By William L White

In his classic work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell described a dominant myth pervading the world’s cultures. Campbell noted that, in spite of their myriad variations, mythic stories of the heroic adventure shared a common structure: the hero’s departure, the hero’s transformation by great trials, and the hero’s return. Campbell’s portrayal of the heroic journey beautifully depicts the metamorphoses of addiction and recovery [while] at the same time it poses provocative questions about the final stage of the recovery process.

The beginning of the hero’s tale is the call to adventure. Here the yet-to-be hero, often a person of little note or a community outcast, responds to a call from beyond his or her parochial world. To answer this call requires leaving that which is familiar to enter regions of both treasure and danger. The call to adventure marks a great separation from family and community and entry into an unknown world.

As the adventure unfolds, the hero encounters numerous trials and tribulations that test his or her character. Eventually, the hero experiences an ultimate test. It is here that the hero is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died. But the hero, often with the aid of a personal guide, finds a way to escape, whether from the labyrinth or the monster’s belly. The death experienced by the hero turns out to be not a death of the body but a living death of the ego. It is in this transformation that the hero recognizes and embraces new sources of power and understanding and is reborn into a new consciousness and a new relationship with the world. The central part of the heroic tale involves the acquisition of new knowledge that turns out to be as much rediscovery as discovery. Campbell notes: “the powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time.”

According to Campbell, the most difficult stage of the hero’s journey is the return home. This is a stage of re-entry into the community that was left behind, reconciliation between the hero and the family/community, and a stage of service through which the hero delivers the gift of his/her newfound knowledge to the community. To complete the heroic journey, the hero who left the community as a seeker must return as a servant and teacher. Campbell notes that the task of fully returning is so difficult that many heroes fail to complete this final step of their journey.

There are obvious parallels between the processes of addiction and recovery and the structure of the hero’s tale. There are hundreds of thousands of people whose recovery stories share striking similarities to Campbell’s myth of the hero. My primary purpose for exploring this similarity is to explore one aspect of this comparison: what the hero’s return to the community implies as a task of late stage recovery. Several questions arise from Campbell’s discussion. Have recovering people returned to their communities to share the boon (gift of knowledge) of their adventure? How can this return be completed? What is the nature of this boon that can help the community work out its own salvation?

Returning to the community calls not just for a physical and social re-entry into the community, but also for acts of reconciliation (healing the wounds inflicted upon the community, forgiving the community for its own transgressions), and giving something of value back to the community. For the heroic journey to be completed, for the hero to reclaim his or her citizenship in the community, those debts and obligations must be paid. Left unpaid, the hero’s final act of fulfilment remains unconsummated. Left unpaid, the community loses experience and knowledge that could enhance its own health and resiliency.

The boon of the heroic journey can be offered individually through acts of restitution, by carrying a message of hope to others (sharing one’s story), and by modelling the lessons contained in the boon (practicing recovery principles in our daily lives).

The full article by William L White can be found here: Recovery as a Heroic Journey.