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Recovery in the News
Kickin' It
Andy Metzger
GateHouse Media, Inc.
June 5, 2008
There was nothing missing from the performances, but those onstage and in the audience at Right Turn Saturday night left out the drugs and alcohol they used to depend on.
For some artists and recovering addicts who visit the venue / psychiatry center, playing sober can be a daunting proposition.
“It’s kind of like that exercise where you fold your arms and you close your eyes and you fall backwards and you trust that people will catch you,” said Woody Giessmann, the founder and CEO of Right Turn Biz, Inc.
Back in the 1980s, Giessmann used to play drums for a local band that made it big, called Del Fuegos.
Del Fuegos toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Kinks and ZZ-Top, but while his status in the rock world was rising, Giessmann was sinking into some bad habits.
“There’s alcohol everywhere and substances to be found,” Giessmann said. “We got on the road and we never got off the road man, until we burned and crashed.”
Giessmann declined to go into all the specifics of his troubles and his recovery, but by 1990 he had cleaned himself up and gone to UMass Boston where he studied addiction therapy.
Then, after working for Cambridge Health Alliance and the Department of Mental Health, Giessmann started Right Turn, a place for recovering addicts to meet and play music, about four years ago.
The group started out in a small office by the U.S. Post Office in the Center, but more and more people became involved and Right Turn moved into a bigger place across Broadway from the Center Fire Station two years ago, Giessmann said.
While the program has taken off for musicians and other performers, Giessmann said creative therapy can reach and help any recovering addicts.
Right Turn has a writing workshop, a song-writing workshop, a drum circle and a comedy workshop, in addition to one-on-one therapy, group therapy and performances on the weekend, Giessmann said.
Efforts to keep people away from drugs need help right now because more people are getting into trouble and getting hurt using opiates, such as heroin and Oxycontin, Giessmann said.
In 2005, around 544 people in Massachusetts died of poisoning related to opiate use, according to a Massachusetts Department of Public Health study from last year.
Addiction is like a Trojan Horse, Giessmann said.
“It takes over when you’re not looking,” Giessmann said.
To conquer drug cravings and get clean, addicts need to find new things to do and a support group of people to talk to, said people at Right Turn on Saturday.
Soundman Hendrik Gideonse started using drugs as a teenager in Ohio, but it didn’t turn into a problem until years later when the Tufts graduate started making a lot of money as a music producer.
“I said I was being ‘a producer’ for a living, and what that really meant was ‘drug addict,’” Gideonse said.
Gideonse would wake up feeling terrible, smoke some marijuana and then start drinking by late-morning, he said.
As the day went on, Gideonse would move on to opium and harder drugs, he said.
Then in January 2003, while on a flight back from the Azores where he and a rapper had done television spots, Gideonse’s body shut down, he said.
When the plane landed, Gideonse was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital; he quit using drugs but had trouble making a new life for himself.
“I was sober and clean, but not in good shape,” Gideonse said. “I just wasn’t able to get un-stuck creatively.”
Now, Gideonse has re-discovered his passion for music.
In addition to doing sound and the Web site for Right Turn, the 35-year-old teaches audio production at the New England Institute of Art and teaches at the Northshore Recovery High School in Beverly.
Saturday night at Right Turn, Gideonse worked the soundboard next to a stage in the middle of a long rectangular room, with about 30 people spread throughout, listening quietly.
Dressed in a white shirt and tie, Dan Howard, a recovering alcoholic, played a fierce guitar, in between ruminations on his situation.
“Once a pickle, you never go back to being a cucumber,” Howard said.
But at the Arlington Center venue, recovering addicts can relate to one another.
The room filled with friendly laughter as Amy Clay and Josh Cole told the stories behind songs for their band Fool Saints.
And the folks at Right Turn do not take a hard line toward less damaging addictive substances, like nicotine and caffeine.
Before the show about a half-dozen people gathered outside the door and some smoked cigarettes while others drank coffee.
© 2008 GateHouse Media, Inc.