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When Jim St. Charles left his 45-day recovery program at Koinonia Treatment Center in January, he did not know how he would cope with returning to a world he had only known as an addict. What St. Charles has found in the past eight months is that the best way to re-enter the world after treatment is to build friendships with people who have been through the same struggle.

On Saturday, a group of Koinonia alumni, friends, and family will hold an event in Hodag Park to celebrate the fact that recovery from alcohol and drugs works.

“We are hoping to spread the word about what it take to be gentle about returning to the world after treatment. Recovery is not a death sentence,” St. Charles said.

Typically AA and NA groups operate on a principle of attraction rather than promotion, meaning new members find their way to meetings without the help of media publicity.

The principle helps ensure that the groups remain immune to outside influences that could corrupt them or keep them from serving the addicts first.

The drawback to the principle is that recovering addicts do not have advocacy groups or support groups that allow them to participate in society at large in a public way.

The Koinonia alumni, friends, and family group first started as a way for recent graduates of the program to stay in touch. But legal restrictions about how Koinonia can interact with alumni led St. Charles to formalize the group as an organization for those coping with life outside the walls of Koinonia.

Bruce McLaughlin, a substance abuse counselor at Koinonia, said the new group is an important next step on the pathway to healing from long-term addiction.

“It keeps you connected. It’s more about personal growth and it takes socializing to a different level as people start to move away from the NA and AA groups and look at new challenges,” said McLaughlin.

McLaughlin, who was an addict and a chef for 30 years, went back to school for his degree as a substance abuse counselor because he loves working with addicts. For many addicts, he said, the struggle of proving to other people that you are worthy of their trust can be a challenge capable of triggering relapse.

“The success rate is so low for recovering addicts that people want to know when you’re going to relapse,” said McLaughlin. “Early recovery is tough. You feel like you’re playing catch-up. You’ve neglected your bills and your family members and it’s hard to attend social functions.”

According to McLaughlin the average person in recovery needs 58 weeks of rehab treatment before they experience long-term recovery and the recidivism rate is still around 90 percent.

Koinonia Residential Treatment Center is one of the last centers in the state to offer a full 45-day residency program. Often times residents come to the program having lost everything.

St. Charles believes treatment is the first phase of an on-going battle to re-claim a meaningful life through recovery. The purpose of the alumni, friends, and family group is to create a new venue for maintaining healthy, nurturing relationships once an addict has completed a residential treatment program.

“It’s a semi-social group with a dual purpose of keeping people in touch with the Koinonia approach to recovery but also to give people a chance to expand their social sphere,” said St. Charles. “The missing piece of the puzzle is that when someone gets out of recovery they often go back to the same situation that got them into treatment in the first place.”

The aim of the group, according to St. Charles, is to function as a public social organization, something that has been missing from the recovery world since the early 1980s, when NA social clubs founded in the 1970s lost funding sources in the era of “Just Say No to Drugs.”

“We can’t give them what they get at their meetings but we can give them a way of experiencing society in a non-anonymous way,” said St. Charles.

St. Charles said the fledgling group hopes to grow so that it can sustain long-term volunteer projects that benefit the recovering community.

“It’s part of the treatment process to start to feel good about yourself. One of the ways you can do that is by helping someone out. It gives you a sense of confidence that you can help someone else out,” said St. Charles.

A secondary function of the group will be to confront the stigma attached to addiction. The AA model was created in the 1930s, when society generally accepted that addiction was the result of a lack of will power. Recent medical advances in brain imaging have shown that alcoholism is a disease that re-organizes brain chemistry and reacts to genetic predisposition.

“People still think it’s an issue of will power. But the medical research is there. In order for us to be accepted by the world we have to go out and change what the world thinks about our disease,” said St. Charles. “We’re looking at this weekend’s event as our first major test to see if our group can spread some joy and share some information with the public.”

The Harvest: Reap the Rewards of Recovery celebration is sponsored principally by Koinonia alumni, friends, and family with the support of the Human Service Center, Northwoods Guidance, Koinonia Treatment Center, the Oneida County Health Department, and the AODA Coalition.

The program will feature speakers like retired Judge Robert Kinney, music from various artists including a native drum group from Lac du Flambeau, and a dunk tank manned by Oneida County Sheriff Jeff Hoffman.

For more information about The Harvest call (715) 362-5745.

For more information about Koinonia Residential Treatment Center call (800) 864-3009.

For the Oneida County crisis line call (888) 299-1188.

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