADD had grown so extreme over the years that I simply wouldn’t be able to sit in a classroom for three hours at a time. I didn’t suspect that my views about recovery would change; I didn’t know that my views about recovery even needed to change.
This wasn’t my first go at adult education, and I figured my new commitment wouldn’t be too challenging. During all those years when I’d been too scared to sit down and write books and submit them to agents, I’d done my time in a series of writing classes where embittered-seeming, exhausted teachers who’d been published in two or three literary journals would feign enthusiasm for showing frustrated wanna-be writers the ropes. Each class was more depressing than the last.
So I was shocked when I rolled in late to this orientation to find a roomful of inspired-looking people, fluttering around and asking questions with more energy than those who’ve been in work and traffic all day have any right to. It was immediately obvious they were sober: Not only did the requisite tattoos (and cigarette smoke outside) clue me in, but the group as a whole had that frantic, excitable energy that surfaces when those who once consumed lethal amounts of alcohol and drugs are stone-cold sober and focused.
I felt at home and immediately committed to taking a class each quarter and some weekend courses, meaning I would earn my certificate in two years. My first class—Social and Pharmacological Aspects of Alcohol and Other Drugs—immediately taught me that I’d miscalculated when I’d assumed this would be easy. The teacher, who had double-digit sobriety and had worked in the treatment industry for nearly as long, rattled off facts about the “old brain” (which, she said, contained the limbic, or emotional, part) and the “new brain” (which included the prefrontal cortex, where logic and reasoning take place). Words like “nucleus accumbens,” “Ventral Tengmental Area” and “amygdala” tumbled out of her mouth.
I took out my glasses and struggled to keep up.
But it’s turned out to be one of the most rewarding educational experiences of my life. Soon I started devoting my free time to reading the hefty textbook (Uppers, Downers and All-Arounders, not exactly light bedtime fare) and getting to know my classmates. Most were a lot like me: in their middle life years, sober, and realizing that what they were doing for a living was less rewarding than they’d hoped. Some already worked at treatment centers—one at Promises, one at the Salvation Army and a lot in between—but most did not. Some, like me, weren’t sure that they ever would. And throughout that quarter and the next (where I took a class in Co-Occurring Disorders) and the one I’m in now (Bringing Recovery to Diverse Populations), I’ve grown closer to my classmates, which has helped me to learn about addiction in ways that I never could have otherwise.
Some of them are pretty hardcore: Never once has a drug or drug combination arisen that someone hasn’t tried. When we discussed bath salts, many people shared their experiences of that particular high. When we were studying the antagonists and agonists that help people get off opiods, our teacher told us about Vivitrol, Buprenorphine and Suboxone, and one of my classmates—not the kid from Brentwood who likes to show off a bullet hole from his drug dealing days, but the one next to him—told us what it’s like to be on all three at once. (In a word: gnarly.)
When I was in college, my focus was more on getting through, and I was rarely inspired by my assignments. But now, when we break off into duos or groups and practice intakes, assessments and Motivational Interviewing, I get to experience what it’s like to be a counselor, while also being reminded of the changes I’ve made since I was a rehab client nearly 13 years ago. I’m engaged by the chance to get to know my fellow students in intimate and fascinating ways.
I got to write my final paper in Social and Pharmacological Aspects of Drugs on Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” (specifically on how Jigga raps that MDMA makes you “feel like a champion” and how “the city that never sleeps better slip you an Ambien”)—and how that connects to tabloid photos of smoking starlets, and the scene in Toy Story 3 where the toys play roulette with a See ‘n Say game, and what all this says about society’s attitude to addiction. It was exciting. I felt the same when, in Co-Occurring Disorders, I got to write a treatment plan, using the DSM, for Sherry, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character in the 2006 movie Sherrybaby.
Because AA worked for me, I didn’t have a large enough vision to understand that there were people who it didn’t work for, who could also find a way to healthy recovery.
This program is no joke. The quizzes and final exams require serious, stressful study. If you ever want to feel pressured to do well, try putting a bunch of sober addicts in a situation where they’re going to be graded. Every bit of energy that these people used to focus on better living through chemistry gets maniacally channeled toward obtaining perfect grades. When one of my classmates gets an A instead of an A+, he’s usually disappointed. The irony that many of these people barely graduated from college when they were in active addiction isn’t lost on me.
Before we graduate, we have to complete hands-on internships in treatment centers. Since January, I’ve been leading a weekly group at Friendly House—the oldest recovery home for women in the country. While I started out reading the Big Book with them, my UCLA classes have inspired me to get more creative, so now I’m having the girls work on addiction and recovery scrapbooks, pasting everything that reminds them of life before sobriety on the left page and everything about life in recovery on the right, while I play a song about addiction and recovery. Then we discuss what we related to in the song. It’s the art and music class I wish I could have taken in grammar school.
But more than anything else, what my classes and the UCLA program have taught me is just what a big, wide world recovery is.
Because I got sober through AA, I didn’t ever meet anyone who quit drugs and drinking on their own, or through SMART Recovery, Rational Recovery, LifeRing, church or anything else.
I love AA. But I’d never truly understood until taking these classes that being in AA had caused me to believe that those in recovery who weren’t doing 12-step programs were gearing up for a relapse, gritting their teeth or lying about being happy and free of cravings. I don’t blame AA for this; many addicts who are not in AA are gearing up for a relapse, gritting their teeth or lying about being happy and free of cravings.
But because AA worked for me, I didn’t have a large enough vision to understand that there were people who it didn’t work for, who could also find a way to healthy recovery.
This came up in class one night, when a few of us mentioned that we didn’t know any addicts who were sober, not in 12-step programs and happy. Then a voice popped up from the back. “I am.” I turned around: A smiling brunette waved her hand in the air. We had talked a few times and she always seemed cool; I’d respected a lot of what she’d volunteered in class.
She and I are now friends and she’s told me about other people she knows who are sober and doing well without AA, while I’ve told her about other people like me. And now that she’s shared her experience with me, her real-life example shows me that there’s more than just the path I took to sobriety and contentment.
And for me, perhaps that’s even more valuable than learning just how much my pre-frontal cortex needs to watch out for my limbic brain.
Fix columnist Anna David is the author of Party Girl, Bought, Reality Matters and Falling For Me. She served as The Fix’s Executive Editor for over two years. Her previous columns have covered dodgy doctors, AA-haters, being a so-so AA sponsor and the unpredictability of making amends.