If you ask me should we self-disclose I would say :yes and no.Why?
Very simple if you are working with clients and are familiar with their problems and mindset it really is irrelevant if you are addict or an alcoholic.What really does matter is your eagerness to provide best professional services ,being ethical and readily available for your clients.If they do ask me point blank if I am one I do answer yes,however if they don’t I don’t have to go into the details of my life. In the end it is all about them ,not me and we all know if you’re talking about the problem you can not possibly be talking about the solution.And even when I do share I only talk about the way out and clear cut directions I undertook to get better.
Another thing is being appropriate :if I have clients that meet me outside I don’t act unless they make first contact or just say hi as a casual encounter.Once a client is always a client and I got that ingrained in my mind.War stories do not help we can share them forever that is called socializing,if we are to have professional approach we are to lead by example and that has to do with everybody:either you’re a recovered garbage bag or someone that never had a problem with drugs and alcohol. I live in ten,eleven and twelve on a daily basis,but I never sponsor clients that is a conflict of interest,they will never get my cell phone number and I wont invite them to my house.I would break bread with them ,but wont accept gifts other than a thank you letter.I will crack a joke with them ,but will never become their financial advisor and family counselor,I wont tell them how to act with opposite sex,but I will always offer a great book or meeting to visit.If my clients are at my home group meeting where I share so be it I will welcome them in the end we all have choices that is what recovery is all about changes in mindset and ability in making clear choices.
It is true that sometimes the fact that you have survived coma and numerous overdoses might be a catapult in reinforcing somebody’s desire to move forward with treatment ,but in the end unless a client has an intention and a at least a glimpse of willingness no matter what I would say will come in one ear and come out the other.
There’s a great saying:You can never say a wrong thing to a right person and and no matter how many right things you will tell the wrong person you will always miss the point.
Today I want to get into the intrinsic motivators for addicts to change and what happens when it occurs. Obviously anything life threatening should make someone stop drinking or using one might think, however in most cases it does not. I believe there are series of exterior and interior factors that influence the decision making.
Number one is the time it takes for the addict to experiment and see that it is futile, unfortunately it is very hard to shoot heroin daily and be a vibrant socialite at the same time for long periods of time. We see more and more people that turn to the realization that they want to stop but don’t know how. Another thing is honesty, most addicts and alcoholics can not own up to the fact that they have a problem and the ones that do, are not willing to do what it takes to fix it. The question comes as to how do we motivate or push someone to the realization and then get them to make the efforts towards a vital breakthrough. It may start with an altruistic helping hand and a story of a similar experience or it can be seeing other people that took drastic steps and were led by clear cut directions and have actually become better. It takes time, perseverance, work and writing of the fourth step.
Now that we have licenses and are have had an official open house we are ready to accommodate first clients.And our marketing is the priority.Exploring different options in the rehabilitation sphere one has lots of ways to go.Both perfectly legal and transp[arent as well as very illegal and borderline human trade or so called client brokering where you pay per “head”of the addict or an alcoholic that has insurance and “needs placement”.I was told today by one such bazaar “pro”that I am to play with Big Boys now and should be humble and go “under radar”and not be cocky…What a great advise from someone offering to fill up my center .Well it did not take long for me and my marketing director to make a decision to continue on working our ways on creating relations ,building rapport and widening exposure through 8-10 different legal ways to attract clients .And my answer was that we are unique enough to go our way.With that I was wished best of luck and thought to myself that really need more creativity ,open mindedness and perseverance and will have waiting line to our center.
It is true that todays industry is driven by 28-30 days factories and have steady stream of sick people that go in and out and barely get in to get clean and get out to continue what they have been doing…Comply with DCF and maximize insurance benefits and pleease make sure nobody dies while they are in your treatment that seems to be the ongoing theme …
So what so different with us ?Yes we accept insurance,but our goal is to bring clients through series of breakthroughs and keep them for long time and expect no less than recovery and shift .And all of that done with the clients:since if we change and our team has the same intention the client will change -it is mutual and it is paramount.
Tulsa Community College professor Lynette Moreau’s life includes two children, two grandchildren and three degrees, and she’s proud of them all.
It also features 20 years as an intravenous methamphetamine addict.
“I used to have a lot of shame,” Moreau said.
“I was so embarrassed that I did that to myself and to other people. It held me back a lot.
“I can’t change it. The only thing I can do is learn from it and move forward and pray to God that I have a helping hand in saving somebody else’s life like this school has saved mine.”
Through tremendous effort and the help of a lot of people, Moreau overcame her meth addiction and got her life back on track.
Now she’s helping others do the same.
She first injected drugs – cocaine – when she was 16, about the same time she dropped out of high school.
Two years later, she fell into meth use.
“It’s the worst and the best experience ever,” she said. “You lose your family, your friends and your life, (but) the high is incredible. They call it the devil’s dope, and it really is.”
Eventually, she was manufacturing meth, selling it and shooting up daily.
She had some scruples: She wouldn’t sell drugs to minors, prostitute herself or burglarize homes.
But she lived a criminal life, and eventually, she was caught and ended up on probation.
“Probation never lasts for people like me,” she said.
She got caught again and ended up incarcerated in Texas.
In prison, she stayed sober for more than a year, but 10 days after she was released she was strung out again.
She seemed headed to a familiar, short life of drugs, crime and prison, but then her daughter, Leah, put things to her straight.
“She told me to get right or get going,” Moreau said.
Wanting to be part of her daughter’s wedding and her family, Moreau decided it was time to get her life in order.
She called her mother and said, “I’m done.”
It wasn’t the first time she had said it – or words to the same effect – but this time she meant it.
“One day I was walking through my mom’s house, and she has this big mirror on the wall, and I walked by and I said, ‘Wow, it’s all your fault,’ ” Moreau said. “It was the first time that I realized that all those years of … drug abuse … were not (other people’s) fault for giving me the drugs. It was my fault for accepting it.
“That was the first time that I had acceptance, and then forgiveness.”
She gives credit to a lot of people, including her parents and her children, and she includes a force greater than herself.
“God had a big hand in this. He did,” she said. “He reached down and said, ‘I’ve had enough of you. There’s bigger and better things in life for you,’ and I paid attention that time.”
If heaven was involved in her decision, her withdrawal from drugs was a slice of hell.
She describes a long period of what experts in meth withdrawal call anhedonia, a feeling that life has lost all of its pleasure.
“It is incredibly hard,” she said. “I slept and ate, slept and ate, slept and ate.”
She remembers the nightmares and her efforts to back out of her decision to kick her habit.
At one point, her parents hid the wheels from her car and left it on blocks to prevent her from driving back to the drug scene.
“They said, ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ ” she said. “So I stayed in the house and paced the floor.”
An expert in meth addiction said Moreau is in the minority of people who can get off the drug and stay off.
About a quarter to a third of those who quit the drug are able to stay clean for extended periods – a success rate similar to those for alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine, said University of California at Los Angeles psychiatry professor Richard Rawson, who runs several international studies on meth addiction funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“The difficult part with methamphetamines isn’t stopping, it’s not relapsing,” he said.
Support is a key to long-term success.
“To the extent that you can surround yourself with people who are supportive and sober and living productive lives, you’re going to have better outcomes,” Rawson said.
That’s essentially what Moreau did.
She enrolled at Tulsa Community College, where she met Sharolyn Wallace, the human services professor who would become her mentor.
“She has totally changed my life,” Moreau said.
When she started at TCC, Moreau said, she didn’t have fundamental academic skills, such as typing.
But after her first semester, she was named to the President’s Honor Roll, meaning she had a 4.0 grade point average.
“I was so excited that I just wanted to continue to do that over and over again,” she said. “From that day I was hell-bent that I was going to make good grades and I was going to be a remarkable student because I had never been good at anything.”
When she was preparing to graduate from TCC, she asked to meet with the school’s president, Tom McKeon, and his staff.
McKeon hadn’t heard Moreau’s story and had never before received such a request, but he agreed to let her speak to the group of administrators on the final school day before Thanksgiving break.
Moreau described in great detail her drug addiction and the other problems she faced in her life. She ended by thanking him and the school’s leaders for helping her rise from those ruins, McKeon said.
When she finished, McKeon said, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
“I said to the group, ‘This is probably the best Thanksgiving gift that anyone could have given us,’ ” he said. “It was really pretty moving. It moves me just to talk about it again.”
Moreau’s academic career then took off.
She was Oklahoma’s New Century Scholar – meaning she was the No. 1 community college student in the state.
She went on to Northeastern State University and earned her bachelor’s degree in social work.
She earned a master’s degree in social work at the University of Oklahoma in one year.
Now she is back at TCC, teaching Introduction to Social Work classes at the NSU-Broken Arrow campus and coordinating the human services project.
Clean for eight years, she says she no longer has any desire for drugs and is reaching out to students who are recovering from their own addictions.
My name is Andrey Rossin and I am a recovered alcoholic and addict. About six years ago I overdosed for the last time. I slid into a coma and my parents and girlfriend were told I would not survive. By the grace of my higher power I am alive today. At that moment I discharged from the hospital, I decided to get detoxed. I did not want to change – I just wanted to get detoxed. That same night my family did an intervention on me.
Amazingly, someone that used to supply me drugs back in Boston came back into my life. He had started working for a treatment center and told me and my parents that I should go away for 90 days to get better. I was barely walking and still weak, I did not think I should have to go away on top of that! I had work to do as a Realtor and learned to function efficiently while high on a very busy schedule. But looking at my families faces, I realized I had no choice. I decided to pacify them and say YES.
I was out of control and it would always start very simply with just a thought of a pack of Newports. Once I had the idea that I should pick one up I knew I was done. After work, I would come home, start working out, swim in the ocean and I even quit smoking! I attempted to re-establish my relationship with loved ones, but the moment I thought of those Newports – I was done!
I went to Florida and in the treatment center I found out about the Gorski textbook, relapse prevention program. I was told about the harm I did to myself and others when I use… nothing new… nothing life changing.
So what happened that day six years ago? Someone took initiative and brought me to the meeting that I still attend today. For the first time in my life I saw people that were content! For the first time in my life I heard a message that there is a solution, for the first time in my life I heard that I can get better!
That was an “A-HA” moment in itself – I could not fathom the fact that I could live life without drinking and using ever again. I had always thought that only abnormal people didn’t get intoxicated every day and end up a mess. I kept going to the meetings and eventually asked someone to help me “get what he had gotten”, after all I had nothing to lose and only time to kill in rehab, so why not?
Long story short… I recovered while in the center. Everyone has their own time frame as to when they recover, but as long as you are willing and being honest, the change does happen. When I was discharged I told myself I need to carry this message to everyone in need because I personally know so many people that have no idea there is a real way to recover. When you’re in a vicious cycle there’s no way to even imagine a solution.
Now let me take you up to today, 2011. With time, patience and a lot of hard work, I found an Investor to help me open up a treatment center that would make a difference. It took over five years and my dream is coming true! I have come to realize that this is my life’s mission and my high is to see someone change from a suicidal wreck to a content and aware individual. WOW, I get goose bumps and am ready to cry whenever this happens. YES it is work, YES it is a process and YES it takes perseverance and determination but the results will amaze you before you are halfway through. How does that sound for a payoff?
It’s the willingness to try a new way. The more your know, the better you are. I personally invite you to venture into our website and look us up on Facebook. You can email me at intoactiontreatment@gmail.com or call my mobile phone at 786-942-0502.
Police are winning the pill mill battle, but heroin may fill the void, authorities sayOctober 16, 2011|By Jerome Burdi, Sun Sentinel As South Florida law enforcement is making headway in its fight against pill mills, there is a mounting concern that heroin could be the drug moving in to fill the void for addicts.Oxycodone and heroin have similar chemical compositions, and many oxycodone addicts have been ingesting the pills in the same way addicts take heroin: sniffing and injecting, authorities said.As the pills get more expensive and harder to get, heroin may be an addict’s answer.”We’re going to see a heroin increase,” said state Rep. Will Snyder, R-Stuart, a retired Miami-Dade police officer and a candidate for sheriff in Martin County. “These people are severely addicted. This is an all-encompassing, overwhelming addiction.”The Palm Beach County Multi-Agency Diversion Task Force — comprising local, state and federal law enforcement agencies fighting the trade in illegally sold prescription pills — reported that 3 pounds of heroin already has been seized in street deals this year, up from 20 grams last year.
Although it sounds a bit heavy it is really not the beginning because the idea have started over five years ago. It is just the beginning of this blog for the intoaction treatment facilty that will get open later this year.
We have been thinking about the vision and came up with a very simple, though grand one: Everybody gets recovered. Yes it is naive, yes it is overly optimistic, but is it?
As long as you are willing and are honest with yourself the results are guaranteed. Will all our clients will be willing? Absolutely not and never and that is really what we are there for to give them a notch, to provide that drastic push that validation, that attention that have triggered massive events and changed millions of people’s lives thru out the history. Honesty, well, nobody expect the alcoholic and the addict to be one since most of us could not differentiate the truth from the false anyways.
And, yes, one more thing to mention: there’s no difference between the alcoholic and the addict, the one craving “oxys” or using meth, drinking or sniffing as long as you have a problem (and we will have the section were you will be able to determine that) we can help.
