Smaller Sized Programs Private or luxury drug rehabs tend to have smaller, more individualized programs.

Therapy and the Subconscious

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, Therapy, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

Therapy is built on a particular premise: I don’t understand myself
A lot of times, people don’t know how to do therapy, I think there are certain modalities of therapy where of instructing the client is helpful
Approaching what’s happening in the background (unconsciously), a little more actively than people often do, you see much more profound effects.

Therapy can be aided by identifying unconscious thoughts

Therapy is built on a particular premise which is:

“I don’t understand myself”

And there are forces and drives inside of me that manifest in my feelings, my emotions, my behaviors, the thoughts and images inside of my mind that I’m not aware of.

That there is a hidden realm to the consciousness and Freud and Jung and the founders of analysis came along and that was a discovery.

Now everybody gets that and knows that, it’s seeped into modern culture and nomenclature. I think often people don’t give, this is a tricky thing to say – it’s actually not accurate, but worth thinking about

A lot of times, people don’t know how to do therapy right. Now sometimes that’s good, because the therapist wants to work with whatever is in the room, they don’t want to instruct the client.

But I think there are certain modalities of therapy where of instructing the client on the most helpful way to approach the therapeutic process is actually helpful. But I had to discover that on my own.

I never had a therapist say, “Hey it might be more helpful if you do this” – ever! Which is kind of incredible considering the variety of therapeutic approaches that exist

I’ve found that in therapy, for me at this phase of my life, that being conscious of the things that aren’t in the front of my mind but in the back of my mind and speaking them out loud is helpful.

I’ll give an example.

I’m sitting in the room with the therapist picks up on some hesitation or some resistance that I have and then says “what’s going on” and I say “I’m feeling frustrated right now”

“okay what’s that about”

and I say “I’m feeling helpless in this process of therapy.”

And she goes “oh. Are you concerned that I can’t help you? Is that what’s coming up in the room right now?”

I say something but actually, in the back of my mind, I have an image of myself picking up the chair this to the right of us and breaking it in front of her and just raging 🔥

So instead of just saying what I say, in the midst of therapy, I’ll say – “wait a minute, I just had an image flash in my mind of me breaking a chair right in front of you and raging” – and then we work with that

If one of the points of certain types of therapy is to gain access to the parts of ourselves that we’re not really conscious of then I think approaching what’s happening in the background, maybe a little more actively than people often do, you see much more profound effects. In terms of your own understanding, biases, belief systems that are buried real deep in the bottom of the mind.

There are plenty of therapists that will disagree with that and they are 100% correct and I’m just putting that out there for the one person who goes, “oh wow you know I have those images in my mind that I don’t share that with my therapist and I’ve had them for months or years”

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Feb 26 2019

The Traditional Social Model of Recovery

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

The form of recovery nearest and dearest to my heart is the traditional social model of recovery
It’s profound, to watch a room full of people, who were previously in active addiction, coming together to talk and help each other
The future will see a mix, of the new, exciting, plnt medicine and medical techniques, with this old, traditional, beautiful social model

The Traditional Social Model of Recovery

I would say the 4th and final, and probably the form of recovery that’s nearest and dearest to my heart, is the Traditional Therapeutic Social Model of Recovery

That is really, for me, it reaches me in a deep place. Which is not about science, it’s not all that fascinating it’s about human beings coming together in a thoughtful way to help each other figure out their lives and how to do that together

So that includes therapy, that includes groups, that include social support like Alcoholics Anonymous.

I’m a huge fan of Alcoholics Anonymous, I think it’s one of the most miraculous things that the United States has produced that is a very American phenomenon. I find it incredible, I could talk about AA all day, I’ll give a little example:

Alcoholics Anonymous

If I go to a meeting on a Saturday night at 10 p.m. maybe somebody asked me to speak or something like that maybe I stumble into a young people’s meeting and the average age there is maybe 19 years old and there are a hundred people in the room in Los Angeles and they talking about their addictions, their problems, their relationships, their recovery in an honest way and they’re talking about their hope for the future may go outside and hang out together or something like that. 37 years old now so

I look at these young people on a Saturday night. These are the same people that weeks months or years ago were right the streets selling dope, using dump, doing Lord knows what kind of crime, Lord knows what to themselves, to other people, that are now sitting in a little room on chairs talking deeply and honestly about life

with no parents around no judges no counselors no therapist on their own and it sort of epitomizes the social model of recovery – how to become together solve our common problems. There’s something beautiful about that.

So, in the future of addiction, I see some mix of those different kinds of camps happening and I see them mixing in ways I couldn’t possibly predict or see. It’s exciting, it’s it’s scary.

What’s exciting about it for me is I think we need to find much more effective ways of dealing with the issues of addiction of the large-scale so it’s exciting as these new ways come in, and hopefully, for me, still at the core is that traditional recovery which is human beings coming together to solve their problems.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Feb 20 2019

Plant Medicine, Ayahuasca, & the Right Relationship Model

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

Plant Medicine like psilocybin and ayahuasca are a burgeoning underground addiction solution
Much like diet, there is a sliding scale of harm – in food and drug – but most fall into a fuzzy middle
The future will see movement away from the abstinence-based model toward more individual recovery care

Plant Medicine, the spectrum of harm, and the Right Relationship Model

Looking at the future of recovery, another phenomenon that we’re experiencing now, it’s underground and it’s on the horizon, at least in the United States. Is using plant medicine to treat addiction.

So there are some great studies with nicotine and psilocybin which is the psychoactive component in magic mushrooms.

They’re also using psilocybin to treat depression, which of often is an underlying condition addiction, there has also been a lot of fanfare about Ayahuasca, which is a powerful psychedelic from South America that was used traditionally for either hundreds or thousands of years.

And the thought behind plant medicine is to invoke a spiritual experience and to disrupt the default network of the brain, meaning the patterns of our thinking and feeling, in such a way that people can get a boost in breaking free from addiction. Something gets rewired, you know, in the shorthand.

Plant medicine is becoming popular in the underground and so if you go online you’ll find it kind of buried there amongst different ways to deal with addiction, I’ve come across a lot of clients, both successful and unsuccessful, who have either tried or use plant medicine to treat addiction

it’s it’s a fascinating area, my own general philosophy on if I’m speaking to a parent or a potential client who’s looking for recovery and looking for help is I don’t have a philosophy it’s whatever works

The Future is a Multiplicity of Approaches

The way that I think the future of addiction is going to break down is there’s going to be a multiplicity of approaches and in the end, I think the best parallel when looking at the future of addiction is looking at how human beings approach diet. There have been all these diet fads that come and go – everybody is on keto now – where I think it’s going to go as modern science is getting there, is what specific diet is right for you.

so I think we’ll break away a little bit of overtime from an abstinence-base model meaning you can’t use any substances, to understanding your body and your neurochemistry better and specifically what substances in foods does your body and self react well to, and what substances and foods does is it not react well to

So I think about it on a spectrum write pretty much everybody knows that processed sugars and saturated fats really aren’t good for anybody hardly ever. You want to stay away from that stuff.

On the other side broccoli, celery. all these things we really don’t like, are pretty much healthy for everybody. So we have the stuff that’s pretty much healthy for everybody and pretty much bad for everybody then there’s a spectrum of the middle

That has to do with your own body. For some people red meat, the iron in red meat is good, and for some people, it’s not. Trying to figure that out, I think will happen with drugs eventually is the same kind of approach.

The Right Relationship Model

I call it the “right relationship model’.

Which is pretty much for everybody crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin… is not good for your life!

And I think we can all pretty much agree on that. But there are a group of substance is over here, in the proper set and setting, that can be good for huge groups of people.

The way that I think about that is: there are certain substances that narrow our consciousness, right, when you use methamphetamine – people use it to, like Adderall, it’s similar to methamphetamine, a stimulant, it helps you focus.

The problem with methamphetamine is that it narrows your consciousness! So, you’re actually not that connected to the things around you or the people around you, more important, over time.

Heroin narrows our consciousness in a different way, If you’ve ever seen somebody do a large dose of heroin, they just pass out, so it’s not focusing your consciousness, it’s obliterating your consciousness, and you pass out into oblivion. But they have the same general narrowing effect.

Alcohol is another substance that is like that, you drink alcohol and it lowers your inhibitions and your consciousness – which is what we appreciate about it – we don’t have to think so much and deal with all those feelings of anxiety.

So there’s a group of substance over there that narrow and dim consciousness, that’s why we like them, there’s a group of substances in the middle – people respond differently to marijuana and even wine or something at a smaller dose,

Although it dims your consciousness, it maybe connects you a little more, so there’s a little bit of space there in the middle. Which is why I think we have some agreement that they are kind of, KIND OF okay.

Plant Medicine | Expanding your Consciousness & Empathy

Then you actually have this group of substances, largely in the plant medicine world, but also MDMA, that have the capacity to expand your consciousness and empathy, and it’s real it is very well documented that it actually kind of lets filters down and allows you to have a wider awareness and vision

and anybody who’s done MDMA knows you have an incredible amount of empathy on MDMA and you rarely see people fight, you don’t get in a fistfight on the street, on MDMA. They are dancing together with glow sticks, it’s incredible.

So I think where it’s going, is into that kind of model were people, meaning people in society as a whole, is figuring out what kind of substances are good for us as a whole, and in what setting, and how we deal with that legally,

And what substances are really killing us and separating us?

I’m kind of optimistic about that vision, but every vision of the future is problematic. They are huge problems with that vision, just like they’re huge problems with the way we approach drugs and alcohol the abstinence-based model now,

It’s more just looking at what’s probable… as to what’s good, I never know what’s good in a complex phenomenon.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

Feb 06 2019

Medical Approach to Addiction

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

The medical approach. Treating addiction as a medical condition. The primary tool that we use for a medical condition is medicine.
There are also non-harm-reduction, medical approaches to addiction.
Predicting more and more complex pharmaceutical approaches to addiction in the future.

The Medical Approach to Addiction

The future of recovery I see it in 4 strands, 4 different areas. We’ve covered traditional recovery.

One that we’ve been in, but I think will become more sophisticated, is the medical approach. Treating addiction as a medical condition. The primary tool that we use for a medical condition is medicine.

A great example is Methadone, for opiate addicts, methadone is a substance that is similar to opiates, but reduces a lot of the harm that comes along with an opiate addiction.

So if you are using heroin, you need a drug dealer, you have to break the law. You don’t know exactly what you’re getting when you are buying a bag of black tar or powder from somebody’s probably not that trustworthy and you’re putting it in a needle and shooting it in your arm – its and incredibly harmful or dangerous habit to have, often deadly

The thought was, “can we come up with something that is like heroin, but people can still function better, that we can distribute legally, to stop people from dying & falling apart?”

Methadone, in many ways, has been effective. There are huge downsides, whatever, it’s a medical harm reduction approach.

There are also non-harm-reduction, medical approaches to addiction.

Antabuse is an alcohol deterrent substance. If you’re taking Antabuse and you drink, you violently throw up. And it deters you from drinking – without getting you drunk.

Vivitrol is a blocker. Its been around a couple of decades, it’s not widely publicized enough.

But if you are an opiate addict and you are on Vivitrol, then even if you use opiates you can’t get high. It just blocks the effects of drug usage. It’s actually a great tool in the world of addiction.

I see more and more complex pharmaceutical approaches to addiction in the future.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

Santa Monica Sober Living for men, Brentwood IOP

Feb 01 2019

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Why Choose Private Drug Rehab

Adam Mindel

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment

The opioid epidemic and alcohol addiction have affected millions of Americans, in fact, most people can say they or someone very close to them, have been touched by the massive consequences of drug and alcohol addiction; with the likelihood of death by opioid overdose officially passing car accident deaths for the first time in 2018. Drug rehab programs provide individualized, expert care for those struggling with drug and alcohol addictions, giving them the platform and foundation to maintain long-term sobriety.

Smaller Sized Programs

Private or luxury drug rehabs tend to have smaller, more individualized programs.

Anonymity

At a larger facility, it is only possible to have a limited amount of privacy. The more people swirling around the patient, the more hesitant the patient may be about opening up about his or her issues. People might find it less intimidating to take the next steps to recovery if they don’t feel overwhelmed by the number of bodies on the premises.

The role of shame

Deciding to go to rehab is humbling. The process is hard. Hard on your body, hard on your soul, hard on your mind. Shame can be an enormous hurdle for those reaching out for help. Even when a person is in a location where everyone else is going through similar circumstances, there can still be a sense of shame associated with being at a rehab facility. The privacy and general comfort of a luxury facility help to ease the tension in the mind, allowing healing to take the forefront. When a participant feels like he or she has room to breathe the impact of shame may be reduced drastically.

True family environment at Recover Integrity

In a smaller facility it is easier to connect on a one-on-one basis with other patients. Participants will have the benefit of connecting with his or her peers, developing friendships and a sense of family that will help remove the discomfort of recovery. Additionally, patients also will get to know the staff better, as there will likely be fewer employees present.

Beautiful, Luxurious Environment

Environment Affects Treatment

The serenity that comes with a luxurious rehab facility can greatly affect the effectiveness of the program. If a person who is already uneasy is put in a facility that is stressful, this will only exacerbate the feelings of anxiety that the patient is already experiencing. A lovely nature-filled environment can have an instantly calming effect on someone who has been through months or years of a very difficult addiction.

Comfort | Enduring Long Term Care

Because many patients will need to stay at a treatment center for a long period of time, comfort is of the utmost importance. People undergoing the recovery process will be tempted to return to their addiction over and over again. However, if they are in a new environment that they know will help them feel settled and at ease, they will be more likely to turn to those things that soothe them than to the addiction that has made life so difficult for them.

Amenities

Another aspect of environment is the amenities that are provided. Some of these amenities include mindfulness training activities such as yoga and meditation, which can have extremely positive effects on cognitive functions. Exercise programs are also often provided in a private rehab facility. Exercise has been consistently proven to have positive results, not only on the body, but also on the mind. During aerobic activity, endorphins are released and the stress hormone, cortisol, is reduced. Even the cuisine at a private rehab facility has a re-energizing effect on patients. Those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction will often forgo a healthy diet, and being in a facility that provides balanced and nutritious meals will help restore the physical strength and stamina of the participants. Both exercise and healthy diet can also have a positive effect on self Image, which is crucial so that the patients will believe in their own ability to fully recover.

Individualized Programs

Tailored Treatment Options

Every patient needs a different plan for recovery that fits his or her particular needs and backgrounds. Private facilities ensure that each individual receives this type of tailored and extensive attention. A plan of action that is created specifically to address a patient can help staff to pinpoint things such as triggers, pre-existing psychological conditions and the effectiveness of different treatment options.

Family Input

Because the staff at a rehab facility is only slightly familiar with the incoming patients, they have a lot of catching up to do. They have limited access to a person’s deeply personal information, as a patient might not be comfortable releasing those tidbits to a stranger. Family members who have known the patient for his or her whole life can provide indispensable details that may have otherwise not been revealed. These details can be crucial to the development and updating of a patient’s individual program.

Personalized Attention

In a larger facility, it can be easy for a patient to fall through the cracks or to feel like they are just another number. In a private facility, every patient receives extensive individual attention. The staff becomes very well acquainted with every individual’s particular set of needs. Patients also receive very close supervision from the medical staff, enabling the staff to provide input into problems that are arising during treatment that may be hindering the recovery process.

No waitlist

Large facilities tend to have astronomical waitlists because of the low cost to enter. This can be detrimental to someone who is currently experiencing an addiction. When someone is ready to receive treatment, it is important to strike while the iron is hot, so a waitlist is not an ideal situation to encounter for those who need help immediately. A more costly, private facility naturally limits the number of patients, simply based on the ability to pay, resulting in little-to-no delay in enrollment.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

We are Rooted in the Foundation of the 12-Steps and Believe in Long-Term Care

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Jan 28 2019

Traditional 12-Step Treatment

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

Understanding the evolution of addiction rehab & recovery is important to understand where we are heading
The 12-Step program is a spiritual program that evolved after psychotherapy failed to help
This has become the foundation for most North American Treatment Programs, but the success rate could improve…

Traditional Addiction Rehab | The 12-Step Program

In terms of the future of recovery, I think we’re already in the midst of a rapid change in; let’s call it the recovery underground. To understand, first I think we need to understand traditional recovery and where that even comes from.

Traditional recovery is pretty much 12-step based in North America. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous everyone is familiar with that. The reason why traditional recovery developed in the first place is because the mental health and physical health systems that we’ve had historically weren’t helpful when it came to treating addiction.

So we knew very early on in 20s 30s 40s even before that, that Psychotherapy did not work with helping people to recover from addictions it’s a well-known historical fact. We’ve kind of forgotten that over time but it’s a well-known historical fact. Alcoholics Anonymous came along as an interesting spiritual program with elements of therapy and morality and eventually community and literature that people started to get sober and people start to recover. That worked and works!

So traditional recovery in North America is 12-step and it was it was the dominant form of recovery for the… last eighty years let’s call it. The success rates that we see now, I think they’re controversial, to be honest with you, I think it’s a difficult question to ask, to talk about that, but let’s say the success rates are 15%. That might be generous that might be stingy,

it just isn’t good enough.

What are the Alternatives that are on the horizon for people in recovery?

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

Jan 22 2019

Marijuana Decriminalization | The Future of Addiction

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

Exploring how marijuana fits in society
Being Pro-decriminalization doesn’t mean there is no harm or side effects
We’re in an interesting experiment to see what happens when we decriminalize a substance, the stigma goes away, & how that affects our society in general over time.

Marijuana Decriminalization | The Future of Addiction

I don’t think we really know over the long-term what it’s like to regulate self-medicating marijuana over 5 years 10 years 15 years 20 years and the impact that has on individuals and the impact that has on groups or productivity or our society as a whole.

So we’re in the midst of an interesting experiment to see what happens when we decriminalize a substance and the stigma goes away, which I think is a good thing, how does that affect our society in general over time.

So part of what will be understanding is what does society look like in relationship to mass consumption of marijuana over a long period of time.

Probably chill.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Jan 07 2019

Suboxone Treatment | The Future of Addiction

The most immediate thing I see on the horizon in terms of the near future of addiction is consequences of what we're doing now with addiction. Click To Tweet

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

The Immediate Future of Addiction | Suboxone and the Opiate Crisis

The most immediate thing I see on the horizon in terms of the near future of addiction is consequences of what we’re doing now with addiction.

So, we have a gigantic opiate crisis in the United States, unprecedented really. One of the things that we’ve done to save people’s lives, understandably, is we’ve approached it from a governmental level and an Institutional level, and our approach has been harm reduction. Which means finding medications that reduce the amount of harm caused by heroin and oxy and these drugs and so the consequence of that is we are going to have a generation of young people or some percentage of this next generation that is on some sort of opiate blocker or opiate substitute the most common is called Suboxone most common is called a Suboxone or Subutex and the first crisis we’re going to deal with in terms of the future of addiction as we’re going to have hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who have been on Suboxone or Subutex for 3, 4, 5,10 years and we don’t really understand on that scale the effects of those drugs long-term on the individual.

We don’t know how that affects people’s development over the long-term you know, what happens when you put it on 18-year-old on Suboxone how does it affect the development when they are 24. Maybe it’s hardly at all, maybe it’s a really big deal, we don’t really know. But my guess is it’s something we’re going to have to deal with. As people start to have mental health problems years out of their development may be in relation to the Suboxone the questions going to be how do we get these people off of this drug? And, what I found in my own experience in treatment, is it’s actually harder to come off of suboxone than it is to come off of heroin – it’s actually well known. If you’ve been on Suboxone for a long time, you know, two, three, four, five years the detox is horrendous and often the depression is really heavy and lasts months if not years and so…

The immediate future of addiction looks like what are we going to do with this group of people who will put a bandaid on their situation that we had to do so they wouldn't die but they didn't completely heal Click To Tweet

The immediate future of addiction looks like what are we going to do with this group of people who will put a bandaid on their situation that we had to do so they wouldn’t die but they didn’t completely heal and they’re on this medication, maybe for life or maybe they want to get off and what do we do so that’s a new media crisis that we will be in the headlines in a couple of years.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

Jan 02 2019

The Future of Addiction

Schedule Free ConsultationSchedule Free Consultation

Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process, The Field of Treatment, The Future of Addiction, Video, Yeshaia Blakeney

What to expect in this episode:

The drug and alcohol treatment industry tends to be very reactive
How addiction works in relation to social phenomenon and social systems; increased anxiety and depression
Prediction: Vaping, vaporizers & increasingly complex designer drugs.

The Future of Addiction

The question of what drug addiction looks like in the future is massively important. What I am experiencing working in drug and alcohol treatment is that we are very reactive. We’re in the midst of an opiate epidemic, methamphetamine use is also on the rise, and we’re so busy dealing with that we’re not looking at what’s coming down the pipeline, which I think is an important conversation to have.

I see addiction working in relation to social phenomenon and social systems, things that are happening in the world around us. I think the biggest thing that’s happening in the world around us, the biggest event of our time, is the rise of technology and the complexity of human urban life; and we don’t know how to deal with it. So we know how to engineer complex systems but we don’t know how to deal with our feelings. We’re not necessarily training our children to make their bed and do the laundry, even though they can be top scorer on Fortnite or whatever.

And so what I see is (this is already happening) I see massive growth in anxiety and depression which are internal disorders that come from coping with the difficulties of life. And so when I think about what’s happening in the future of addiction, I think of what’s happening in the future of mental health. My prediction is that there’s going to be more and more complex designer drugs.

Designer drugs are drugs where the molecular structure is modified usually from an existing drug for a specific application like Pharmaceuticals are designer drugs and what I see is a massive growth in designer drugs and their distribution online and so if you go online right now and you look up how many different kinds of drugs there are that list is growing more rapidly or drugs are coming out in the recipes are available and I think they’re going to be used for people to self medicate to treat feeling that they don’t know how to deal with a don’t know how to live into.

The other thing that’s happening is the way that drugs are being ingested is changing. There’s been maybe seven different routes of ingesting drugs for the last hundred years and when the vaporizer came on the scene I took notice. It was a new way to ingest a substance rapidly right that you can inhale and it’s also concealed you can flavor it however you want so the odor changes. We know that with marijuana THC and nicotine that you could… we have high schoolers that are running around vaping weed and nobody knows, nobody smells it so you can completely conceal it.

Now you can also Vape methamphetamine, you can also Vape dimethyltryptamine, in fact you can be anything that’s water soluble. So you can imagine the mix that you can see on the horizon as clever human beings all of these designer drugs all of these mental health problems and having a way to ingest them that’s hidden difficult for police officers and authorities to detect, parents, Etc.

So, I see a lot of complexity on the horizon and I see nobody talking about it. Interestingly I am not anti-drug. I think human beings have had relationships with two substances for all of history and it’s not a bad thing. The question is how we collectively deal with our relationship to drugs and alcohol, which is a really deep question.

Schedule a 30-min consultation with Yeshaia

Find out if we can help you raise the bottom

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Jan 01 2019

“What he found was that the decision to quit was more a result of the impact of alcoholic illness reflected by tensions within the family and other close relationships than a bottoming out per se.” Click To Tweet

Interventions: A Series | Part 1 of 3

Adam Mindel

Adam Mindel, Addiction, Recovery Blog, Rehabilitation Process

Interventions: A Three-Part Series

by Adam Mindel and Ben Goodman

Intervention on account of its ubiquity is a term ingrained in the consciousness of modern culture

and has been for quite some time. Part of this has to do with the success of the reality TV show bearing the title, but more importantly, it reflects the prevalence of substance abuse permeating modern life.

Common familiarity with intervention has been honed to the point of parody. Recall the Sopranos, where Christopher’s intervention for heroin abuse ends with a stomping by Ralphie and Paulie and a trip to the emergency room.

The scenario contrasts starkly from the ideal’s intervention aims for which are a reckoning within the substance abuser and the emergence of a path towards recovery for all concerned, user, family, loved ones. Intervention is the medium through which light breaks on the horizon and life can resume.

“Intervention is the medium through which light breaks on the horizon and life can resume.” Click To Tweet

A long-held notion within traditional recovery circles has been the idea that a user had to “hit bottom” before becoming vulnerable enough to accept or seek help.

Such a bottom was typically preceded by a downward spiral, decades-long, and a wake of despair. The proliferation of Alcoholics Anonymous as a viable means of treating addiction resulted in a foreseeable alternative as the book 12 Steps and 12 Traditions stated, “It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had to hit to the point where it would hit them.”

When Vernon Johnson was developing the initial model of intervention in the late Sixties and early Seventies, preventing the addict’s death was his chief concern. Seeking out the best approach in doing this, Johnson studied 200 recovering alcoholics attempting to answer the question, “What made them want to quit drinking?”

What he found was that the decision to quit was more a result of the impact of alcoholic illness reflected by tensions within the family and other close relationships than a bottoming out per se.

Interventions have evolved over the years from Johnson Method to Invitational, Systemic, Engagement, and simply Collaborative models that work side by side with individuals and their families to harness family tensions and mobilize the power of love and attachment to create the essential willingness required for individuals to enter treatment. (next month’s blog will discuss different styles of intervention in depth)

The ensuing years, as it turns out, have seen intervention become the most promising means of raising the bottom for individuals suffering from the disease of addiction. Adam Mindel, Program Director of Recover Integrity and Interventionist, is impassioned about raising the bottom. Adam states that with more than 72,000 overdose deaths including opiates and all drugs of abuse in 2017 we have no choice to but to “raise the bottom”. The old saying that each and every addict has to bottom out first is no longer relevant when there is such lethality.

According to The American Society of Addiction Medicine, Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

if addiction is brain disease as described above by the chronic pathological seeking of substances, does it make sense for us as families and society to expect our addicted loved ones magically to wake up one day and separate… Click To Tweet

Therefore, if addiction is brain disease as described above by the chronic pathological seeking of substances, does it make sense for us as families and society to expect our addicted loved ones magically to wake up one day and separate themselves from the disease of addiction. Furthermore, if addiction is characterized by neurochemical, personality, cognitive and mood disturbances, we must recognize that many individuals have lost the ability to separate themselves from chronic use.

Adam describes a series of cases involving intervention with clients drinking themselves to the point which each of them required hospitalization, who were pathologically defended in accepting treatment due to changes in their personality as a result of neurochemical changes in the brain caused by alcoholism. Each of these client’s neurochemistry was so affected that they lost a degree of insight to the severity of their alcoholism and were operating on a day to day basis in “limbic survival like responses” which were servicing their alcoholism in either seeking alcohol or protecting continued use.

With the stakes this high, the question becomes not whether to intervene, but how and when to intervene on an addicted person.

For further information please contact Adam Mindel directly at amindel@recoverintegrity.com, or 310-694-3552, or keep reading Interventions, Part 2, Understanding Change and Raising the Bottom

Schedule a free consultation with Adam

See CalendarSee Calendar