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Phil’s Recovery Minute

September 3, 2013

“… There is hope for everyone. And for me hope stands for, ‘Hang On Peace Exists’.

And I found peace after twenty five years. But it didn’t come easily, it didn’t come quickly. It came one day at a time and putting one foot in front of the other.

And here I am. I feel peaceful. I intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me. I have the love and respect of my family and I love and respect them. I have an incredible staff to work with each and every day, and my life is filled beyond measure.

Read More ➔

Category: Blog Tags: CCAR, family, hope, peaceful, Phil Valentine, recovery, respect, workmates

William Glasser Memorial

September 2, 2013

I was sorry to hear that we lost a special psychiatrist, Dr William Glasser, last Friday. William was also an education reformer and prolific author. His obituary appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other newspapers. I include a copy of his Memorial:

‘The word “genius” has never fitted Bill Glasser well – not because he wasn’t one having been well recognised as such around the world – but because he was that and so much more. Bill was a genius and a man of courage and a person of wonderful humanity.

As a young man he had wandered through academia looking for a niche for himself. He had studied engineering and psychology and medicine and then, still restless, talked his way into psychiatry.

What facilitates recovery from mental health problems?

August 30, 2013

I was looking through my old blogs on Wired In To Recovery and came across this one.

The blog is based on a paper by Wendy Brown and Niki Kandirikirira, entitled “Recovering Mental Health in Scotland: Report on Narrative Investigation of Mental Health Recovery”. It’s the 19th manuscript in the list on this page.

‘This research involved the recovery narratives of 64 individuals in Scotland who identified themselves as being in recovery or recovered from a long-term mental health problems.

Changing Education Paradigms: Animate from Sir Ken Robinson

August 29, 2013

Although you might think this film is not strictly related to addiction recovery, I assure you that it is. Education plays a key role in recovery, as does the way we are taught to think.

I love this talk, as well as the use of the animate. Sir Ken is a leader in the education field and you can find a number of videos of his talks on YouTube. I agree with him wholeheartedly that we need to change the way we educate young people (and old!)

And there are some interesting facts about the prescribing of drugs in the treatment of ADHD.

Read More ➔

Category: Blog Tags: ADHD, animate, education, innovation, Ken Robinson, recovery, RSA, young people

‘The Work of Recovery’ by Bill White

August 27, 2013

I missed this very important recent posting on Bill White’s website which is well worth reading.

‘Research on addiction recovery is quite scant compared to the volumes of research on addiction-related pathologies and clinical interventions. Additionally, some of the most important research on addiction recovery is buried in academic journals, rarely if ever read by the people who need it most – addiction treatment professionals and people needing, seeking or in recovery. Such is the case of studies on the role of work in addiction recovery.

In 2011, Dieter Henkel of the Institute for Addiction Research at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, Germany, conducted a comprehensive review of international studies on the relationship between substance use and employment that was published in Current Drug Abuse Reviews (4, 4-27). Henkel drew the following conclusions from his review of more than 130 scientific studies:

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

August 26, 2013

Shame plays a major role in keeping people locked in addiction. Shame of what a person has become through their addiction, and how it has affected relationships with loved ones and friends, can drive people to more self-medication in efforts to alleviate the feelings experienced.

In the section Books to facilitate your recovery, I have recommended Brene Brown’s latest book Daring Greatly, which is well worth a read. Brene is a shame researcher who has become a major name in the past few years, in part due to her having the second most viewed TEDx talk. I guess 10.7 million views is what you call viral.

Here’s what I said about Daring Greatly:

“Every now and again, I read a book that I immediately read again (this time using a marker), and then keep picking up to read various bits that I have highlighted. This is the latest of such books.

Recovery Rocks: Chip Somers

August 24, 2013

Really pleased to see the latest Recovery Rocks on the Veronica Valli website. I have a lot of respect for Chip Somers. Here’s what Veronica has to say about her latest interviewee.

‘Chip Somers is the co-founder and CEO of Focus12 Treatment Centre in Bury St Edmunds, UK. Focus12 was the first treatment centre I worked in, and it really did teach me everything I know.

It’s an inspiring place, where no matter what they have done or how low they have gone, addicts and alcoholics are treated with the utmost love and respect. For 16 years they have been putting lives and families back together.

RIOT – Recovery Is Out There

August 23, 2013

David McCollom has been making some good films about recovery and recovery-related organisations. Here is one about RIOT, which you can find in our Film Section.

Three people talk about their recovery and introduce RIOT, an award-winning group of recoverees who attended the BAC O’Connor centre. Recovery Is Out There, right!

And you might want to check out RIOT Radio and the short news clip of its opening.

Category: Blog Tags: addiction, BAC O'Connor, David McCollom, DMC Media, film, radio, RIOT

Dealing with Betrayal and Abandonment

August 23, 2013

Beth Burgess flagged this article which appeared on Hubpages. Sometimes things happen in your recovery that are difficult to come to deal with. Here is some excellent advice.

Remain Objective
It is all too easy to blame ourselves when we have been betrayed or abandoned, and to take the actions of others as a personal affront. Most people’s behaviour is a reflection of their own shortcomings or mental state rather than a rejection of you personally.

Try to be objective about the situation – ask yourself if you genuinely did anything wrong, or was this situation brought about because of the other person’s issues. If you do feel that you were somewhat to blame, what can you learn from this occasion and how can you do better in future.

The Addicted Brain: Interview with Marc Lewis

August 21, 2013

Here’s a fascinating interview with Marc Lewis as part of the ABC Radio Big Ideas series here in Australia. Well worth putting your feet up and listening – or have it running in the background.

‘Marc Lewis took every drug imaginable over a 15 year period. He knows drugs can make you feel good, and he experienced the desperate lows of addiction. He’s been drug free for 30 years and is now a neuroscientist.

So what do the drugs he took actually do to your brain? Why do they make you feel the way they do? And – crucially – how is the brain responsible for addiction? He speaks to Paul Barclay.’

‘The Globalization of Addiction’ by Bruce Alexander

August 20, 2013

‘Global society is drowning in addiction to drug use and a thousand other habits.

This is because people around the world, rich and poor alike, are being torn from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times. This kind of global society subjects people to unrelenting pressures towards individualism and competition, dislocating them from social life.

People adapt to this dislocation by concocting the best substitutes that they can for a sustaining social, cultural and spiritual wholeness, and addiction provides this substitute for more and more of us.’

I’ve taken these words from Bruce Alexander’s website and can highly recommend his book, The Globalization of Addiction, which highlights the role of disconnection or dislocation in the development of addiction. This theory makes much more sense than the classical disease model focusing on the role of brain neurotransmitters in addiction.

Cocaine: The experience of using and quitting

August 20, 2013

What does scientific research tell us about people overcoming substance use problems? I have previously described the study with US veterans who stopped using heroin after they returned from Vietnam, showing that the common belief that heroin is highly addictive cannot be generalised to all situations.

A variety of other scientific studies have been conducted with people who have recovered from addiction to other substances and we look at another of these studies in this chapter.

Dan Waldorf and colleagues conducted the most comprehensive ethnographic study of heavy cocaine users in the mid-1980s in northern California.

They interviewed 267 current and former heavy users of cocaine, a sample that did not include people in treatment programmes or in prison. Most of the respondents were “solidly working- or middle-class, fairly well-educated, and steadily employed.”

Stress, trauma and addiction: the role of society

August 19, 2013

“Addicts are locked into their addiction not only by their painful past and distressing present but equally by their bleak view of the future as well. They cannot envision the real possibility of sobriety, of a life governed by values rather than by immediate survival needs and by desperation to escape physical and mental suffering.

They are unable to develop compassion to wards themselves and their bodies while they are regarded as outcasts, hunted as enemies, and treated like human refuse.

As we have seen, a major factor in addiction that medical and social policies must take into account is stress. If we want to support people’s potential for healthy transformation, we must cease to impose debilitating stress on their already-burdened existence.

Serenity Recovery Fringe Festival

August 18, 2013

In an earlier blog, I highlighted an article by Bill White on Recovery Carriers.

Recovery Carriers are people, usually in recovery, who make recovery infectious to those around them by their openness about their recovery experiences, their quality of life and character, and the compassion for and service to people still suffering from alcohol and other drug problems.

I know two special Recovery Carriers in Edinburgh – and there are many more – David McCartney and John Arthur. Here’s John’s latest blog:

From Discovery To Recovery: My Emotional Journey As The Parent Of An Addict

August 16, 2013

Powerful writing from Ron Grover, a parent of a son with a substance use problem, which appeared on the Intervene website.

‘What’s it like being the parent of an addict? I’m not talking about the day-to-day experience with a crisis and drama around every corner. I mean what is it like inside the mind of a parent who has gone from discovery (of a child’s drug use) to recovery (from a drug addiction)?

As I take stock of my current emotional state – examining all of the emotions I have felt over the last 10 years – I wonder: Am I normal? Am I a survivor? Am I crazy? Maybe I’m just a composite of these experiences and it’s simply who I am now.

Read More ➔

Category: Blog, Family Tags: addiction, anger, contempt, hope, hurt, love, parent, recovery

‘How Forgiveness Can Change Your Life’ by Peter Breggin

August 15, 2013

I have a high regard for the work of the psychiatrist Peter Breggin. Here is an article he wrote on forgiveness for the Huffington Post earlier in the year. Forgiveness plays a key role in recovery.

‘Early in 1865, in his second inaugural address, little more than a month before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln stood before the bloodied, fractured United States to speak about forgiveness, the letting go of hatreds, and the binding of wounds. He implored the people of America:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Read More ➔

Category: Blog Tags: anger, emotions, empathy, empower, forgiveness, judgement, Peter Breggin, shame

‘Helping Populations Progress Through Stages of Change’: Talk by James O. Prochaska

August 14, 2013

I was thrilled to find this video on YouTube, a talk by one of the psychology greats, James Prochaska.

‘A scientific revolution is occurring in the field of behavior change. This revolution involves a shift from an action paradigm to a stage paradigm in which changing troubled behavior involves progressing through six stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination.

Previously almost all research and treatment programs were action-oriented but less than 20% of people with such behaviors are prepared to take action. Action-oriented programs resulted in relatively low participation rates, high dropout rates and small impacts on populations with unhealthy behaviors.

Recovery as an organising construct – Bill White interviews Larry Davidson

August 13, 2013

I have just been reading a Bill White interview of Larry Davidson – the two people who have most impacted on my work – and I was very interested by Larry’s response to these two questions about the mental health field. What is said is of course highly relevant to the addiction field.

Bill White: How is the emergence of recovery as a new organizing paradigm changing the design and delivery of mental health services in the United States?

Larry Davidson: I think the biggest change that the recovery paradigm has introduced, and the change that poses the most difficulty for traditional clinicians to understand and accept, is that recovery is primarily the responsibility of the person rather than the practitioner.

Recovery Vision: New paradigm, new questions, new answers

August 13, 2013

I’ve just watched this wonderful talk (from 2001) by Bill Anthony, one of the pioneers in recovery-based care in mental health. [Bill starts his talk at 25’20” into the video]

Bill describes a metaphor for explaining a paradigm shift, such as the paradigm shift to recovery-based care in mental health.

This metaphor is that mankind once thought the world was flat. This understanding led to certain questions such as, “How far do I sail before I fall off the end of the earth?” Once mankind learnt the world was round, these questions were redundant. We asked different questions.

Book Review: ‘The Happy Addict: How to be Happy in Recovery from Alcohol or Drug Addiction’ by Beth Burgess

August 13, 2013

We’ve heard quite a bit from Beth Burgess on this website. The reason for this is quite simple. Beth is always busy. Last week, I included her column from the Huffington Post, this week a review of her latest book from the website Drug Addiction Treatment.

‘It sounds like an oxymoron, The Happy Addict. How can an addict be happy, right? Leave it to a clever marketer to come up with a catchy title like this, one that literally draws the reader in. That is, if the reader has an interest in learning how it is humanly possible to be “happy” in recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction.

But, wait, that’s the rest of the title of this no-nonsense, witty and well-written book by Beth Burgess: The Happy Addict: How to Be Happy in Recovery from Alcoholism or Drug Addiction.

Blog

Phil’s Recovery Minute

William Glasser Memorial

What facilitates recovery from mental health problems?

Changing Education Paradigms: Animate from Sir Ken Robinson

‘The Work of Recovery’ by Bill White

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Recovery Rocks: Chip Somers

RIOT – Recovery Is Out There

Dealing with Betrayal and Abandonment

The Addicted Brain: Interview with Marc Lewis

Serenity Recovery Fringe Festival

From Discovery To Recovery: My Emotional Journey As The Parent Of An Addict

‘How Forgiveness Can Change Your Life’ by Peter Breggin

‘Helping Populations Progress Through Stages of Change’: Talk by James O. Prochaska

Recovery as an organising construct – Bill White interviews Larry Davidson

Recovery Vision: New paradigm, new questions, new answers

Book Review: ‘The Happy Addict: How to be Happy in Recovery from Alcohol or Drug Addiction’ by Beth Burgess

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