ABOUT US
ABOUT JAYWALKER LODGE
Jaywalker Lodge provides hope and a healing environment for men in recovery by treating each day as a promise of our future, not as a consequence of our past.
Jaywalker Lodge is a community of recovering people—staff, volunteers, and clients—all firmly rooted in the 12 steps. The Jaywalker community values the principles of integrity, personal accountability, and service to others above all else.
At Jaywalker Lodge, we believe individuals who return to rehab treatment do so for many reasons – but none more important than the failure to grasp and fully personalize Step One of the 12 steps.
Clients at Jaywalker will examine the impact of drugs and alcohol in all aspects of their lives through the writing and sharing of sections of their own life stories. This “section” work reveals the underlying truth about each individual’s struggles with addiction and recovery.
OUR NAME
We love the name of our treatment center. The term Jaywalker comes from page 37 of the Book Alcoholics Anonymous; it’s a story we affectionately know as the “Jaywalker Parable.”
“Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jay-walking. He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings.
Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him and he is slightly injured several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Presently he is hit again and this time has a fractured skull. Within a week after leaving the hospital a fast-moving trolley car breaks his arm.
He tells you he has decided to stop jay-walking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both legs. On through the years this conduct continues, accompanied by his continual promises to be careful or to keep off the streets altogether.
Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he races in front of a fire engine, which breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t he?
You may think our illustration is too ridiculous. But is it? We, who have been through the wringer, have to admit if we substituted alcoholism for jay-walking, the illustration would fit us exactly. However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane. it’s strong language – but isn’t it true?…”
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 37
As Chief Executive Officer Bill provides leadership and manage all day-to-day operations of Jaywalker Lodge, an extended care residential addiction treatment program for adult men.
