More than a decade ago, “intervention” premiered on A&E. Like most things, it’s a combination of both good and bad. On the one hand, the show opened up a means by which America was able to get comfortable discussing addiction. On the other, the show borders on the exploitive and often minimizes the complexity of the illness.
Your typical episode unfolds via a pretty rote formula: addict injects in gas station bathroom (shock and horror!), addict is seen in their Little League uniform (aw, see, he was a normal boy!), trauma revealed (death of beloved grandfather; loss of a job; a divorce; you know, life), addict’s mother reads letter and cries in a Marriott conference room, addict is whisked off to a Florida rehab, addict becomes a counselor at said Florida rehab.
I’m all for happy endings, but that particular story skirts all the complexities of addiction while at the same time being representative of a tiny minority of addicts’ actual experiences. Still, it’s something, and TV has its limitations, so let’s call it a mixed blessing when all is said and done.
One thing the show has done is to amplify the voices of the bullpen of interventionists on the show. One of those interventionists is a man named Ken Seeley. Seeley has leveraged his celebrity into a consultation practice, sober livings, and a treatment facility. Good for him! He’s also become a prominent voice in the culture about addition and recovery.
Has he added much to the conversation? Not really. Maybe it’s because he’s not really qualified to be looking down from on high and making pronouncements. Seeley is trained as a “certified interventionist.” What does that mean? Not that much, to tell you the truth. It means he took a few weekend seminars and has strong opinions.
He’s also a former addict. Lived experience can be valid in the attempt to slay the beast of addiction but it’s not exactly therapeutic training. In today’s America, you are an expert if you say you are, and Seeley says he’s an expert in addiction because he was an addict himself. But being sober is by no means sufficient qualification to helping others address an affliction as complex and life threatening as addiction. Nobody would take their car to a mechanic whose qualification was that their car is broken down, too. (A&E also has “certified professional organizers” on Hoarders, their show about compulsive disorders.)
Ethical considerations aside, Seeley has, for better or worse, built a brand and a voice in media. He also has a newsletter where he has a feature called “Heads Up”. That’s a saying you hear on Little League fields, and which is where Seeley’s insights belong. Last week, he took to the virtual soapbox to pen the recovery equivalent of slut-shaming of Demi Lovato.
He started by decreeing that “words matter, sober is sober, there is no other definition.” Right before he insisted that “nobody is judging her recovery.” (Sometimes, people just can’t hear themselves.) Seeley is a gay man married to another man. That’s okay with me. To each his own. But you’d think someone in that position would remember what people used to say about same sex marriage—”that’s not marriage, marriage is between a man and a woman and I get to define marriage”
Along the same lines, “we the people” used to refer to “we the white, male, land-owning, slave-holding people”. But things change. There are still people out there pounding their chests over their insistence that there are only two genders.
The recovery community is inclusive, above all else. Diversity of thought or experience isn’t simply an option, it is the bedrock upon which all recovery is based.
“That’s not sober!” crows Seeley, as if he didn’t get the memo for his approval. It may not be his brand of sober, it may not be the accepted paradigm of sober, but sobriety is a deeply personal thing. It’s self-defined.
How dare this young woman have an experience different from Ken Seeley? The temerity! Seeley goes on to scold Lovato in both passive and aggressive ways. By the end of his lecture, he’s sounding like an old lady clutching her pearls and clucking, “What are those girls wearing…in church!”
Yeah, we get it, Ken. You don’t like a young woman finding her way and trying on hats. Your preference is to sideline QB and judge her or have her join you. That’s the mantra of the evangelical: Join me or be destroyed by me!
I’m a cis gendered, white male. A large one, NFL lineman sized. On a good day, I look like the history teacher who coaches football after dismissal and has a full class because he’s an easy grader. Mostly, I look like a cop. Kids have stopped me and asked if I’m “Jim Hopper” the character from “Stranger things” they call “Fat Rambo.”
I’m also 25 years sober in the traditional AA total abstinence model. I am one of the very few lucky ones for whom that worked. I’m also a clinically-trained social worker with decades of experience. But even I don’t have all the answers. In spite of looking like a cliche, I have strong feelings against evangelicalism. I’m with Pope Pius X, who said “Evangelicalism is a sun, other people form their own relationship with God and it may or may not look like ours.”
This is how I feel about recovery. Individuals get to form their own relationship with it and it’s more than okay if it doesn’t look like mine. Anyone who claims to understand addiction to the point of judging someone else’s recovery is out of their mind.
I don’t have all the answers, but there are certain things I do understand about addiction and recovery. The main thing is that it’s person-specific, as individual as your thumbprint or your life story. Another thing of which I am supremely confident is my understanding that shame has no place when trying to help anyone, in any context. Nothing fuels addiction like finger-wagging moralistic shame.
I have invited Seeley onto my podcast to explain his position and debate me on this issue. To date, I have received no response. He’s obviously better at yelling from the sidelines than he is at getting into the game itself.