Welcome to the Integral Recovery blog
Well, here is the first blog entry for our Integral Recovery website. This, in many ways, represents years of struggle, defeats, frustration, exhilarations, inspirations, and integrations. I’m looking out the window of my office in Teasdale, Utah: September 3rd, 2007, 5:30 PM. The sunlight does amazing things at this time of day in our valley. Maybe it is a little early in this journey for reflection, but even to get to this point has taken a lot. I have great hope that many, many lives will be saved from the misery and death of addiction. If there is a more toxic disease than drug addiction I don’t know what it is. Because, this thing not only destroys the body, but the mind and soul as well. With a disease like AIDS or cancer you can still die radiantly, with nobility. With addiction you just die, a shade, a four-quadrant wreck, in ultimate defeat.
But now perhaps we can use this map and model to start to roll back the darkness one life, one family, one community, one day at a time. To me it seems that the AQAL map was made for the defeat and treatment of addiction. To me it seems to be the low hanging fruit of the emergent Integral wave that has the potential to reshape our world in the midst of its chaos and struggle. The lives that this Integral Recovery model saves may be the ones that will make the difference. At least that is what I feel. Many years of experience have shown me that addicts are not flawed, bad people. To the contrary, in many cases, they are our best and our brightest. Now they are going to have a better chance of making it. And that is going to be very good for us all.
