But if those early experiences led to overwork, they also graced Larsen's speech with gritty metaphors for recovery. He talks about hitting bottom as "kissing concrete." He describes joylessness in recovery as "running into a wall." Character defects are "kinks in the hose." And though addiction is a "hell of a speed bump," recovery is a road with joy as the ultimate destination.

Larsen has spent nearly four decades mapping that road as a counselor, author and workshop leader. Speaking engagements have taken him across America, to Europe, and to Australia. And his national reputation in selfhelp circles led People magazine to describe him as one of the "movers and shapers of the ‘90s."

Larsen's credits as an author include 55 books along with numerous audio and video recordings, many of them Hazelden titles. According to Alexis Scott, a video producer for Hazelden Publishing, he's developed that long line of products while still making people his priority.

"All of these recovering guys he meets on video shoots--including those who've gone through the correctional system--he always has time for them," Scott says. "Earnie sees thousands of people like this a year. And if

they keep up with him, he responds. He never says, ‘I'm too busy. Don't call.'"

Discovering where the map ends
Larsen wrote his first book in 1967 while he was a Catholic priest assigned to a parish in St. Louis. One of his assignments was to teach a high school religion class. Frustrated by the textbook he was required to use--one that Larsen says was targeted to "middle-class white kids" rather than his students--he created his own notes for use in class.

As it happened, the order that Larsen served had a publishing arm. And in a development that Larsen describes as "divine direction," an enterprising editor took Larsen's class notes and guided them into a book titled Good Old Plastic Jesus. It sold almost half a million copies.

Early success in publishing was a blessing, Larsen says. Yet it led him straight into a character defect--a compulsive relationship to work. It was a problem he struggled with even after spending a decade in the Twelve Step fellowship. He was sober but stuck, smack up against a wall in recovery.

"I asked all the old-timers who were in the program about what to do," says Larsen. "It wasn't bad advice--read the Big Book, be of more service, work harder. But, a workaholic martyr doesn't need to work harder."

Eventually, Larsen found an answer: He'd entered a new phase of recovery. The Twelve Steps did an exquisite job of charting the initial experience of sobriety, something that Larsen now calls Stage I Recovery. But the map seemed to end there.

This created an opening. For the past 30 years, Larsen has been exploring a territory that includes sobriety and more--Stage II Recovery.

It begins, Larsen says, with a shift in perception: "If you start by defining yourself as your disease--I'm an addict--then once you've arrested the disease, there's really nowhere else to go. The map ends there. But if you define yourself first as a person who happens to have an addiction, then you can still continue to grow and move on as a human being. That's what I call Stage II Recovery."

Universal stages of change
Today, the aim of Larsen's work--including his latest book, Destination Joy: Moving Beyond Fear, Loss, and Trauma in Recovery (Hazelden, 2003)--is to help people create lasting change in their thinking and behavior. His teachings resonate with people, like himself, who continue to live each day by the Twelve Steps. Yet the tools he presents have been used by thousands of people outside recovery programs as well.

All personal change happens in three phases, Larsen says, whether it's getting sober, stopping smoking, losing weight, or overcoming any other limitation on human potential.

The first phase is readiness to change--or in Twelve Step language, admitting powerlessness.

Second is understanding the nature of a problem--its origins and the way it manifests in your current life. In most cases the problem is fueled by unconscious beliefs and behaviors.

Third comes focused action. Someone who works compulsively, for example, can commit to spending 20 minutes each day in non-productive activity.

Practicing the principles
Larsen's professional life still calls for regular travel. Yet he spends time most weeks with alcoholics and addicts who are "beating the streets" and new to sobriety.

"Earnie can hang out with CEOs and top government officials or with someone who's down and out, severely mentally ill, and has not a penny to their name," says Corrine Casanova, an editor at Hazelden Publishing. "He just has a way with people regardless of socioeconomic status."

Larsen is a regular face at a Salvation Army in north Minneapolis near the city core. And when he shows up for the Wednesday night sing-along and recovery meeting at the Christ Recovery Center--part of the Union Gospel Mission in downtown St. Paul, Minn.--people around the room greet him by name.

"Earnie's life is full of service-related work," says Gary Hestness, executive vice president of Continuing Care at Hazelden. "He just walks the walk."

Published in The Voice, Winter 2005