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Monday, March 20, 2006

Orthodox grapple with alcoholism

Alcohol and drug addiction exist in every sector of American Jewry, but addiction and recovery specialists say Gould is part of a growing problem in the Orthodox community — a problem that, because of the pressures and particularities of an observant Jewish lifestyle, has hit the Orthodox community in different and sometimes more troubling ways than other segments of the Jewish community.

“The Orthodox community really does have a need,” said Adrienne Bannon, executive director of Baltimore’s Jewish Recovery Houses, two centers in suburban Baltimore that house recovering Jewish drug addicts and alcoholics. “I thought most of the addicts and alcoholics filling this house would be long-estranged from religion, but it isn’t true,” she says.

Pinchas, who has been sober for 19 years and asked that his real name not be used, is one example of a recovering alcoholic who never gave up on religion.

A Potomac resident, Pinchas said he joined JACS, the Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others because “when I got sober, I found very few synagogues would hold meetings” for recovering alcoholics, and he wanted Judaism to play a role in his recovery.

“[I thought], ‘I’m Jewish, how do I handle this?’ Because the 12 Steps were written by two Episcopalians and they wrote it from an Episcopalian perspective,” he said, referring to the famed rehabilitation mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous and the two professionals who created it in 1935.

“I almost killed myself,” continued Pinchas, who attends meetings at both groups. “I’d been drinking pretty successfully for about 11 years [and] was living by myself between my junior and senior years in college. I had four things happen to me in a row.”

First, he woke up next to someone he didn’t remember meeting.

Then, in a blackout state, he walked through a floor-to-ceiling glass pane.

Third, he lost a summer job because he missed so much work.

“Then I decided to go to shul,” he said, “and I got kicked out for being drunk.”

Asked if he had noticed an increase in the numbers of Jews he sees at A.A. meetings, which he attends weekly, Pinchas said: “I don’t think there’s been an upsurge, per se, I think the Orthodox community … is not as accepting of the fact that there’s alcoholics or drug addicts in the community. They have more blinders on than the general population.”

He recalled a time when he spoke about his experiences at an Orthodox synagogue, only to have the rabbi ask afterward if he had been adopted, believing, Pinchas said, that adoption was the only explanation for an alcoholic Jew.

http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=5005&TM=35443.58

Comments:
He recalled a time when he spoke about his experiences at an Orthodox synagogue, only to have the rabbi ask afterward if he had been adopted, believing, Pinchas said, that adoption was the only explanation for an alcoholic Jew.


Nice slap at converts by the "rabbi."

 

BS

 

hiccup!!!!!!

 

ee cannnot zeeee whattt is soooo wrong abuttt beinggg a lushhhh (sp?) me thinks i had cunsummmmed wayyyyyyyy 2much red wine weth me din din

 

as the song goes...."One Bourbon....One scotch....and one Beer..." The NYPD Rules!!!!!!!

 

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