Got a cocaine, heroine, or marijuana addiction? Enter a rehabilitation clinic. Got an alcohol addiction? Head for the nearest rehab center. Addicted to your sleeping pills? Follow Senator Patrick Kennedy’s example, if you have the money, and fly to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
Better yet, admit that it’s your fault. Just as you set your will to get involved in addictive substances and lifestyles, you must set your will to step away from those addictive substances and lifestyles.
It’s called personal responsibility. It’s called decisiveness, commitment, and determination. Each of us must take full responsibility for what we do with our lives instead of blaming others, or falling back on the excuse that our problems are genetic defects over which we have no control.
Character rehabilitation is needed increasingly in our society, yet few realize the need. Few even know what it means. Former President Bill Clinton is said to know better than most that keeping the public eye on him while doing good things is the way to rehabilitate his character. They say that’s part of the reason for his high profile in rendering help to Indonesia’s tsunami victims and Gulf Coast hurricane victims. But that isn’t character rehabilitation.
Character rehabilitation is not a conscious effort to make others like you. Character rehabilitation is not something that seeks the public eye or even accepts it. True character rehabilitation takes place in private. It begins when you ambush yourself alone in a room, admit to yourself that you need character, force everything else out of your mind, and wrestle with hard decisions. You will need to convince yourself that you need help to break the addiction to immorality or weak moral values. You will need to reach out for help in building, embracing, and acting on new moral values.
Character rehabilitation requires that you get help in hammering out strong convictions of what’s right and wrong. If you are a teenager, it requires that, like Andrew in Passport to Courage, you set your will to act on the courage of those convictions. If you are an adult, it calls for you to read books like Courage, and learn exactly how to avoid the siren call of addictions and become victorious over them.
Character rehabilitation is for addicts of any substance, but it is also for all who will admit to weak character – weak moral values. It is for those who finally realize that they need to enter rehab to strengthen or build character. They want to find a good character education program in which to enroll themselves or others who are lacking in character. They need a program that will teach, encourage, and guide in tearing down the addiction to immoral or weak moral actions.
People do recover from addictions – every day – and they can recover from an addiction to weak character – the addiction that leads to the more recognized abuses. For every individual, there is a way to build character and to live with moral character.
Senator Patrick Kennedy and many like him may come out of rehab centers with physical detoxification and counseling complete. The job will remain unfinished, however, until they undertake character rehabilitation.
That’s the view from my chair. What’s your view?