Recover Integrity: Blog

Addiction hijacks- let's call it semi-rational thought, as a way to justify ego desires.    The simplest way to put this is to tell a story.    I remember working with a client, and he was about a week sober, had gotten out of detox from opioids. He was a week sober and he was still in some obsession to use heroin. And he very earnestly approached me as a counselor at the time. That's probably 10 years ago.   He...

  The Spiritual Element of Recovery  In many programs, that you would go to, to engage in recovery from addiction, there's a spiritual element to that program. So we have a spiritual program or something like this. And the most common spiritual traditions that they drawn are these Eastern traditions, Buddhism, the yoga, the mindfulness, meditation, these kinds of things. And honestly, I don't think one can put into words the benefits of those practices.     Spiritual Psychology There's another...

One of the things I don't talk about as much--but it's so important--is the physical aspects of treating addiction.    Now this doesn’t necessarily pertain to people who are already “fitness freaks”. There's a whole group of people that come into treatment and their primary coping tool is the gym and eating well. For those people, they're not gonna get the same kind of relief from the gym beyond what they've already got. They've already dealt with...

When I'm working as an addiction or spiritual counselor, clients want to climb the ladder of treatment. They want to move forward in their lives, which is understandable. We all want that direction.    And that idea of moving forward in treatment--that's a therapeutic issue. I don't mean that as an evasion. Our conception of what it means to move forward is a therapeutic issue.    How do I answer clients when they ask, "When is it time to...