When treating clients struggling with addiction, especially women struggling with addiction, we find several similar patterns and issues that emerge. One of these issues is unresolved grief and loss. In treatment, we help clients learn healthy coping skills to deal with uncomfortable feelings, and also delve more deeply to address these unresolved issues.

For some clients, their grief is about the death of a loved one. For others, they are grieving that their childhood needs weren't met. Some clients are grieving the loss of drugs and alcohol, which they thought for a long time was their only friend. Anytime we experience a change, there is potential for a grief process - we grieve the loss of the way we expected things to be. When we use drugs or alcohol to avoid these feelings, we disrupt the natural grief process. The feelings don't go away - they just get buried, pushed aside, or ignored. When we get sober, they often come back. In order to stay sober, we must face them.

In our culture, funerals are an example of a ceremony that helps us along in our grief process. Ceremonies and rituals can be helpful tools in recovery. They are symbolic markers of progress. They can provide closure and give us permission to move on. For some of our clients, we may assign creating a meaningful ceremony, ritual, or symbolic activity to "let go" of some of their unresolved issue. We may hold a memorial service for an unborn child or a parent at whose funeral we weren't fully present, an "adoption" ceremony for a client to take on the responsibility to care for their unmet childhood needs when their own parents could not or did not, or release balloons into the wind to symbolize a forgiveness and letting go of long-held resentments.

These ceremonies can be powerful tools in assisting our clients address the issues underlying their addiction so that they can move on to live lives that are more happy, joyous, and free.