How do young people in Berlin cope with addiction and alcoholism? What are the challenges that young people in sobriety face? Are the services provided comparable to those in the United States (specifically Seattle?) Are drug and alcohol use more acceptable, considering Germany’s proximity to places such as Amsterdam and the laxity of legal restrictions on drug use there, as well as the younger legal drinking age?
I plan to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous while in Berlin in order to meet young people in recovery. After talking to the young people and conducting interviews, I hope to be able to speak also with people in active addiction. This can potentially happen on the street, or through observation in dance clubs or other social gatherings. Based on case studies of these people, I want to discover why they started using drugs and whether or not their drug and alcohol abuse resulted from the more liberal environment, peer pressure, family influences, etc. In exploring how drug addicted/alcoholic youth are experiencing recovery in Berlin, I will ultimately compare it to my own experiences of young people in addiction and recovery in the states.
An experiential methodology is the most appropriate for conducting my research; being a participant observer will ultimately generate the most compelling and informative research. Through conducting interviews with the young people that I meet in the program, I plan to compare the information that I gather about their experience in recovery to my own. As my research is based on a comparative approach, interviews in Berlin will coincide with information I have collected from friends in recovery in the United States, as well as with my own experience. The more interviews that I collect, the more adequately prepared I will be to determine a case study to conclude my final research project. Again, in line with the comparative approach, I am ultimately searching for a person to act as a mirror to my experience in the United States. The ultimate goal is not that this case study has had the exact same experience as the general majority of sober youth in the United States, but that there is a common thread that knits youth and recovery together, regardless of location.
The challenges that may present themselves while I am in Berlin are most predictably speaking with people in active addiction and I do not know if I will have the opportunity to do so. Even if I do end up meeting active alcoholics and drug addicts, an essential aspect of the disease is a lack of honesty and openness and I do not know if they will be willing to talk to me about their addiction; they may not even recognize that the addiction exists. In traveling to different places around the world and going to meetings, as well as being active in my personal recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, I have found that people following a similar trajectory tend to open themselves in ways that are pretty profound. The challenge then lies in finding these people in meetings in Berlin; English-speaking meetings tend to be dominated by travelers or foreigners in residence in the country.
The following questions will be included in some form in the interviews that I conduct:
How old are you?
At what age did you have your first drink? Was it with your family or friends?
When was the first time that you remember getting drunk? Why (peer pressure, just because, family issues, etc.)?
What drugs have you used and what ages?
Do you feel like you have a problem with drugs and/or alcohol?
If so, at what age did you realize that you had a problem with drugs and/or alcohol?
What factors (social, personal, etc.) do you feel contributed to your addiction?
What services, if any, have you used to cope with your alcoholism/drug addiction? Do you feel like there is enough support for young people in Berlin?
Finding young people who will be willing to serve as research subjects in recovery will be based on my ability to create friendships within the meetings; as I share my experience and listen to others’, I plan to integrate myself into the community, especially during the first week, so that people are more willing to talk to me than they would a total stranger. As I become more integrated into the community and progress with my interviews, I plan to use the ‘snowballing’ effect, whereby I will ask the people who I am interviewing whether or not they have friends who are still in active addiction who would be willing to talk to me. If not, I plan on contacting a friend of mine who lives in Hamburg to see if she knows anyone who would be willing to talk to me. In finding a case study who is on the active side of his or her addiction, I am planning on finding service work to do through the program where I might be able to help in a homeless shelter or speak in a drug rehabilitation center. I do not know if these opportunities are available in the breadth that they are in Seattle, but I will have to wait until I attend several meetings to determine whether or not this approach will be viable. In the case these approaches do not yield the desired outcome, I will go to bars and nightclubs and simply observe the level of alcohol intake, whether or not drugs are an integral part of the evening, and the level of intoxication that occurs within a given population.
Protecting the people I am researching is a major priority; not only is anonymity one of the keystones of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the nature of alcoholism and drug addiction is so sensitive that I doubt that I would find people living in active addiction who would be willing to expose themselves. Therefore, in recruiting my interview subjects, I will engage with them immediately by first stating that whatever they say will remain completely anonymous. I will draft a document that reiterates this fact and will sign it, explicitly stating that the only reason that I would break their anonymity is if they gave me direct permission to do so. Unfortunately, unless this permission is granted, I will not be able to audio-visually record any of my research and will have to either take physical or mental notes. My hope is that through the common bond of addiction and recovery that my peers will allow recording of some nature, but will accept and respect their decision either way.
RESEARCH SCHEDULE
Contact for Alcoholics Anonymous in Berlin 030-787 5188
Contact for Narcotics Anonymous in Berlin e-mail: info@na-berlin.de
FIRST WEEK
I plan to attend a meeting a day in the first week of the program in order to make contacts orient myself in the program in Berlin. As the week goes on and I continue to meet people who are willing to be interviewed, I will pass out consent forms and make appointments for interviews.
MONDAY 20.00-21.30
Step & Tradition Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
TUESDAY 19.30-20.30
"Round Table", Closed Style Meeting
Alvenslebenstr.25, 10783 Berlin-Schöneberg.
WEDNESDAY 20.00-21.30
Discussion Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
THURSDAY 20.00-21.30
Big Book Study Meeting, Closed Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
FRIDAY 19.30-21.00
Speaker Meeting and sobriety anniversaries, Open Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
SATURDAY 12.00-13.30
Step Study, Closed Style Meeting
Barbarossa Str. 64, 10779 Berlin-Schöneberg, backyard, right.
SUNDAY 18.00-19.00
"As Bill Sees it", Discussion Meeting, Open Style Meeting
Kolonnenstrasse 38, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg.
SECOND WEEK
I will determine which meetings have a majority of young people and stay in those meetings, but if none of them have the demographic population that I am looking for, I will try Narcotics Anonymous.
MONDAY 19:00 - 20:00
Berlin Friedrichshain:DTZ Zentrale Anmeldung Frankfurter Allee 40 U5 - Samariterstrasse
TUESDAY 19:30 - 21:00 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg:: English Speaking International KIS, Fehrbelliner Str. 92, 2. Floor U2 - Senefelderplatz / U8 - Rosenthaler Platz
WEDNESDAY 12:00 - 13:45 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg:: KIS, Fehrbelliner Str. 92, 2. Floor U2 - Senefelderplatz / U8 - Rosenthaler Platz
THURSDAY 19:00 - 20:30 Berlin Tempelhof: Christliches Selbsthilfezentrum Lichtblicke, Tempelhofer Damm 133 S Ring Tempelhof, U6 Alt-Tempelhof
FRIDAY 08:00 - 09:00 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg : "Morning has broken" K.I.S., Fehrbelliner Str. 92 U2 Senefelder Platz, U8 Rosenthaler Platz
Over the weekend, I plan on doing whatever service work that I have found to do in order to meet alcoholics/ drug addicts in active addiction or just starting the recovery process.
THIRD WEEK
By this time, I hope to have found at least two people to focus on in my case studies, one from the recovery perspective and the other from the addiction perspective. I will continue to spend this week going to meetings and doing service work, but will ultimately spend more time with specific people as opposed to conducting more dispersed interviews.
FOURTH WEEK
I will continue to attend meetings, but will be focusing more on writing my findings from the previous three weeks into a cohesive final report, as well as working with the larger group on our compositions.
REFERENCES
Alcoholics Anonymous.
Narcotics Anonymous.
Outreach in Europe: Social Integration.
Permien, Dr. Hanna. “Street Careers in Germany Between Families, Youth Welfare Services, and Prison.” In Referat auf der Internationalen Konferenz: „Problems of Vagrant Children“ in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China vom 21.-25. 10. 2003.
<> (accessed 1 June 08)
Weinhauer, Klaus. “Drug Consumption in London and Western Berlin During the 1960s and 1970s: Local and Transnational Perspectives”. In The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 20 (Spring 2006): 187-224.
