Hired Power...

From "Treatment Magazine (Addiction Industry News)", Jan 2006 - an advertisement:
The Hired Power Recovery Assistant Program (TM) - "Help clients make the critical transition from being in treatment to living in recovery. Trained, experienced staff, insured, bonded company."

Working in the field, I run across these things and usually don't notice them much. But the name of this group caught my eye and I got a snide chuckle out of it. ("If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll be anyone's higher power you say.")

Apparently this company can arrange to have someone go to a client's home to stay with them and keep them on the straight and narrow. They claim that they are not sponsors or therapists, but they do allude to the fact that they can report back to the patient's doctor or treatment program. ("So be good! For goodness sake!" ...I guess it's a day for "Ghostbusters" quotes).

I've worked in the counseling field for a long time, and I know that I've had to live with 12-step philosophy and its domination of my field for a long time. I've had to sit through a bunch of annual EAP conference lunch speeches that were just AA drunkalougues (just substitute rubbery chicken for the coffee and cigarettes). One year I almost lost my rubbery chicken lunch from hearing Bill Moyers (the younger) describe in graphic detail how he blew his nasal septum out after using too much cocaine.

But even considering how thoroughly 12-stepped my profession is, I think I can venture an opinion that this sounds pretty goofy. Then again, in this era of personal trainers, wellness coaches, and executive coaches, if people want to pay for something like this, I suppose they can be my guest. The company's website is hiredpower.com.

The same magazine has an article that I found enlightening: "Over the past couple of decades, as South Florida has grown into one of private addiction treatment's leading regions, so too has the ancillary business of providing sober living facilities and services boomed. Not only is the sober house business highly profitable in and of itself, but it has provided an ideal way in which to finance entrepreneurial participation in South Florida's hot real estate market..."

Apparently the city of Boca thought this was a less-than-stellar use of some of that choice real estate and wanted to zone the property to keep recovering drunks out. Fortunately, the owner (using his "considerable financial resources") got the Dept of Justice involved, probably on the premise that rich drunks are a protected group.

For the rest of us, both counselors and people who want to quit, self-help meetings, counseling, and reading materials will still be the main tools within our budget. But it's nice to know that the rights of any of us to occupy choice real estate in order to get sober is being protected by the courts.