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Joe McQuany's vision takes shape
Serenity Home for women
launched
By
One Day at a Time
As he surveys the
landscape of society and sees the rise of substance abuse in women, the decline
of families and the mistreatment of children, Joe McQuany knows that he is right
about the need for a women's treatment center at Serenity Park.
It has been his vision, and today (March 10) he came another
step closer to realizing it when an official groundbreaking launched the
Serenity Home for Women project.
The $850,000, 20-bed facility will be built on the
four-and-a-half acre Serenity Park campus on Roosevelt Road in Little Rock where
the men's facility has been since 1989.
McQuany and the board of the non-profit Serenity Park
Foundation have raised $81,000 and with the groundbreaking behind them, they
will ratchet up their efforts.
"The disease of addiction is growing at an alarming rate in
the female population and continues to be overlooked by society," McQuany says.
"Women," he says, "have always been the nucleus of the family
and community, and the disease of addiction adversely affects the lives of the
family and especially those of the children. Children are being raised in
the middle of the disease process."
Martha A. Morrison MD, writing on women alcoholics in the
back of McQuany's 395-page Recovery Dynamics Manual, says, "the increase in the
number of women suffering from chemical abuse continues to occur between 4 to 7
million of the 10 to 20 million problem drinkers and alcoholics in America today
are women."
The article also suggests, with confirmation from the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), that alcoholism is
more damaging to women than to men and that women hide their alcoholism better.
"Women," the NIAAA says, "appear to be more vulnerable than
men to many adverse consequences of alcohol use. They achieve higher
concentrations of alcohol in the blood and become more impaired than men after
drinking equivalent amounts of alcohol.
"Research also suggests that women are more susceptible than
men to alcohol-related organ damage and to trauma resulting from traffic crashes
and interpersonal violence."
The bottom line according to the NIAAA is that "Female
alcoholics have death rates 50 to 100 percent higher than those of male
alcoholics.
"A greater percentage of female alcoholics die from suicides,
alcohol related accidents, circulatory disorders and cirrhosis of the
liver...drinking may also be associated with an increased risk for breast
cancer."
Because they bear and raise children, women who abuse alcohol
and drugs damage these children and also perpetuate the cycle of addiction.
"Alcohol use by pregnant women is the number one cause of
mental retardation in children. Not drinking eliminates it," according to
Cynthia C. Crone, director of ArkansasCARES. It is also well known that
abuse of alcohol and drugs often produces premature, underweight babies with
costly, sometimes incurable and even fatal medical problems.
And finally, children raised in substance abusing families,
if they survive, will continue the cycle of addiction because their mothers
cannot take care of them, and they cannot heal.
"In the throes of addiction," McQuany says, "Women aren't
mothers. They are alcoholics and addicts."
The treatment model for Serenity Home for Women will be
Recovery Dynamics, developed by McQuany, many years ago and used in Serenity
Park's men's facility as well as 200 other treatment centers both here and
abroad.
"We have an extremely high 80 to 90 percent recovery success
rate at our men's facility which in one of the top ranked treatment
facilities in the nation," McQuany says, adding that "the one guarantee we can
make is that people can recover and live useful lives if they apply what we
teach them."
McQuany, of course, didn't get to where hi is today
overnight.
"The idea to develop a treatment center as well as a
treatment model, Recovery Dynamics, began over 32 years ago when I saw the
significant need the community had for a treatment center designed specifically
to treat the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction," McQuany said.
"The results since then have been asto9nishing. I well
remember the day I entered the first building we rented on 10th and Gaines in
Little Rock, with only $300 and a great deal of generous hard work from others,"
he said.
"As I entered the building," McQuany said, "there was nothing
remaining there except a little plaque on the wall with the inscription, "We are
born for one purpose...to help one another."
"The quote was from Tolstoy and to this day," McQuany said,
"I have taken it to heart and made it my sole mission. I have never been
here for profit, and if I felt we were no longer helping others, I would move on
where I could be of such assistance."
Serenity House, doing business as Serenity Park, was
incorporated as a non-profit organization and opened in March 1972. Since
that time, the facility has treated over 30,000 individuals from all over the
world.
The time has now come, McQuany says, to finish the job.
"Now in the latter stages of my life," McQuany said, "I feel
compelled to focus my efforts on completing the vision I always had for Serenity
House and preserving it through an endowment fund.
"The vision I have will have been completed with the
construction and use of an all women's treatment facility on the grounds of
Serenity Park."
The last leg of his journey
So Joe McQuany is on the last leg of an exiting journey
that began 43 years ago in the psych ward an drunk tank at the Arkansas State
hospital. That was when, at age 35, he finally confronted his alcoholism
and ran up the white flag.
Since then McQuany has traveled to every state of the union
and most of the capitols of the free world as a distinguished author and
lecturer on substance abuse and recovery.
He is the author of two books "The Steps We Took" and "Carry
this Message" and as already noted, the Recovery Dynamics Counselors' Manual
which the Lazarus Center in Sunderland, England just recently adopted.
With two others, McQuany founded the Wolfe Street Center
which provides meeting rooms for 12-Step programs, and he is also a founder of
the Kelly Foundation, which distributes Recovery Dynamics and provides other
educational materials for use by individuals and professionals.
Serenity Home for Women is the final piece in the tapestry of McQuany's vision, and he has asked others in the community to join him "in
contributing to women and their families and to society the experience and gift
of recovery."
This story was published in "One Day at a
Time" Volume 2, Number 1, March 2005
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