Best views, weather, etc. How to test them 👓 SC, Ala. sites look back Betty Ford honored
NEWS
Iowa

Program helps heal 'hurts, hang-ups and habits'

Sharyn Jackson
The Des Moines Register
  • Program originated in Southern California%27s Saddleback Church in 1990
  • It now is offered in churches worldwide%2C 1 million have gone through the program
  • Abuse%2C addiction%2C codependency%2C depression%2C eating disorders and gambling among areas addressed

DES MOINES — A 12-step program offered in 20,000 churches around the world adds religion to the mix to help heal people suffering from addiction and abuse.

The program addresses not just alcoholism and drug addiction, but codependency, depression, eating disorders, gambling, sexual addiction and sexual abuse. The topical groups vary by site, and some churches' volunteer leaders offer support for same-sex attraction.

The emphasis is on healing "hurts, hang-ups and habits," said John Baker, a pastor at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., who founded the program in 1990. Only 1 of 3 participants is dealing with chemical dependency.

"Everyone basically struggles with a hurt, hang-up or habit, so it can't hurt anyone to go through Celebrate Recovery," Baker said.

More than 1 million people have gone through the faith-based 12-step program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, and the program is growing across the country. Awareness has increased with the April release of a feature film, Home Run, that centers on an alcoholic's experience in Celebrate Recovery.

While no major research has been done on Celebrate Recovery's efficacy, John Kelly, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, said the growth of the program is evidence that it is working for many attendees.

"People are really grasping on to this. They're attending. They're going back," Kelly said. "There is something going on there that people are deriving some kind of benefit from."

Minister leader Melissa Dale addresses the audience May 9, 2013, during a Celebrate Recovery service at Hope Lutheran Church in West Des Moines.

Many participants describe feelings of abandonment or hopelessness as the root of other problems in their lives, and the words of Christ as filling that hole.

Linda Martin of Des Moines, now 50, was abused by her parents, who were Christians and leaders in their church.

"I thoroughly believed that there was a God, and that he didn't care for me, and I was worthless because the abuse wouldn't stop," Martin said.

She ran away from home and survived a tumultuous young adulthood before getting help from a support group, moving forward and raising a family. She felt recovered but avoided religion. Then she accompanied a friend to a Celebrate Recovery support group.

Until she walked in the door, she said, "I thought I was healed." She quickly realized that without her faith, she wasn't.

Soon after, she became a volunteer leader of the abuse group. She started going to church regularly, too.

"It's comforting," she said. "There's a peace that I didn't have before."

Power of religion in fighting addiction

Tom Johnson, a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University, said Catholic, Jewish and Islamic groups also have adapted 12-step programs to their faiths.

"Sometimes people turn to religion when everything else seems to have let them go," Johnson said.

Additionally, he said, spirituality and addiction often intersect.

"Religion in some ways provides a total life commitment, a term some people have used for addiction as well," Johnson said. "It could be our spiritual needs are such that religious activities are one of the things that's powerful enough to push addiction out of the picture."

That was the case for Krysta Sizemore, 32, a methamphetamine addict and resident at House of Mercy. She has attended Celebrate Recovery for a year.

"When I went there, it all clicked," she said. "The Lord is the only person powerful enough to take your addiction away."

David Kaptain, director of the Powell Chemical Dependency Center in Des Moines, said the program can be most beneficial for people who crave religion in their lives.

"It especially works for people who don't feel the same affinity for Alcoholics Anonymous as some feel, who want to have a program that focuses more on a personal relationship with God rather than a global understanding of a higher power that AA promotes," Kaptain said.

New networks for participants

But like Alcoholics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery provides the pivotal benefit of changing an addict's social networks. For non-addicts struggling with abuse or depression, it provides a non-judgmental support network.

Of the 17,000 participants at Saddleback Church 70% were not church members before the program, and 85% of participants stayed with the church.

"Now I am more religious than I ever was," said Dave Pastwa, 50, of Clive, Iowa, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who has been going to Celebrate Recovery for six months. "I go to church two, three times a week because that's where my friends are."

Melissa Dale, who's an Iowa representative for the program nationally, struggled for years with addiction before finding God while serving time. After taking part in a jail treatment program, she became active in the church.

"When I walked through those doors, I found that I was at a place that was going to accept me for who I was," Dale said.

"As far as I was concerned, I was no more than a dope-selling felon from the other side of town, and I come walking in here, and these people accepted me."

Dale grew up with an alcoholic mother and an absent father. She was instrumental in setting up Celebrate Recovery at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines because it addressed childhood experiences and mental health, not just addiction.

Dale hopes her turbulent past can be comforting to others who are in the place she had been years ago.

"This girl would crumble a church she would walk into for the history she had. I felt like I was the biggest sinner on the face of the Earth," she said. "People come here and they are afraid of being judged. I tell them I've got a record, and I'm on staff."

Featured Weekly Ad