Ted Haggard and Addiction- Here We Go Again

I got a request on here the other day to reflect from my alcohol and drug counselor experience on Ted Haggard. He has surfaced again recently with an apparently real letter asking for money for a ministry.

Boy, does that scare me!

I had a priest acquaintance back in Milwaukee a number of years ago who used to say:

Any time a person walks into my office with a problem I assume addiction until proven otherwise. And then I continue to suspect it.

Such is my reaction to Ted Haggard.

It will be 10 months next week since Haggard resigned. A few months ago a letter came out from Haggard that he had been "cured" of his problems (or at least he claimed, I gather, to be straight.) There was no comment on drug abuse/addiction. That has been the big pink elephant in the middle of the room in this whole thing. And, from my reading of what's going on, he is ready to just move on and make a difference for everyone. A sure sign that his addictive nature is back at work.

ABC affiliate KRDO has posted the letter in MS-Word format here. All kinds of things jump out at me in the letter.

[He and his family] decided to move into the Phoenix Dream Center on October 1st. [T]he Phoenix Dream Center is a half-way house for the homeless, those coming out of prison, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and other broken people. I identify.

Does he really and truly identify? Only time will tell, of course. One of the hallmarks of recovery has always been to connect with others who have gone through what you have gone through. I wonder how people on the other side of his helping and identifying could identify with him.?

[T]he Phoenix Dream Center team is creating an apartment for our family by combining a small, one-bedroom apartment with an adjacent room so our boys will have their own rooms. Even though Alex (age 16) and Elliott's (age 14) drive to school is quite a distance every day, we think it is worth it to be given the privilege of service. Now, however, we need to raise our own support.

Something about this bothers me. From the sounds of it the family will be living at the Center. They are making room for him - and his two teen-age sons. There is the rub for me. It may be an exciting idea for them- but I wonder. A long distance to school in a different world from where they are living that may not be as safe as it sounds makes me nervous. The Center sounds like some type of half-way house or living arrangement. "The privilege of service" line, while true in substance, sounds like justification for something less than desirable.

In preparation for the future, Gayle and I are both enrolled at the University of Phoenix at their main downtown campus. Gayle is in the undergraduate program studying psychology. I am pursuing my master of science in counseling degree, which means we are both full time students. Alex and Elliott are both attending a local Christian school. Elliott is playing 8th grade football this fall. Everyone is busy!

It looks as though it will take two years for us to have adequate earning power again, so we are looking for people who will help us monthly for two years. During that time we will continue as full time students, and then, when I graduate, we won't need outside support any longer.

But for the next two years, we will need support. Between now and the end of the year, we have to find the people who want to help us transition into our future. So I am starting today to let friends like you know that we are raising money for support as we move into the Phoenix Dream Center.

Gee, I wish I could have found supporters when I went to school for either my Master's or Doctorate. After all they were both in ministry areas. What grandiosity, sense of entitlement, and chutzpah! These become signs that the addiction is active and certainly not under any sense of recovery. There is, in fact, no mention in the letter of any recovery that is happening.

According to the letter supporters can mail checks directly to the Haggard family at their Scottsdale, Ariz., address, but that if contributors wish to make their donations tax deductible, as they very likely will, they can make out their checks to something called Families With a Mission and write on the check that it is designated for the Haggard family. As was pointed out somewhere on the web that I was reading, this sounds more than a little fishy. If it is to be done through this mission, why would the checks be sent directly to the Haggard family- unless you want the tax deduction. Almost sounds like a scam.

Well, them's the facts. I have no problem with he and his wife going to school. I have no problem with him sensing a call to go into counseling, even at this "early" stage of recovery (if that is truly what is happening.) I was 8 months sober when I got the "call" to go back, get my doctorate and specialize in alcohol and drug counseling.

I have problems with the style and tone of the letter and some of the assumptions. Sadly, they may be more related to the way we have often done "mission" work in the churches, especially in Haggard's tradition. You have to go out and get support. While we have done that with great success for short term mission trips with youth, for example, or Campus Crusade for Christ workers, to believe that this support is simply to get you through school is not mission work. It is narrow-visioned entitlement. I deserve this. I am entitled to your support - simply because of who I am and what I am doing. There is little talk or sense of mission in any of it other than where he is living and the work he may be doing there.

Addiction is cunning, baffling, and powerwful. It works at pre- and sub-conscious levels of our brains. It will convince us that it is not our problem. Society will often support that through things like changing the focus from substance use of methamphetamine (and who knows what else) to homosexual activity. Then, now, 10 months later, it is all gone. Not talked about. Cured.

Now, to be fair, we know very, very little about what Haggard has been going through these past ten months. I am not asking to know the details. But I get no hint of a change. This is the same Ted Haggard as we saw "before the fall." That may be the biggest and brightest of all the red flags.

Let me be clear- I am not attempting to hold Haggard to a higher standard. I want him to be held to common standards. Get down off the pedestal of ministry and mission. Actions speak louder than words- and these words are speaking loudly.

Assume addiction until proven otherwise.

Then continue to suspect.