Recovery is Determined Inside the Belly of the Whale
After accepting the call to adventure, the hero in early recovery must deconstruct their old identity in the effort to reconstruct themselves. They’ll face trials on their recovery journey, each providing an opportunity for the hero to change their life story, but some moments hold a particular weight. The importance of these experiences ultimately shift their perspective of life and how they fit into it.
In substance use treatment, I often work with individuals that have been mandated for treatment. They are often encouraged (and required) to seek services by courts, probation, case management, child protection services, etc. While completing assessments, most of the clients I come into contact with were mandated by outside parties.
In my experience, mandated assessments go a few different ways. My clients will, most often, express acceptance of their substance use as problematic and openly express the nature of their substance use. Some will, however, minimize their problematic use. A third option being the client expresses the true problematic nature of their substance use but are not yet ready to stop using. In the last two scenarios, the individual commonly doesn’t see their use as problematic, has no desire to go to treatment, or is apprehensive of seeking services. They may enter into treatment without having faced experiences that fundamentally prepare them for a successful journey.
It’s no secret that many individuals go into treatment when they either aren’t ready for change or have no desire to. They’ve crossed the threshold, accepted their call to adventure with outside influence. For some, it’s about fulfilling a requirement or staying out of jail. So, when a client goes to treatment because they are mandated to, how successful will they be? Does every client mandated for treatment simply leave early or coast through programs before going back to the way of life they know?
Mandated clients can be just as successful as their counterparts that express internal motivation from the start. In my experience, some of my most successful clients began their recovery because they were obligated to for various reasons. But what changes? There are many possible explanations, depending on the person, but my claim is that…
Recovery is determined inside the belly of the whale.
Allow me to explain.
In the Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell highlights the constant nature of death and rebirth for the hero. It’s a common theme in his work that the hero experiences a death of their old identity as the new is constructed through their journeys. Within the framework of the hero’s journey, Campbell identifies the Belly of the Whale as what occurs immediately after the hero crosses the threshold, accepting their journey. Of course, this stage is not limited to the literal belly of a whale, but the theme is that the hero goes through an ordeal in which death appears inevitable, and the hero is seen to have died while facing it. However, the hero emerges having changed, reborn from the experience. They are no longer the person that left the world they know; they are now a version of themselves ready to embark on their journey, one that may now face the trials before them.
How does this apply to recovery? Individuals that go into treatment find themselves at a crossroads. They have crossed the threshold but are not ready for the trials ahead because they remain the same, unchanged through their experiences. This is the crux for the individual in early recovery. What happens when they are swallowed by the whale or walk into the inmost cave?
Change is inevitable in these moments, but how one faces any life-changing situation is a choice. The hero in early recovery may refuse the change necessary. Those individuals find themselves crossing the return threshold, back to their everyday life, without having completed their journey. The next call to adventure in their recovery will inevitably start at the beginning.
The hero in early recovery that embraces the change, however, faces a form of symbolic death. They allow the particular version of themselves that crossed the threshold, leaving their known world behind, to collapse. This collapse occurs in the Belly of the Whale. From death of the old identity, the hero in early recovery is reborn into the version of themselves ready to engage meaningfully in the recovery process.
Does this guarantee recovery process? No, of course not. However, it does provide the individual with a chance. A chance to embrace a new identity, fostering experiences that support their recovery. While change won’t occur all at once, the hero is now ready to walk their life with a sense of purpose.