Struggling with addictions or behaviorial health? Find joy this holiday season

Holidays can be an especially rough time for people struggling with addiction and/or behavioral health.

This is why Rev. Jim Swarthout, a longtime addiction specialist with AMITA Health’s Behavioral Medicine Institute, will host five Sober Holiday virtual support sessions in November and December.

“People have the right to have joy and then give it away,” Swarthout said.

Now the sessions won’t necessarily bring people joy and Swarthout isn’t expecting the sessions to work magic.

“I just want to give them a mustard seed, a mustard seed of opportunity,” Swarthout said. “The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but it turns into the largest of plants. If they just get a nugget – or seed – of information, they might be curious enough to go to a deeper level.”

He’s hoping attendees will leave with an open mind, which may lead them to see “something new” – and to understand they have the right to feel joy, he said. He said part of the 12-step program is learning to trust God, clean one’s house [metaphorically speaking], help each other and value service over self.

Besides, Swarthout feels that anything positive that grows within us is meant to be shared.

“We’ve got to give it away,” Swarthout said. “Otherwise, it dies in ourselves.”

Swarthout said holidays often bring triggers, and those triggers might involve shame or blame for addictions or behavioral health from loved ones.

People don’t want to go back to places of judgment and environments that are toxic, Swarthout said. Furthermore, people struggling with addiction and behavioral health tend to slide to the front of the line to “beat themselves up,” he said.

Lack of self-love is often at the core, Swarthout said. And yet, Swarthout added, quoting from the musical “Les Misérables”, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

“Our job is really to love people enough so they can love themselves,” Swarthout said.

The Sober Holidays virtual support sessions will be held at 10 a.m. Nov. 23, Dec. 23 and Dec. 29, and at 7 p.m. Dec. 16 and Dec. 21.

Register at AMITAhealth.org/BMIprograms. For information call 855-383-2224.