Final Comments about HOPE

A higher level of supportive input is available with the presence of this involved and uneducated “support”. Many of us have spent more time trying to take care of the people who love us than focusing on our own treatment. The input we get in a HOPE group supports each of us in our own life, and we come to learn that our ability to give care to our loved ones goes up as we learn to take care of ourselves. This direct personal input is a very positive asset of the HOPE concept. Maybe the key to this asset is finding the meaning in “persons exceptional”. A long legacy of success stands behind those who open their hearts and minds to improve their lives, and to recognize their exceptionality--the precious uniqueness of every individual’s experience.

“Exceptional” always carries the risk of making someone “special”. This was a major challenge for Alcoholics Anonymous from the beginning. Alcoholics working the AA program know that ego inflation is a big challenge for them; it tended to make them the equivalent of God, and the drink helped. When sobriety set in, the Big Ego kept working, leading to the descriptive term, “dry drunk”. Sobriety was said to really be established when the recovering person was able to realize s-he was not God. Now, 60 years after AA began, the issues of ego inflation are still rampant in society; so we specify in HOPE that “exceptional” applies to our wonderful differences that can be viewed as not separating us from one another, but bringing us together in our collective and individual service to the Universe.