Addiction and Death, Recovery and Succession

Abstract

Having recently lost my mother, I am acutely sensitized to the personal impact of death on our lives. Although we will all eventually face our own mortality, addiction tends to accelerate the process of dying. One hope of recovery is that we are able to live today with more awareness of the gifts that the present has to offer us. Some people in recovery tell us that is why we call it the present. Another hope of recovery is an increased ability to create and participate in a community that will carry on our vision into the future. We trust that such a vision guides our journal. In this issue, we celebrate the lives and accomplishments of two members of our community who recently died, David Powell and Catherine P. Papell. William (Bill) White offers us a warm tribute to David Powell, who is known as the father of clinical supervision for addiction treatment providers. David served on our editorial board from the founding of our journal, and his article on men in groups appeared in our inaugural issue (Powell, 2006). We will miss him dearly. Catherine P. Papell lived to 97 years old. She was an elder stateswoman in the field of group psychotherapy among social workers and founded our sister journal, Social Work With Groups. We are grateful to Andrew Cicchetti, frequent contributor and reviewer for our journal, for his eloquent memorial to Catherine. Our articles in this issue highlight the themes of recovery, innovation, and succession. April Benson and her colleagues extend the work of their previously published article in our journal (Benson & Eisenach, 2013) with a randomized controlled trial of group therapy for compulsive buying disorder. In addition to extending our understanding of behavioral addictions related to money, these authors demonstrate a model for all of us to integrate our work into the increasingly demanded arena of evidence-based treatment. Succession necessitates a process of passing on our experience, strength, and hope to the next generation. In 12-step recovery, this process typically occurs through sponsorship. The article by Lawlor et al. describes succession as it occurs in the Oxford House recovery homes. The richness of studying these homes as a model for recovery from addiction has been illustrated in the prolific number of articles contributed by these authors in prior issues of our journal, including the special issue on Oxford Houses, edited by Leonard A. Jason and Joseph R. Ferrari (Roth, 2009).