Video

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.

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Jan 02 2019

The Future of Addiction

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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.

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Oct 30 2018

Moment of Surrender

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What to expect in this episode:

Yeshaia Blakeney hit bottom on Pico in Los Angeles
He was pulled over an arrested for selling marijuana
That was the moment of surrender for him, where he said ok. I give up. I lose. Show me the way out…

The Moment of Surrender

My bottom was on Pico in Los Angeles.

I got pulled over. I was selling marijuana.

A police officer said, “Okay if I search your car?”

I said, “Why are you going to do that?” He said, “Step out of the car sir” and searched my car.

I knew I was going to get arrested and I knew I was in big trouble.

I remember sitting on the curb and I felt defeated, not just in that moment, but in my whole life. I felt like I had been living one way and it wasn’t working anymore and that was the moment of surrender for me.

Where I said, “Okay world, you win, I lose”.

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Oct 22 2018

My Favorite Questions

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What to expect in this episode:

If you’re in a real situation that is making your life difficult I would say go inside of yourself and say, where are you stuck?
If there’s a favorite question, it’s those that the answers have a real impact on somebody’s life
I’m trying to get off heroin, what do you think about Suboxone Maintenance? That’s a common question, but important question…

My Favorite Questions

If you’re in a real situation in real time in real life that is making your life difficult, whether that’s an act of addiction or you’re stuck in your sobriety or it’s somebody that you love and you’re stuck, I would say go inside of yourself and say, where are you stuck, what is it you don’t get, what is it you need at this moment, how would you frame that as a question?

So, if there’s a question, my favorite questions, are the questions that the answers have a real impact on somebody’s life.

It could be something technical, so it could be – I’m trying to get off heroin, what do you think about Suboxone Maintenance? Right. That’s a common question, but that’s an important question, right because that question is going to impact your life potentially for the next six months to the next year.

You know, so it could be a technical question around something like that or it could be a question about I keep letting my kid come back home and they keep relapsing. It’s been five times in two years, what should I do? Well, that’s a really deep question. Right. It’s easy to say, just lock them out and let them hit bottom.

It’s easy to say, just keep them and love them, you know what I mean? It’s hard to say you’re in a really difficult situation where any choice you make isn’t good – something bad could happen and that’s the first thing you have to acknowledge, that holding your kid in your house while they’re getting high, does not keep them safe and kicking them out doesn’t keep them safe.

So, my answer, for instance, to a question like that would be to tell your child that all you can support is their recovery right now and if they’re not being willing to engage in recovery than you can’t support them, because the only part of them you can support right now is recovery and that’s a hard thing to do, but at least it puts the ball in their court.

Where you’re saying “I’m not kicking you out, I’ll help you get somewhere, but I’m not just going to keep you here in your addiction either.”

And sometimes a little phrase, I know I had to say that.

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Oct 15 2018

Moment of Grace

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What to expect in this episode:

When I first came into recovery it was like a giant mountain I didn’t know how to climb
People were giving me info, love, encouragement, support, so I began The Climb
You begin to plateau, but then you are granted a moment of grace – when all those burdens flip off your shoulders and become a foundation…

My Moment of Grace

When I first came into recovery, I just remember kind of walking into treatment and all this information that was given, and it was like a giant mountain and I was like “Whoa, how am I ever going to climb that thing?”

And there were people that were encouraging me and giving me information and giving me love and giving me care, and so I started to climb the mountain and I’m like “Whoa, this is – okay, I can do this”. And then it just felt like the progress was slow, it was like trying to climb a hill in roller skates, you know.

And everything felt so heavy, but there’s something that happens in that recovery journey. It’s not something that can be measured. It’s not scientific. It’s not in any manuals. It’s something close to grace and all of those things that are weighing you down, all of those burdens that are making you heavy and making you small and making you feel like you’ve never be able to stand up straight.

You’ll never be able to look yourself in the eyes. You’ll never be able to feel love, none of that. Something happens in an unmeasurable instant, at some point in that journey, where all of those rocks on top of you, all of those burdens, all of that weight, it just flips.

And suddenly, you have this new capacity, you have – you’re in touch with something different. I call it Hope, you can call it what you want and you’re able to travel up to the top of that hill. And once you get to the top of that hill and you’re standing on top of that mountain, once you’re there, there’s nothing to do but just dance, because you’re free and you’re dancing the dance of recovery.

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Oct 09 2018

My Regrets

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What to expect in this episode:

My life turned out ok – do I have regrets about my path in addiction?
I do not regret the path, but I regret every person I bumped into and harmed along the way.
I didn’t have values, I was not a good dude. I regret that.

My Regrets

I was speaking to a group of high schoolers and somebody asked me the question, “well for you this all worked out, for your path, so do you regret it?” and I have the same answer now that I had with the high school kid:

I don’t regret that experience, I regret every person I bumped into along the way and influenced their lives poorly; that I was not a person who made people’s lives around me better and so in that sense I actually really regret it and it wasn’t worth it for me in that sense – but now that I’m not going to beat myself up about that – but if that makes sense.

I think we underestimate the impact we have when we’re in our addictions let me know you know I’m here talking like a ‘made up’ dude but I was not a good dude I was not a good person and I didn’t have values.

I harmed people… I wasn’t evil but I wasn’t fun to have around either and so I have to acknowledge that, there’s a certain reality there…

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Oct 02 2018

Drugs & Alcohol Saved My Life

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What to expect in this episode:

The pervasive feeling at AA meetings that drugs or alcohol actually saved many from suicide
Drinking can lead to bonding, which is good, until the tipping point of addiction
Acknowledging as a society that there’s a piece of that that’s beautiful, but that beauty can rot over time.

Drugs and Alcohol Saved My Life.

🙏

If I had not used drugs and alcohol I would have killed myself. I mean, I’ve heard that many times, in AA meetings.

In some ways for people that medicine works. It works where you actually do find a way to feel good in your life and you find a way to connect with others and you find a group.

The issue becomes when it grows into a full-blown addiction and it doesn’t work anymore. So, medicine can work, addiction can work as a medicine for a period of time.

It can also create social bonds and things like that and, I think, probably most people have a period in their life when they look back on getting high and drinking as part of their story arc.

Those are great times.

For some people, they were the best times of their life. ‘When I went to college and I experimented with drugs’

So acknowledge as a society that there’s a piece of that that’s beautiful, but that beauty can rot over time.

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Sep 10 2018

The Self is Too Small for Perpetual Enthusiasm

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What to expect in this episode:

Huston Smith Said, “The Self is Too Small for Perpetual Enthusiasm
What makes us miserable and stuck as human beings, is that we’re stuck in ourselves
Path to Growth is to get out of the Self

The Self is Just Too Small…

Huston Smith has this quote, “That the self is too small for perpetual enthusiasm” It’s a lot of words, but if you think about it, he’s talking about the Path to Growth and the Path to Enlightenment, that what makes us miserable and stuck as human beings, is that we’re stuck in ourselves.

When I’m in myself, thinking about myself, you know 15 hours a day, my needs, my wants, my desires, etc., etc., I’m not happy right.

He says that the “Path to Growth is to get out of the Self”, right.

Why?

Because I’m just too small to stay jazzed about and if I can’t get into your life, for my kid’s life, for my wife’s life, or my community or the world, well then, I’m stuck, so that little phrase, “The Self is too small for perpetual enthusiasm” always rang true with me.

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Aug 26 2018

Recovery is About Living Life

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What to expect in this episode:

Recovery is Not About Sobriety…

I thought getting sober was about sobriety.

It was like “I have to stay sober, I can’t use, one day at a time no matter what” and what changed for me is that I recognized that recovery is about life.

And how we live life.

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And really, only a very small part of it is about drugs and alcohol.

When I’m having a hard time in recovery, what does that mean? It just means I’m having a hard time in life.

Recovery is not a thing recovery is just ‘how I’m living’. So it evolved from something that was about drugs and alcohol into something that was about life.

And that’s a massive shift.

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