I love you and forgive everything you have done. Now, I want you to take the rest of your life to learn to love yourself.
Tony B (http://www.sober.org/Wisdom.html)

The Belly of the Whale
This stage symbolizes the passage of the magical threshold in a transit into a sphere of rebirth+; it represents a form of self-annihilation. Recovery is a radical process of transformation both in beliefs, self-narrative and in behavior. Nevertheless, this transition will not occur without complications. “Movement is often characterized by ‘fits and starts,’ with shifts back and forth between drinking (with the belief in self-control reinstated) and abstinence (with the acceptance of loss of control).”*

Ultimately, the flawed control organizing principle is replaced for its total opposite, “the acknowledgement of loss of control and the identity as an alcoholic becomes the new organizing principle”*. It is in this stage that the alcoholic usually may try (or the therapist recommend) AA, which also can be seen as a symbolic whale, wherein out hero will eventually die to his old alcoholic ways to be reborn in abstinence.

I. Early Recovery
The Road of Trials
Having traversed the threshold, the heroine moves to what appears to be a different reality, where she will need to face a succession of trials. Fortunately, she does not have to face these alone, by now she has developed a strong therapeutic alliance with her therapist and is able to get support from AA. There will be challenges ahead, since the “patient remains preoccupied with the task of not drinking, the how’s of staying sober, while an identity shift begins to take hold.”*

The therapist will play multiple roles in this stage, the coach, the teacher, the counselor and –obviously– the therapist. Focus remains in alcohol, shifting towards putting in place firm behavioral strategies to establish and maintain abstinence. “The lure of self-control and the behaviors that accompany it are always a potential threat.”* As our hero successfully stabilizes recovery, other perils emerge (those previously covered by alcohol or developed with abstinence); these include substitute addictions, uncontainable emotions, phobias, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. Again, the hero needs to keep on repeating his new learned behaviors to keep himself in the “right track” while learning to reach out for support, both from AA (particularly of his sponsor) and his therapist.

II. Ongoing Recovery
Apotheosis and The Ultimate Boon
At the end of the road of trials, the heroine realizes that the journey has bring about an expansion of her own consciousness. She is not the same one who began the journey. Something has shifted; a deeper self-knowledge, both derived from following regularly the 12 steps and her own individual psychotherapy, which provides access to the unfolding of a new self. Now she is able to look back to her life (both her recent history and her childhood) and gain new insights from it.

This is the moment to emphasize the uncovering therapy process, it is also the moment (as reported by people in 12 steps programs) of an opening of the heart and spiritual development. Sobriety bestows its boons to our brave hero. The hero gains enlightenment through his actions (maintaining a concrete behavioral and cognitive focus, regular attendance to AA meetings, sobriety) and as a result is transformed.

She had gone deep in to the realms of hell (the hell of her own addiction) gone into the darkness of her own fears and faced the dragons that lied within. She killed the dragon and tasted its blood (swallowing her own ego in the form of the illusion of self-control) and simultaneously died in the belly of the whale (again a symbolic ego death) to be resurrected. Now she has learned the lessons that come from the dark, from deep within her own abyss. She has reached Nirvana or the Kingdom of god (a relationship with a higher power), realizing that these are a psychological state of mind, a center rooted within (which does not need of crutches, substances or alcohol) to live in the middle of our world.

However, neither the hero journey nor the alcoholic recovery process ends there. In fact, both schemes see recovery as the end of a cycle, but also the beginning of another. Our recovering hero/alcoholic, can begin now to continue his growth where alcohol hampered it. It is at this point where the adventure of self-discovery begins, and with it, the last part of the hero’s journey. To complete it (in Campbell’s scheme) our hero still has to return to the world, cross another threshold, learn how to be the master of two worlds and find true freedom, using his knowledge and experience to help others. Similarly, AA’s last step, reads, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of theses steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

But then again, what do I know…