The recovery project : three dramatic works concerning alcoholism and recovery

This dissertation explores the transformative nature of storytelling in alcoholism recovery. I created a trilogy of dramatic works titled The Recovery Project, which address the underrepresented narrative of recovery through my personal experience with alcoholism recovery, and the experiences of others. The three plays, Sliding into Home, The Disappointments, and The Recovery Project are not a trilogy in the traditional sense; rather they represent the three stages in the life of a recovering alcoholic: active alcoholism, acceptance of a problem, and recovery. Sliding into Home is a family tragedy told with a non-linear structure. The Disappointments is a semi-autobiographical inspired work about my journey through treatment. The final play, The Recovery Project is an ethnographic performance text. I conducted interviews with several people who have differing lengths of sobriety. Based on these interviews, I wrote a non-fiction narrative about finding recovery. Each dramatic work is prefaced with an introduction that describes the inspiration for each play, my personal connection to each work, their specific purpose, dramatic techniques utilized, their evolution, their development and possibilities for the future of each play. A variety of dramatic techniques including magical realism, stage realism, and performance ethnography informs the narrative structure of each play. The purpose of these plays is to aid in the understanding of alcoholism and recovery.

Recovering alcoholic

This paper examines the competing construals of the phrase recovering alcoholic, which, as a Membership Categorization Device (Sacks 1992), serves to fulfill a commitment to an identity category and at the same time evokes other category-bound activities, often with unintended consequences. Former problem drinkers are routinely referred to by themselves and others as recovering alcoholics, yet they are not ‘recovering’ in the canonical sense of the word, and they participate in a behavior – not drinking – which is a negation of the behavior that originally qualified them as alcoholics. This use of the relatively new identity marker recovering alcoholic may discourage a problem drinker from attempting sobriety, as it implies an unbounded, never-ending period of recovery, unlike recovery from other diseases (and, oddly, unlike the full recovery proffered by Alcoholics Anonymous).

Owning a Face: Publicity and Advertising

This chapter explores the Don Newcombe's lawsuit against Coors Brewing Company Newcombe played in the Negro baseball leagues until 1949, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. He had a stellar career, winning the Most Valuable Player award, the Cy Young Award, and the Rookie of the Year award. However, his career in Major League Baseball was cut short in 1960, in part because of a continuing battle with alcohol. Eventually, Newcombe acknowledged his problem, and, as a recovering alcoholic, he served as a spokesman for the National Institute on Drug and Alcohol Abuse. As an anti-alcohol advocate, Newcombe was shocked when he discovered an advertisement for Killian's Irish Red Beer (a brand produced by Coors Brewing) that featured a drawing of an old-time baseball game in which the pitcher was a recognizable version of Newcombe. He sued Coors for a violation of his right of publicity but lost in the federal district court. Despite that decision, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with Newcombe and overturned the lower court, establishing that celebrity athletes had the right to choose how their image was used in advertising and allowing them to disassociate themselves from products they found distasteful.