The Rev. Joseph Martin stood before a group of alcoholics who had just spent a month in recovery at a cost of more than $11,000 each and had just a few words to say: "Remember, if you don't take a drink, you can't get drunk."
Simple advice. But if followed, it could mean a new life for the handful of men and women who were graduating from the month-long program at Father Martin's Ashley, the nationally recognized alcohol and substance abuse treatment center near Havre de Grace.
Father Martin, 67, has built a career offering uncomplicated, heartfelt assistance to victims of addiction. A recovered alcoholic himself and international lecturer on beating chemical abuse, he is convinced that maintaining sobriety must be kept simple if it is to work.
"Remember, we learn to live a day at a time a day at a time. If you do that, good things will happen in your life," he said as last week's graduation ceremony at the non-profit treatment center ended.
Set on 43 well-manicured acres overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, Ashley was opened by Father Martin and co-founder Mae Abraham in 1983.
It has become one of the top substance abuse treatment centers in the country, thanks to Father Martin's knowledge of alcoholism and compassionate method of translating it, says Arthur Calliandro, vice chairman of the Institutes of Religion and Health in New York.
PD The IRH, a pastoral counseling and training organization founded
by Norman Vincent Peale in 1937, chose Father Martin as one of three recipients of the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking. It's just the latest in a long series of honors bestowed on him for his work.
"You taught people the world over that an alcoholic person is not evil, but sick, and deserves our love and care," says a citation read at the awards ceremony in New York last month.
Father Martin personally knows the agony of the illness. He grew up in the Hampden area of Baltimore, the son of a heavy drinker. After graduating from Loyola High School and St. Mary's Seminary, he joined the Sulpician Fathers, who train young men for the priesthood.
It was as a priest that he began to drink.
"I drank from age 24 to 34," he says of his own bout with alcohol. "I was afraid to go near the altar to say Mass six days a week. I did go on Sunday, but shaking all the while."
