Episcopal Press and News
Vernon Johnson was Pioneer in Compassionate Chemical Dependency Treatment
Episcopal News Service. June 30, 1999 [99-104]
Willmar Thorkelson
(ENS) Early in his fight against chemical dependency, the Rev. Vernon Johnson began to question the then-popular conviction that alcoholics had to hit bottom before they could begin to recover.
"Why do the people who have the disease wait so long to get treatment?" he would ask. "Why do they suffer so long? Since alcoholism is progressive and fatal, we see an urgent need to stop the progress of the disease as early as possible."
Johnson, a Minnesota Episcopal priest who died of cancer last spring, and his colleagues in the Johnson Institute subsequently became advocates of early intervention -- a position that may be one of the priest's most valued legacies.
Because of early intervention, the jobs of thousands were saved as they were confronted by co-workers and professionals about their drinking. Many were sent to treatment centers and others treated in local outpatient facilities. Programs of intervention and employee assistance became common in the corporate world.
The effect of the illness on entire families was another Johnson emphasis. "He was convinced of the need to involve the family of the dependent in the recovery process," said an associate.
Johnson also addressed the need he saw for a program on awareness and prevention in the schools
As a clergyman, Johnson was able to reach out to faith communities and to get them involved. Churches routinely made their facilities available for meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and other groups.
"The church in the basement" is the way some would refer to meetings of these groups," Johnson would recall.
Despite some progress, he was not satisfied with the way either seminaries or medical schools prepared their students to deal with the problem of chemical dependency.
Johnson himself had a drinking problem and in 1962 entered the Hazelden Foundation, the nation's pioneer in 12-step-based treatment for alcoholism in Center City, Minnesota.
That treatment prompted Johnson to begin meeting with a parish action group at St. Martin's-by-the-Lake Episcopal Church in Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota. The group included families in recovery from alcoholism.
In 1966, Johnson co-founded Johnson Institute to help employers assist employees who suffered from chemical dependency. In 1968, the institute developed and implemented the first chemical dependency program at St. Mary's Hospital in Minneapolis, now Fairview-University Medical Center. This was the first of some three dozen such treatment programs in hospitals.
Johnson became nationally known with lectures and with his three books including I'll Quit Tomorrow, which has been revised since first published in 1973. More than 350,000 copies have been sold. In the book, Johnson estimated that 10 percent of the drinkers in America will become alcoholic and that these people will not be able to stop drinking by themselves.
Relatives, employers and others can help awaken an alcoholic to his/her condition and its consequences by confronting that person with the facts of what he or she has done during the times they were drinking.
At the time the book was published, the Johnson Institute advocated therapy that consisted of four weeks of intensive inpatient care and two weeks of aftercare. But with managed care tightening funding, the number of alcoholics who get insured inpatient treatment has been sharply reduced, according to George Bloom, Johnson's successor as institute president. Instead of the 21 or 22 days found to be a significant breakpoint for effective treatment, the average time a patient now stays in a treatment center is four days.
Johnson served for 25 years at the annual summer school on alcohol studies at Rutgers University and was on the summer school faculty at the University of North Dakota and the University of Georgia.