Return to Dignity is a recovery group based on the 12 step program pioneered by AA.

For anyone suffering from damaging addictive behaviors, meetings are held at 5:30 p.m. every Wednesday at the Bluffton First United Methodist Church, Upper Room, 116 Church St. 

For more details, text 419-235-4229.

The organizers provided the following explanation of Damaging Addictive Behaviors Anonymous:

What is D. A. B. A.?

Damaging Addictive Behaviors Anonymous is a fellowship based on the 12 Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  This is the first meeting of this kind in the Bluffton area.  This self-help fellowship is open to people of any age or any type of damaging addictive behavior. 

Members include anyone that suffers from a behavior that has an obsessive/compulsive pattern with either a desperate or emotional (or both) need to continue doing this behavior.  This damaging behavior has become increasingly destructive to all areas of their lives – career, family, and sense of self-respect.

We believe this is an addiction not just because we need or use this behavior more than others, but because of the motive.  Unlike normal persons, who do this behavior to fill normal needs, addicts use the behavior to lessen the pain that comes from other areas of life.

As we use this behavior to ‘take us away from all of this’, we are really seeking to avoid reality altogether.  We come to use this behavior, however fleeting, to substitute for other satisfactions, to comfort ourselves, or to avoid or try to make unnecessary attending to a life that seems to give us too much pain.

Of course, normal people may seek escape or transcendence over life’s problems using this behavior sometimes!  The difference for us is that we lose control of this, and cannot stop.  We sacrifice closeness and emotional consistency with others, and our loneliness and anxiety grow as our loss of control continues to result in ever more serious consequences.