-I teach for a theatre, I also bartend,
and I do stand-up comedy.
All three of those are casualties of this pandemic,
so I am now unemployed,
and filling my time is necessary.
-In this isolation of the Coronavirus pandemic,
all challenges are unique.
-I'm over 18 years clean and sober,
so recovery for isn't just not using.
It's trying to get to meetings where you can get that support,
and a lot of that support has been cut off
because a lot of those meetings are not available anymore.
-For many struggling with addiction,
in-person group meetings have long been a lifeline.
Now as CDC warnings against large gatherings
have forced many meetings to shut down,
those in recovery are worried.
-The isolation, the unemployment,
all these things, it's just more logs on that fire.
It's just one more reason to be like,
"Eh, I guess it wasn't meant to be."
I work in a couple of fields where I'm around vice a lot,
and that is not a dicey situation for me.
You know, idle time where your mind can run away with you
and start excusing things, that's a little bit more dicey.
-Yo! -What's up?
-How are you? -We are doing well.
-Peter Bergen is keeping in close touch
with his cousin Jack Sandhaas.
He's also a recovering addict.
-There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty,
and with that comes tremendous anxiety.
And so when people are anxious,
they're looking to quell and calm that.
People don't like feeling uncomfortable in their skin.
They look a relief, a release, a way to escape.
"No one's looking. No one's looking for me.
I don't have to show up at work.
I have way too much idle time.
I can't go to meetings."
-But Sandhaas says there are other ways
to stay connected and find strength.
-If you're an alcoholic who's isolating,
you need to pick up the phone.
You need to become proactive.
We got to be creative.
Thank God we still have Internet access.
Thank God we still have cellphones, you know?
We're not out of power.
We're not out of hope. -All right, man.
-Yeah, just thinking of, like, who would I want to spend
the end of the world with, like, you know?
-Rebecca Rush, Dustin David, and Mary Tobon
have decided to self-quarantine together
so they can keep meeting and help each other stay sober.
-It's almost impossible to get sober by yourself.
You need other people that have been through
what you've been through, or else you're just screwed.
-They've also been reaching out to others in recovering online
and through social media.
-Being able to connect via Zoom, where they usually have,
like, online conferences, and to shift that
into, like, a recovery format has helped a lot, you know,
to be able to see people in different places and feel,
you know, more connected.
If you want to be sober bad enough
and you seek that connection, like, you'll find it.
Like, it's there.
And to be able to have to immediacy of social media
and fortunate to live in a time where we can do that --
-There are a lot more resources now than there were 5 years ago,
10 years ago, you know, 50 years ago.
So it's actually the best time to be doing it,
even if you can't get out there
and meet up with other people in person.
-We're in a season of Lent,
which is a time to be reflective,
a time to kind of pare things down,
to make things simple as we anticipate and as we wait,
but rarely do we have an opportunity
to do it quite like this.
-At the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.
C . , worship services,
choir practice, and preschool have all been canceled,
but the church has decided to keep its door open
to the recovery groups downstairs.
-We offer them cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer.
We also encourage them to take their own precautions
and procedures to stop the spread.
If that meant not holding hands during Serenity Prayer,
that meant sitting 6 feet apart or 10 feet apart,
but we wanted to be able to offer the space to them.
It is very heartbreaking
that we aren't able to meet physically as a community,
but it would be, I feel, hope-breaking
to mandate that a recovery group
couldn't meet as a group together,
should they choose that for themselves.
It does mean something to gather and to have hope
and to have this devotion of loving neighbor
and being a part of something bigger than yourself.
-It's hard. It's not the same.
There is something nice about sitting in a room
and looking around and seeing all those people, you know?
It's kind of like a family, you know?
We -- We've all been there on some level or another,
and we can just look around the room
and, you know, we're here.
We're getting better.
-It's a process that has always been hard, Bergen says.
The isolation of this new pandemic is another challenge.
-One day at a time.
Especially now, like -- It's changing every day.
Long-term, that's harder to conceive.
Let's get through the day, and then, you know,
tomorrow, we'll try again.