Stafford: Sometimes dog’s gotta do what dog’s gotta do

For years, the idea that I might be able to learn something of value from anybody seemed something of a stretch. True, a study of Hitler’s life could presumably teach me not what to do. But that wouldn’t send me to a dollar store to buy a magnet so I could stick his picture on our fridge.

But I now know – and without doubt -- that in midst of this pandemic, there’s a group of people whose habits I am well advised to follow: recovering addicts.

That notion first struck me four years ago covering a story at Springfield’s McKinley Hall.

I was there to interview Kathy Maddy, a therapist who then counseled women trying to wean their way off heroin before giving birth.

Checking in at the reception window, I spotted a yellow flyer taped to a wall that offered advice to the emotionally wired from my Mom: Lay off the caffeine, get to bed on time, lose the junk food and eat regular meals.

Maddy apparently had told them to expect me.

Remembering that last week, I Googled the story I wrote back then to see what else Maddy had had to say.

One was that women in outpatient treatment often takes longer to complete recovery than women in inpatient settings.

Why?

The ones in outpatient care still had to live and work and take care of their kids.

Daily stresses like that “can be threats to both stability and sobriety” – something that just may ring a bell with parents whose school-age kids have been at home.

At this point, I got Maddy’s number thinking there might be other parallels.

And guess what?

Social isolation came up.

It’s a challenge in recovery because addicts can’t be around friends who are users. It’s just too risky.

Ditto during the pandemic.

And the jumbled emotions we’ve had?

You bet.

Maddy likens our moods to a thermostat.

In early recovery, “you don’t have control of your thermostat.”

As a result, there are just too many ups and downs.

What to do about that?

So she advises people in recovery to check their thermostats every day -- to scan their emotions.

The emotions checklist will sound familiar to fans of Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street: mad, sad, glad and scared.

If a bad one comes up, the next is “grounding yourself.”

She does it by standing on her own two feet.

“If I can just focus on my breathing and feel where my feet are for a minute, that helps me.”

It is an adult version of the time-out step, “because you’re pulling that emotional energy back into yourself,” she said – energy that has spinning like subatomic particles around an atom.

It’s no accident she also calls it centering.

In early recovery, “We have to help people to learn how to do those things.”

And to find things they can enjoy.

In December, she took women at McKinley Hall’s HER House, where she now works, on Christmas light drives.

“They were like kids again.”

Trips to the Museum of Art worked as well.

“Women who didn’t even know they liked art” surprised themselves, and “people’s moods started to change, you could notice it.”

“Because addition is a brain disorder,” she explained, new experiences “create new neural pathways” that help the brain heal.

The next step is to initiate those activities on your own.

“Make yourself do something,” she said.

That advice made me feel both good and bad.

On the plus side: I have been making myself do things, in large measure because I have what I call an achievement Jones. If I can get something done – anything done – I feel better.

On the minus side: I’ve begun doing laundry and unloading the dishwasher like someone out of “Desperate Househusbands.”

Maddy said her teenage daughter has taken up adult coloring books. She also likes thrift shopping, and dyeing her hair about every day.

Maddy also advises walks in the park -- Snyder, Old Reid, George Rogers Clark, John Bryan, it doesn’t matter.

Not only does it get the body moving, she said, it provides “kind of like a release of emotion through that sensory experience” of the great outdoors.

She even found that an in-house walking program helped.

“My energy was better, my mood was better, I was sleeping better, my clothes fit a little bit better.”

And trips to the dog park?

They gave her a chance to get out and socialize, and gave her dogs a chance to developed new neural pathways. It didn’t require many visits to a certain drive through for them to discover which of the back seat they should be on to get some strips of bacon from the dog-loving staff.

And that brings us to the ultimate lesson of the pandemic:

Sometimes a dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do, just to get through.

In an outpatient setting — “when they still have to live and work and care for their children” — she said it can take longer because those daily stresses can be threats to stability and sobriety.

About the Author