43
Minority support group honored
Ebony Lifeline Support Group received Neil Kennedy’s annual Hope Has a Home Award.
BOARDMAN — It was several years after she became sober before award-winning author Susan Cheever admitted to herself that she was an alcoholic.
Even while she was drinking, she didn’t think she was addicted because she didn’t fit her image of an alcoholic — that of a falling-down drunk — said Cheever, who was the featured speaker Tuesday at the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic’s Hope Has a Home banquet.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Ebony Lifeline Support Group of Youngstown received Neil Kennedy’s annual Hope Has a Home Award, given to organizations and individuals that help people on the road to recovery, said Jerry Carter, Neil Kennedy executive director.
“I was living in a townhouse on New York’s Upper East Side with my husband, the love of my life, and two lovely children,” said Cheever in an interview before the banquet.
Despite a seemingly ideal life, she said, “I just wanted to die. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t want to get out of bed.”
But her life changed when she got sober 16 years ago, strangely enough when she was thinking about getting intervention for her husband because of his drinking.
“Now, I want to live. I can’t get enough of life. I couldn’t be more different from that woman who wanted to die,” said Cheever. She has written 12 books, including “My Name is Bill,” a biography of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson, and “Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker,” a memoir of her own drinking and recovery.
Though Cheever said she was unable to ask for help for herself, nonetheless, her advice to those who think they might have a drinking problem is “get help.”
Get help, and provide it, is what two area men, Robert Thomas of Youngstown and Luther Stubbs III of Cortland, both recovering alcoholics, did.
Thomas, who went to Neil Kennedy for treatment, got sober on Nov. 13, 1972. Stubbs, with Thomas as a sponsor, quit drinking in August 1979.
It was while working as a clinical assistant at Neil Kennedy that Stubbs noticed a lot of minority people coming in for treatment and then relapsing and coming back. A lot of others who didn’t come back ended up in jail or dead, he said.
He talked to Thomas about the problem and they decided to put together a support group specifically for minorities. As a result, Ebony Lifeline Support Group was born in 1984.
“Back then, a lot of African Americans and minorities didn’t feel comfortable at traditional Alcoholics Anonymous meetings because most of the people were white,” said Thomas, who started drinking when he was 18.
“We’re very proud of Ebony Lifeline,” said Stubbs, who works for the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership’s Headstart program as manager of parent and male involvement.
“As a result of our recovery, we’re able help someone else,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com