In 2007, with the blessing of Metropolitan of Vladimir and Suzdal Eulogia, a public organization was established to combat drug addiction and alcoholism. This organization was called "Awareness."
Valentin Markov - head of the rehabilitation center.
Father Valentin says that every person has a task in this life and an opportunity to fulfill it. In simple terms, the main goal of man is to prepare for eternal life.
Back to reality
In general, man is designed for eternal life, weno time, we are immortal. But people with drug and alcohol addiction do not understand this, they begin to live from one dose to another and, in fact, lose themselves. Valentin Markov believes that just a rehabilitation center helps a person to return himself, to acquaint him with who he is, to return to reality.
That is, a dependent person must see himself.the way it became due to the use of drugs or alcohol. And all the efforts of the Center "Awareness" are aimed at teaching him to live on the basis of this. Not with the illusion that he will ever quit drinking or stinging, but living with the understanding that he is chronically ill and you need to be careful to fulfill the main task in life, learn to keep yourself in tension.
Valentin Markov: conversations with co-addicts
The ability to hold stress is the maincomponent, therefore, the center teaches to restrain this tension in itself, to direct it and to control it. For this, the center has counselors, psychologists. Programs are designed to help a person gradually, step by step to learn to control themselves. The center directly cooperates with the Russian Orthodox Church, as it relies on its experience, austerity, developed over the centuries, and its experience in communicating with God as a person, and not as a simple force, faceless energy, which can be called and not known: or not.
Priest Valentin Markov talks with parents andclose people who got to this center, which he calls code dependent. They depend on their sick relatives, they think that they can help them with something, but in fact they only hinder their recovery. This is what the father says.
Rehabilitation Center uses that knowledge andmethods of dealing with sin, which are stored in the church and which were perfected, were practiced for centuries. And when this experience is applied to modern practical psychology and is understood from the point of view of science, it becomes alive, active and quite suitable for the rehabilitation of people even secular, non-ecclesiastical and, maybe, not yet spiritual yet.
New life
Valentin Markov considers the main task of the centerreturn man to God, not to church. Introduce the person to the spiritual side of life and make it attractive for him. The Optina Diocese and Bishop Barnabas themselves help in this “Realization”.
With the blessing of the bishop, the Optina priestsnourish sick children and teach them an understanding of church life so that every parish, wherever a person goes after the Center, can become a fulcrum for him. This is one aspect.
The second is a group of mutual help for anonymous alcoholics and drug addicts and the program “Twelve Steps”, with which the pupils get acquainted directly at the rehabilitation center.
All people working in the center believe thatDrug and alcohol addicted people are not trash. Valentin Markov is convinced that this phenomenon is a special providence of God, because such a person, having gone through hell, the experience of pain and suffering, completely gets rid of all kinds of illusions, and for God he is most valuable. The Lord wants to help such people, and all the servants of the center try their best to help them in this. They support people who are really very difficult from pain and suffering to turn to life pure and bright. The center helps to make this transition and directs all its forces to this.
