Finding Hope in Recovery: Families Living with Addiction is a documentary of challenging and heartbreaking stories of families facing addictions and traveling the stages of recovery—and setback.  

“The most destructive thing for family systems is the disease of addiction. It destroys not only the economy of the family, but also the fiber of the family, the trust, the faith, the honesty”. 
– Shirley Beckett Mikell, NAADAC

Where chemical dependency is present in a family, the entire family suffers. Relationships begin to disintegrate. Often the family ends up with depression and co-dependency issues. The family members become as sick as the addicted individual. Christian families are not immune to this problem.

Why this topic? Besides being implicated in a wide array of social problems, alcohol or drug dependency/abuse destroys families.

• Drug and alcohol are implicated in half of all divorces and separations
• 65% of the children in the foster care system are there because of alcohol/drug abuse by parents
• 87% of people in jail are there because of drug and alcohol offenses
• 5 million alcohol or drug abusing adults had had a child younger than 18 living with them in 2002
• Such homes are more prone to violence and domestic disturbances

Goals: Help viewers overcome their fears about families and individuals with addiction issues. To highlight how faith in God is helping families cope with and overcome the disease of addiction. Many of the participants point to faith as being crucial in overcoming their addiction or staying on the road to recovery.

Featuring: Treatment agencies featured in the program include Saint Christopher’s Inn and Caron Treatment Center (N.Y.), and Penn Foundation Recovery Center, (Pa.)  Professionals who work with agencies like The Association of Addiction Professionals will help viewers understand how recovery, reconciliation and healing can grow. A nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy shares his journey. Five families reveal their roller coaster ride with recovery. Sample stories include:

Pam watched helplessly as both her husband and children slid into alcohol and drug addiction. Son Matt changed his set of friends as he started off with “simple” high school partying. Daughter Kayte turned to drugs and alcohol to fill an “empty void” in her life, where she really didn’t care if she lived or died.

During one hospitalization, Pam accused the nurses of not doing enough for Matt. A nurse stopped her cold with the words, “Mrs. Roberts, your son is an addict.”

Pam says, “I’ll never forget that. It felt like a slap across the face. I always believed that drug addicts were these horrible people that lived on the street, stole, and you never thought that your son or daughter was one.”

Because of the stress, her husband Bill started drinking more and taking prescription drugs.

For Lynn, her son Nick’s heroin addiction destroyed her marriage and alienated her other children. “The hardest thing is loving and hating someone at the same time,” she sobs. “When Nick uses this stuff, he is not my son any more.”

Expert interviews include:

• H. Westley Clark, M.D. J.D., M.P.H., CAS, FASAM,  Director Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• Terry Cline, Ph.D.,Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• Ron Hunsicker, CEO, National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers
• Doug Tieman, CEO, Caron Treatment Center
• Michelle Staub, Caron Treatment Center
• Thomas McLellan, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine,
• Marianne Taylor-Rhoades, St. Christopher’s Inn
• Todd Barlow, Penn Foundation Recovery Center
• Cynthia Moreno Tuohy, The Association of Addiction Professionals
• Shirley Beckett Mikell, The Association of Addiction Professionals

Audience: Teens and adults, male and female.

Length: One hour, with ancillary material available on DVD. Available on DVD or VHS from Mennonite Media after Jan. 1, 2008.

Production: Finding Hope in Recovery is part of a series of documentaries examining issues that generate stigmas in society. Mennonite Media produced the program for initial broadcast on Hallmark Channel through Faith & Values Media, New York, NY. 

Other programs airing in the series, all produced by Mennonite Media are Fierce Goodbye: Living in the Shadow of Suicide, and Shadow Voices: Finding Hope in Mental Illness. Producer for the program is Burton Buller, director of Mennonite Media.

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