Host: Sheryl Glick R.M.T.
Special Guest: Peg O’Connor
In today’s episode of Healing From Within, your host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit shares a look at Universal Energy Healing, Spiritual Communication, and ways to awaken to higher consciousness for achieving true human and divine potential. Today Sheryl welcomes Peg O’Connor author of Life On the Rocks: Finding Meaning in Addiction and Recovery which is the first book to address addiction and recovery from a Western philosophical perspective ultimately showing us that philosophy is more than an academic subject..it is really a way for life and a quest for meaning.
Peg O’Connor who is Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota will begin by taking us back to the ancient Greek roots of philosophy as care for the soul illuminating many issues addicts and their loved ones face, as indeed do we all, and that is: self-identity, moral responsibility, self-knowledge and self deception, free will and determinism, fatalism, the nature of God and our relations to others.
Peg O’Connor wrote this book because rates of addiction are reaching epidemic proportions. More people are interrogating themselves about their relationships to substances and behaviors. This interrogation Socrates might claim, is about examining one’s life...Peg’s own story is illustrative. She writes,” I was sober for more than 19 years before I started to irregularly attend a 12 step fellowship. In the process I found myself drawn back to philosophy. In hindsight I see that philosophy helped me to stop drinking and start living life differently. It provided me with the tools and concepts to ASK and ANSWER questions about my moral character, my non-negotiable commitments, the nature of identity and the degrees of responsibility. It provided me with a framework for meaning and understanding...”
Many seekers would ask to know who they are and why we are having this physical life...Peg describes herself as an alcoholic and a philosopher and thinks that many addicts or people who suffer are philosophically inclined, perhaps sensitive, and are searching for the meaning of life...often just looking in the wrong places. Addicts struggle with issues of self identity, self-deception, free will and the nature of God and relationships as they try quite possibly to understand the human condition in all of its frailties and inequalities.
Philosophy is an orientation to the world as Peg describes. To be philosophically oriented is to be curious about everything but especially the nature of the world, the human condition and an individual’s place in it... Philosophy also aims at prescription or the most basic concern how one ought to live...
Sheryl says in a way philosophy and spiritualism are very similar as Spiritualism seeks to know the Self or inner essence or soul and its connection to Universal Life and how to live according to the values of energy and soul wisdom. Both are ways to reconnect to truth and a higher view of creation and manifesting a better journey through the many varied and sometimes challenging life experiences. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were concerned with living a good life which requires a great deal of self-examination and embodying certain character traits and attitudes that lead to self-improvement.
This book does not advance any one particular form or program of recovery. It is complementary to many approaches to recovery. One of the books central claims is that there are multiple ways to become addicted so there need to be at least as many ways from addiction to recovery to be realized. A person’s needs in recovery will change as he or she changes. Peg suggested and wrote “Philosophers would suggest that the happiest life is the virtuous life and only those who have the right sort of concern for their character can achieve this...so friends matter importantly to one’s character and happiness.
