ADDICTION: TREATMENT PROGRESS

With the launch of my new HEALTHY HEALING ADDICTION TREATMENT PROGRAM, I was reflecting on how far the addiction field has come in a hundred years.
It is still difficult for me to read about how addicts were treated at the turn of the twentieth century—institutionalizing/hospitalization was the kindest approach. Dr. William D. Silkworth, MD, passionately expressed the professional viewpoint of treating addicts of that time, in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, “The Doctor’s Opinion”, page xxviii-xxix: “Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.” He goes on to say “Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal: ‘Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!’ Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. Although he gives all that is in him, it often is not enough. One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable, we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole.” Now, almost a decade into the 21st Century, we have learned that it takes a village to help an addict on their journey to optimal health. Specially trained addiction counselors working as a conduit between the client, the primary care physician, the psychiatrist, the nutritionist, the gym, the life coach, the family—slowly and patiently guiding the addict to a healthier lifestyle.

The HEALTHY HEALING ADDICTION OUTPATIENT PROGRAM is a comprehensive, multidimensional alternative holistic counseling/coach approach to healing from addiction on an individual basis. The HH Program addresses the physical, emotional, and spiritual needed by addicts to make, as Dr. Silkworth suggested, that “essential psychic change.”

Read more about the HEALTHY HEALING PROGRAM at
http://www.lifestylechangescounseling.com