| New Age, No-Age...New What? The EDGE Interview with Melody Beattie by Rita Gallagher Rosenberg Melodie Beattie was a struggling single parent of two children and freelance author and journalist cranking out stories for a small-town daily newspaper in 1986 when she came up with a book idea. She wanted to write a book about what happens to people when they love someone who is addicted to alcohol and other drugs. "There were many books out there about how to help an addict or alcoholic. Nobody was talking about how an addict impacts the lives of the people around him or her, and how crazy you can become when you love someone who is addicted," Beattie said. "Even though I was sober, I didn't know how crazy I could get until it happened to me." Twenty publishers turned down Beattie's book proposal. "It's a good idea, but we don't think there's that many codependents out there," they wrote back. Hazelden, however, a treatment center and recovery publisher based in Minnesota, saw a need for the book. The publisher understood how families of alcoholics suffer and believed Beattie's book idea would help people. Beattie marched to the welfare department, asked for enough financial help to make it through the three months it would take her to write the book, then locked herself in a basement office and cranked out Codependent No More. Codependent No More has now sold 3.5 million copies. Beattie has since written nine more books, five for major publishing houses on the East and West coasts. She relocated from Minnesota to California, and she has long-since paid back the welfare department. Beattie has appeared in the pages of Newsweek and People and has been a regular guest on Geraldo and Oprah. She spoke with The EDGE on this month's featured topic: "New Age, New Thought or New What?" In one of the e-mails that you sent, you said you have some very strong thoughts on the term "new age." Melody Beattie: Well, I do, because if you go back and read all the old books and writings, so many of the ideas that we're calling "new age" are ancient ideas. Spiritual philosophies, whether they came from Egypt or from Israel, or from the Kabbalah, or from Buddhism, have influenced our thinking and our beliefs. We're acting like they're new, and they're not. We're a new country with a relatively nonexistent spiritual foundation. I mean, how many hundred years old are we? Not that many. Other countries and nations and lands have been around a lot longer than we have, and they have a spirituality grounded in these practices for thousands of years. So we're coming along, and we're getting these ideas, and saying, oh, they're new and they're new age, and they're really not. I think it's a resurfacing of ancient spiritual truths. Why do you think the term is "new age?" Beattie: Well, there's so much controversy. I'm always trying to be, not in a codependent way -- I was going to say, "Ewww, that's codependent" -- sensitive to the audiences, the people I'm talking to, and harmonizing with them. There are some people who are automatically prejudiced against anything called "new age." And yet, if that idea is presented with slightly different words in a different context, they think it's great. But it's just a prejudice that exists. As a communicator, my job isn't necessarily to fire up these prejudices. It's to find the words to work around them, because communicating the idea is what's important. We've got a lot of people who call themselves "new agers" who really think these ideas are new. And they're not. Even the idea of reincarnation. That's an ancient spiritual belief that's grounded in other countries' religions, that affect their grieving process, their culture, the way they look at life and death, and yet the subject of life after death or reincarnation comes to our country, and we go "Oh! That's new-agey!" No it's not! What term could we use to describe that -- maybe "no-age" instead of "new-age." Even the Judeo-Christian ideas -- some of their roots are actually these types of ideas. Beattie: They absolutely do. And if you look at the mystical sects of all these religions, they've been working with ideas like meditation. The Kabbalah, which some consider to be the foundation for all the religions, talked about reincarnation, about all of these ideas, about working with energy -- energy we put out, transcending the energy -- all of the ideas that everyone is so afraid of have been around forever. The smoking stuff you wrote about in one of your e-mails... Beattie: Yes, I believe, and this is based on talking to doctors and everyday people, that much of the widespread use of anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs is a response to the smoking taboo. If you study the culture of addiction and use of drugs -- well, tobacco, caffeine, tea, anything that comes in that range -- you'll learn that since man has been on this planet, he's been altering slightly the way he felt with something -- some herb to chew on, something to smoke, something to taste. You know, there's been some little remedy thing going on. In the late '80s, when smoking became taboo, we saw the switch to prescribed, non-addictive medication. Smoking is an antidepressant and anti-anxiety agent. Now that the masses are no longer self-medicating, they're turning to doctors for help. I'm not saying it's bad or good -- it just is. I have now seen almost everyone I know switch to prescribed medication just to help them get through the days -- people I would never have dreamt would have done that. It's been a curiosity I've noticed for a while. Some of it, I also believe, is due to the "new energy" that is settling in -- this is just a theory -- a different vibrational level that we're being lifted to, one that is extremely hard for people to handle. I don't really know how to describe it, other than that we found ourselves being in water where the waves were one way coming across it, and now all of a sudden it's choppy and irregular, and we don't know how to get our swim strokes in to really handle it. It's just difficult. There's not a sense of security among people. We can't look at our five-year planner and say this is everything that's going to happen, but I think there's even less sense now on anyone's part about what's happening. We don't have a clue about what's coming next year, not a clue where I'm going, not a clue what this is about. There's so much uncertainty, and so much lack of security and vision going on. But the problems, the beliefs, and the spiritual practices -- the things we need to do to take care of ourselves on a daily basis -- are the same as they've been since the new age information became available hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. Speaking of spiritual movements, let's look at the AA movement, which actually spawned your codependency movement. What do you think the recovery movement is going to be like in the 21st century? Beattie: I don't know that I can predict. I can talk about some changes I've seen even since the '80s and where that's brought us to. Some of them really scare me. Some of the things I see that we're headed for leave me very distressed, and other things I think are good. Let's start with codependency. When that subject first came out, everybody was just so excited to find out they could take care of themselves. It was a revolutionary idea. People didn't have a lot of problems using the word codependency to describe themselves. It was just like, "Oh, my God, I'm not crazy. I'm codependent." Like anything else, after it mainstreamed, then it no longer necessarily became a revolution. It was just like, "Oh, yeah, codependency," and people weren't that excited. Now as we're in the 21st century, there's even a degree of stigma about it. Which is all right. The idea needed to be revolutionary when it broke into consciousness. It's no longer revolutionary. It's been incorporated. You watch TV shows now and the idea of taking care of yourself, the idea of setting boundaries, all of these things are incorporated in a very natural way, into the way people talk, whether you're watching a talk show or interview, or a movie. Well, I think it's on the Larry David show on HBO. It's everywhere. Beattie: The things that were revolutionary and separated as being codependency are now very mainstreamed and integrated, and there's not stand-alone codependency as a unique problem any more. You watch people in a movie and they'll talk very openly about not being a victim and what they need to do to set a boundary. The idea of taking care of ourselves has been integrated into our culture. I see a lot of people not wanting to label themselves any more, but wanting to look more at the individual behaviors -- I'm not setting a boundary here, I'm not talking about my feelings, I'm not taking care of myself -- rather than actually labeling themselves, which people were more than happy to do at the beginning. On the other hand, it's really easy to have a very short vision and say, "Well, the whole world knows about codependency." And the whole world doesn't. There's just a tremendous number of people out there who haven't had that revolution in their own lives yet, who don't know they can take care of themselves. They're just finding out as we're speaking. Some therapist is saying, "You have a codependency problem," and they're going, "What are you talking about? What's codependency?" So we have two visions: It has been integrated into our culture, but there are a lot of people who it hasn't filtered down to yet. Is that what scares you? Beattie: No, that's not the part that scares me. I think it's great that the information is out there. What scares me is our approach to addictions now. That's complicated. That has to do with a lot of different issues. It has to do with what treatment started. (Our generation) came into the whole treatment movement when that was also a revolution in our country. The early '70s is when all the treatment centers began. AA had been around since, what, 1949? But it had been around very quietly. And treatment centers for drug addicts were archaic up until the '70s. The thought that a young person could be addicted, much less recover from this, was just not even a thinkable thought prior to then. We just didn't know about addictions. The fact that you could throw drug addicts and alcoholics into treatment and they could become not just productive citizens but really make a difference in our world, that they could be valuable people, was a revolution. And that revolution happened. Now, between insurance companies and people getting tired of the idea, treatment is no longer a revolution, it's an institution. Funding is drying up. I think we're in danger of taking a very hard-line approach to addicts, of not giving them the chances and the opportunities they need for recovery. A lot of states are going to the three-strike law on misdemeanors. On friggin' misdemeanors! What scares me is that we lose our heart as a culture and forget that people with this disease need treatment -- because it could be our children, it could be our grandchildren, it could be us. And as we baby-boomers, the ones who were part of this great revolution, get up in age -- I mean, I'm 54 now -- and get ready to leave this planet, I think there are a lot of us who want to make sure that the people following us have the same opportunities for treatment that we did. The other thing that scares me that's happening involves us ignoring our emotions. I think that this ties into a lot of what we were talking about, some of the stuff that made all these great awarenesses possible -- the codependency, the recovery from codependency, the recovery from addiction -- was the realization that we had to feel our feelings. This is such simple stuff. In a way, I feel almost dolt-like talking about it, but I think it's critical as a culture that we stay grounded in our emotions. It's about not letting our emotions control us, but remembering how important our passions and our daily emotions are, and be willing to go through them. If we go through a big loss, we're going to feel sad. If something scares us, we're going to feel afraid. If something really makes us angry, we're going to feel rage. And I'm worried that we're getting too busy for feelings, and there's always a backlash from that. As a culture, if we lose our passion, we lose our heart. And back to those practices we need to do no matter what "age" we are in, that leads us to the book you just wrote. It's called Fifty-two Weeks of Conscious Contact. Beattie: Right. I've tried to use principles that people from any religion or in any recovery program could be comfortable with, you know, without it being a religious book. It's actually more of a practice book than a meditation book. There's nothing groundbreakingly new in this book. I think sometimes as a group, we always want the next thing, then we want the NEXT thing. Sometimes we forget that we've already been given a lot of these tools, that we need to practice those and figure out how to work with them in the energy as it exists now. So, what I've done is taken 52 weeks of basic principles from recovery, from spirituality, from religion, and put them in the context of the 21st century -- 21st century experiences, language, and how we look at things. How do we do this daily practice now and try to keep sane and do more than let life happen to us? Are there instances from your own life that you talk about? Beattie: I draw freely on my own life, I draw on other people's stories and sometimes I disguise everything. I do the traditional "Melody Beattie" stuff...yeah, a lot, because I've had a lot to draw on. (laughs) (laughs) Yes you have! Beattie: I've had most of the problems a human being could be given, you know, and it's not over yet! Yeah. That's what I don't like to think about. But, one day at a time. Beattie: Exactly. As simple as that sounds, that's a practice for one week right there, really looking at one day at a time, and looking at how to put that into play. This is a book for people just beginning on the spiritual path, and it's a book for old-timers, too. And it's not necessarily for people in recovery, is it? Beattie: Nope. Not necessarily. There's some recovery stories sprinkled in there. I'm writing to people who are on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs in there. It's for people who want to spend some time with me every day -- and we'll talk to each other about spiritual practice. And I leave a lot of room in there for people to do their own interpretation of how to apply these principles in their lives -- what it means to them, and how it would work in their own lives. We've gotten to a place where I don't think people want other people telling them how to think and what to do. I think that's part of the new spiritual movement in the 21st century. Beattie: Well, we've been given this information. We were empowered. I mean, if I did my job in Codependent No More, I shouldn't have to discuss the subject again. If people take care of themselves, they can make their own choices and their own decisions. They know how to get the pieces they need as they go along, and although there are times I'm very grateful for information, I don't want anyone treating me like I don't know how to think or like there's this set of rules I have to follow. A lot of the self-help writing and a lot of therapy has become: "Oh, this is the one way, this is the only way, and this is how to think." That doesn't sit well with me. I have a very hard time with that. Kind of a "take what you like, and leave the rest." Beattie: Take what you like. See how this fits. There aren't any rules. I have I hard time when people speak in ideals, because most of us don't live that way. They live by values, but the application is a very imperfect and awkward process. As it should be! I mean, that's the color that makes a life. Well, I'm so glad I decided to interview you about this particular subject. Beattie: (laughs) Well, I didn't know I had that much to say about it! You know I had a bookstore in Malibu for a while and I called that "A Different Dimension." It closed because we had a landslide, and the one road into town closed for a year and I didn't want to sit in the store with no customers for one year. But I loved that bookstore. We had ancient books on spirituality, books on every religion, books on all these ideas. I mean, Shakespeare was a mystic. Shakespeare was a new-ager. Christ was a new-ager! I mean, come on! When you look into the next century or so, do you see a specific movement, spiritual movement coming our way? Beattie: Many people say it's going to be the age of creativity. I don't know what that means. I don't know where we're going. Creativity used to be the indulgence of a few selected artists. I really see this being more widespread. It's there for everyone. When I started writing, there wasn't even a self-help section in the bookstores and now, it's almost too big. With the internet and all, this is all good. I love it. If a problem comes up, I can be online on my cable modem and I can research something in 15 minutes. I love it too. Beattie: I mean, it's just information. There's more equality in power, because information is power. Creativity is power. And I think we're going to see a more even distribution of that. The "democratization of creativity!" That's one thing that really is new. Beattie: Yeah. Rita Gallagher Rosenberg is a writer and freelance journalist and an Account Executive at the Edge. She can be reached at (612) 338-8904 and at rita@edgenews.com Copyright (c) 2002 Rita Gallagher Rosenberg |
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