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Meet Lee Alcohol, Butterflies, and Ansir Life-Purpose: To change perspectives for human doing and being. Evokateur /Healer/ Empath Profile boss: Healer

The view from the mountain ridge in this southern U.S. valley is breathtaking, but for Lee, it represents much more than just pretty scenery. He's on top these days, on top of the deadly sicknesses of alcoholism, drug addiction and depression, and learning to live life above the melancholy and darkness he once used to call friends. As an alcoholic, Lee's story is fairly typical. Never quite comfortable "in his own skin," he started looking for ways to escape as a child. No matter what the task, he gave himself to it completely, in part because he was a curious fellow, but partly because it helped him escape a reality that was both foreign and frightening. "I spent countless hours chasing butterflies and studying nature. I felt at home there. Nobody to impress. Nobody to approve or disapprove. Just me and my flying friends."

The more Lee withdrew, the greater became his need to "be" something or somebody in order to overcome deep feelings of inadequacy and to protect a Self that, at core, was terrified of being alone. Gifted with intelligence and creativity, Lee soon found his way into the fast-paced media world where he became a successful executive. "I had it all," he explains. "Good job, nice car, plenty of money, great family: just like Madison Avenue says you're supposed to have to be successful. Nobody looking at home would have known that, deep inside, I was miserable. People ask me how I could have done some of the things I did given the nice life I had. The truth is I hated myself more than I loved anything or anybody."

Lee drank heavily, and alone, each and every night. He took tranquillizers in the morning to steady his deteriorating nerves. He had long periods without memory, known to alcoholics as "blackouts". Anger bubbled to the surface time and again, destroying any hope for peace in his home. Then, one summer night, he exploded in a violent rage, threatening his wife and children. He wound up in a hospital and was transferred to a treatment center the next week.

"I hit bottom big time," he recalls. "My wife kicked me out permanently. I got fired 2 weeks after I got out of treatment. My greatest fears had been realized. I was alone and terribly lost."

A few weeks, later, a friend recommended that Lee take the self perception test at Ansir.com. "It came back Evokateur/Healer/Idealist, and I knew there were answers in the pages of the Instant Feedback. Everything felt 'right' except for the Idealist part. Some of what it said was right on the mark, but other things I could honestly say were flat wrong. It wasn't me." He turned to a One-on-One with the author, where he made a discovery he didn't expect. "Seich told me that if my profile did not feel right (according to the two powerful intuitive strengths that were onboard, Healer and Evokateur), then my profile was not right. Seich suggested that I get gut-level honest and retake the emoting section of the test again." After a number of trials the profile that resulted and felt right was Evokateur/Healer/Empath.

In his book, The Addictive Personality, Dr. Craig Nakken contends that early in life, addicts create an artificial personality that ultimately becomes the addict and pushes aside the addict's true personality. Lee believes that this was the case with him. "Let's face it," he says, "I'm an Empath. But you have to understand that I hated me! I thought all the flash and possessions that are hallmarks of the Idealist's lifestyle were what would make people love me. So I spent a lifetime chasing somebody else's dream."

Lee is quick to point out that his involvement in recovery programs and his spiritual growth are the principal reasons he's sober today, but he also credits Ansir with accelerating his recovery. "I can't tell you how important that discovery was to me. I'm learning to like the real me, and Ansir helped show me who that is."

Lee is currently involved in a job where his Healer skills are at the forefront, and he's enjoying the view from above a past of deep darkness and trouble. And butterflies now seem different to him.

"I guess I've become one of them," he says. "After a long period of dormancy, I can fly! Ansir didn't give me the wings. God did that. But Ansir showed me they were there and how to use them. I'll be forever grateful for that."

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