Healing Beneath the Palm Trees

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The view of the bay on the Caribbean island of Antigua where the Crossroads Centre for the treatment of drug addiction is located. Help is waiting in the Caribbean for anyone who has not been able to sort out a drug or alcohol problem at home. Crossroads Centre for the treatment of drug addiction on Antigua aims to give its patients the strength to change their lives. And part of that is the quest for a spiritual anchor. When the soul cries for help, Fr Frank Power, SVD, comes into his own. The waves roll gently over the white sand, retreat, and roll forward again. The tiny hummingbirds flutter around the red blossoms of a bougainvillea. The lawn is freshly sprinkled. The morning sun shimmers in the drops of water on the blades of grass. An idyll from a holiday catalogue with an all-inclusive worry-free guarantee! But the people here hurrying over the freshly raked paths in their bathrobes and gym shoes have their worries. They have been drinking for years. Their craving for crack controls their lives. The dealer who sells them cocaine is more familiar to them than their own spouse. When they arrive here they have no eyes for waves or hummingbirds. “We create a healing environment here,” says Tim Sinnott, director of this therapy centre located on a lonely bay on the Caribbean island of Antigua. “We aim to awaken all the senses so that people discover what makes their lives beautiful. We entice them into letting go of their misery.” “Crossroads” is the name of the therapy centre founded six years ago by the American musician Eric Clapton. “He has had alcohol problems himself, his little son was killed in an accident – he has stood at many a crossroad,” reports Tim Sinnott. It was on Antigua that the world-famous jazz guitarist at last found healing and in thanksgiving for this ‘miracle’, as he himself calls it, he founded a hospital for 32 patients struggling with any form of addiction. Fr Frank Power, SVD. Americans and Europeans in their middle years particularly seek help in the Caribbean. Often they have been taking drugs for ten years or more and have already abandoned several attempts at therapy. Here, faraway from their normal everyday situation, they have a better chance of healing. “We guarantee them their private space, they don’t have to be constantly in conflict with their health insurers about what they’re allowed and here in Nature’s wonderful surroundings they restore body, spirit and soul,” explains Tim Sinnott. About a fifth of the patients are local people. They need to come up with only a fraction of the normal therapy costs (US$15,000) themselves – the finance injected by Clapton and his musician friends sees to that. Cocaine snuffers, crack smokers, drinkers, take the 29-day programme based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The patient has to recognise that he has lost control of his life and needs help. The staff at Crossroads support this process with one-to-one counselling and group therapy – as well as massage, acupuncture, sports activities and healthy eating. A decisive step in the Twelve Step Programme is the discovery of a “Higher Power”. Drug addiction, according to Crossroads principles, is not merely a physical disease like diabetes or a weak heart. It also reveals a troubled soul. And this is the domain of Fr Frank Power, an SVD missionary from Ireland, who works at Crossroads as a spiritual counsellor. “We aim to awaken all the senses so that people discover what makes their lives beautiful. We entice them into letting go of their misery.” “There are people here so rich they are flown in on their own private jet,” Fr Frank explains. “They have houses and boats, they manage whole businesses and know a thousand famous people. But they don’t have a single real friend. Their soul is poor. And they know there is something missing in their lives.” In lengthy conversations Fr Frank tries to help the clients come in contact with God. Though he often has to avoid the word ‘God’: “Many of them have had bad experiences with the Church and they transfer their rage on to God. Others have no notion at all of what I mean when I say ‘God’. I motivate them to discover something greater than themselves, something beyond them. Whether they call that ‘Jesus’ or ‘Great Spirit’ or ‘a dream’ – for me that is not so important.” Everyone has to have a session with Fr Frank – it is part of the therapy at Crossroads. The SVD missionary finds that some of these conversations can be extremely difficult, especially when the person has no links at all to religion. “Then I ask them about good experiences they’ve had in their lives, situations where they thought, ‘That was lucky!’ Or ‘What a fluke! I could have been dead…’ And then I move in and ask: ‘Could it be that someone holds your life in their hand?’ Or I say to them, ‘Write down everything good that has ever happened to you. And pause after every sentence and say out loud: Thank you! It doesn’t matter who you say it to as long as you come to see that we don’t owe everything just to ourselves.’” It is not easy for many of them to remember the good there has been in their lives. And often the stories Fr Frank gets to hear take his breath away, experienced counsellor though he is. Abused as children, raped while drugged, driven to prostitution to feed their addiction – many are ashamed of what their sickness has made of them. “An important step in the healing process is becoming reconciled with the Higher Power. Many of them are always asking: ‘Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong? God hates me!’” Fr Frank reports. “They simply cannot believe that God is ready to forgive all that.” A “graveyard for the past” is what the staff call the Crossroads Centre though they know that only about half of all patients will succeed in living drug-free lives for years at a time. “It’s a powerful and insidious disease,” says Tim Sinnott. “And chronic, like diabetes where you have to inject insulin to control the blood-sugar – but that never cures you, it’s a disease you have to live with.” That is why the Crossroads team attach particular importance to the aftercare of their patients. As they leave the Caribbean idyll they are given the addresses of Alcoholics Anonymous groups or they enter psychotherapy. In special family programmes the relatives too are tied into the healing process. For Antiguans Eric Clapton finances a special transition house where they are helped to find work, renew contact with their family and plan for a life without drugs. “Sometimes I meet them on the street and we have a bit of a chat – it’s wonderful to see how they’ve changed,” smiles Fr Frank. He stays in touch by letter with many a client in New York or London, encouraging them, and helping them not to lose contact with the Higher Power. “This is a missionary task. I’m absolutely sure of that!” the Irishman insists. “Even though I may not introduce myself as a Catholic priest – many of them have had such bad experiences of the Church that they wouldn’t pay me any heed at all – I am a Catholic priest. And I do what an SVD missionary is meant to do: I bring God to people who don’t know him. I bring good news to those who sit in darkness. And they do sit, literally, in the darkness of their disease, their bitterness, their guilt. No doubt about it: what I’m doing here is mission!” Text and Images Courtesy: Stadtgottes Translation: Fr James O’Kane

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