ANERDSON, Ind. (AP) - Just three years after her husband unexpectedly died, Virginia “Ginny” Barnes became overwhelmed with grief when her son Jim died.
The 19-year-old overdosed on antidepressants, and it caused her to turn to alcohol to ease her sorrows.
“When he died, I did not want to live,” she told The Herald Bulletin. “So I drank, not to get high, but to get unconscious, (until) the time I realized maybe there was some reason why I was still living.”
That reason, she later found out, was to help alcohol and drug abusers find and maintain sobriety.
Barnes sought treatment in 1981, and by the mid-1990s, she, Lester Duncan and Harold Ben King used their Christian faith to help incarcerated addicts. Eventually, Sowers of Seeds (S.O.S.) became a faith-based, nonprofit recovery organization.
“He was my baby, but that’s the good that’s come from his death, including my alcoholism,” she said.
S.O.S. sees about 300 addiction clients a year, most of which are court-ordered or have recently been released from prison.
The majority of clients don’t have Medicare, Medicaid or any other type of health insurance, so S.O.S. charges only $10 a session. It aligns with the organization’s mission statement: “We provide counseling services to those who need it the most but can afford it the least.”
Dr. Don Osborne, executive director, said almost everyone who enters the program has lost a job, educational opportunities, relationships and freedom.
“When people come to us, we ask a simple question, and it’s only somewhat rhetorical. we ask them what has their life has been like the last few years,” Osborne said.
They already know that they’ve been on a downward spiral, he said. They respond that their life has been hell.
“Our next question to them then is if you don’t change anything, what’s your life going to be like a few years from now?” Osborne said. “When we ask that second question, there’s usually some stunned silence.”
Sometimes that’s the first time their clients realize that their past actions can predict what their future is going to be. It gives them a key tool to changing their probable future.
“There isn’t one person sitting in there that isn’t loaded with grief,” Barnes said.
In order to overcome that grief and their addictions, S.O.S. implements a faith-, abstinence- and 12-step-based treatment plan.
“The first thing they have to do is get rid of their best friend when they were happy, when they were sad and more,” Barnes said.
Osborne noted how important the approach to treating alcoholism Dr. Harry Tiebout’s introduced in the first half of the 20th century. Tiebout believed those who simply comply with treatment won’t ever fully recover. Instead, they have to surrender.
Osborne said if the people who come into S.O.S. aren’t ready to surrender and change their lives, they’re asked to leave the program.
Many say they don’t believe in God upon their arrival to S.O.S. But Osborne said most end up experiencing a spiritual awakening once they relinquish that willfulness.
During the recovery process, counselors talk to their clients about letting go, even if they don’t have a firm concept of a higher power.
S.O.S. promotes the 12 steps so the addicts realize there is a power greater than themselves. If people let go of thinking they’re the god of their own lives, Osborne said, then the Lord reveals Himself in a way that allows them to come to Him.
Osborne said even though S.O.S. is faith-based, counselors don’t force religion. They feel that they can offer their own perspectives on Christianity, but it’s up to each individual to find their own relationships with God.
An African-American teenager from the south side of Chicago is going to see God differently than a corn farmer in Madison County, he said.
“Life experiences are different,” he said. “They may believe in the same God, but they’re going to understand God in a different way based on their perceptions.”
The recovery program usually lasts seven to nine months. Barnes said normally in that time, clients go from saying they don’t believe in God to surrendering.
“Down the line I find out they’re just angry with God,” she said, “and a lot of them before they’re done here have returned to their God.”
___
Information from: The Herald Bulletin, https://www.theheraldbulletin.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.