Tailoring Integrative Treatment
Stumbling in the shadows Jonah was 34 years old when he came in to Beit T’shuvah, addicted to heroin and to hiding. He’d been able to fool his large extended family for many years, as he could be genial and warm, alternately effusive and reflective. He left college after three years, and worked at different jobs around the campus, and then around the northwest. When things got difficult, he’d appear on his parents doorstep, get himself together, sometimes kicking his habit alone in his room, find a job, go back out on his own, until he couldn’t anymore. When he came in to Beit T’shuvah he was determined to get “straight,” to use his mind and his will power to get it right this time. Jonah’s moral logic was mostly organized around “what I’m against” (80% of his moral judgments were “negative”). He had no clue of what he was “for.” Nor was he aware of his own emotions or experiences, which were channeled into his cognitive default mode. Reflecting on his first few months at Beit T’shuvah, Jonah reported about his split and his adaptive posture. A Divided Soul in the Sanctuary ‘For the first two or three months I’d go along with the rules, and be saying the right thing, doing the right thing. But deep down I’d be saying something different. Deep down I wanted something different, and so both parts of me weren’t working together as a whole.’ Going to groups, to meetings, to Torah study, doing chores, Jonah was able to “do the next right thing” long enough to get healthy and start to feel safe, but then… No awakening, no surrender ‘And there’d be a boiling point, when something in me would say, look, I’m doing everything they’re telling me to do, I don’t want to do this, I’m bored, I’m going out and do what I want to do, and kind of exert my life plan.’ Within the second month, and again in his fourth month, Jonah relapsed (ignored G-d’s call to go to Nineveh?). Yet each time, he came back, was readmitted, and started over, going to groups, going to meetings, going to Torah study. He was even able to begin work, and maintained a job for several months, including one relapse. Awareness of the split is the beginning of healing After a third relapse in six months Jonah reported ‘Sometimes I feel like I don’t have power over my actions, that people are directing me to a certain life. So when I go out and ‘‘use’’ it’s like my choice of what I want to do with my life, and against everybody else’s. It’s like the feelings take over, and the emotions are just pouring out of my body, and I want to ask somebody what should I do so badly, it’s amazing to me that as I was going to use, and I ’m walking down the street, and I ’m saying to myself: this is
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