Foreclosures, bankruptcy, maxed-out credit cards, depleted checking and savings accounts, unpaid bills and past-due notices, collection demands, lawsuits, fines, legal fees and so on can mount up to the point where the individual in recovery sees no way out. Why not resort to the bottle or downing pills or injecting, inhaling, gambling, etc. as a means to cope with the economic calamity? While that’s certainly one way to look at it – escape – as always, the escape is only temporary. The economic problems of the recovering addict, mirroring the downturn in the economy, will still be there. They may even become worse. Thus, the escape is not only a delay tactic of facing the inevitable – it is also worthless as a solution. It simply doesn’t work.
You can’t ignore the economic downturn or your own personal financial situation. So, how can you deal with a worsening economic situation without resorting to relapse?

• First, don’t allow things to pile up or get to the point where you feel you don’t have any hope of coming out from under. Seek the help of a financial advisor – perhaps one of the resources available to you in your 12-step group or a program you can be referred to in the community.

• Work with your creditors to arrange a graduated payment plan, reduced payments, loan modification program, or the like. Creditors want their money, but some money negotiated in advance is better than no money at all. Generally speaking, they will be willing to work with you to create a repayment plan or schedule. You need to at least give this option a try. It will go a long way toward helping reduce the economic stressor that could otherwise do you in.

• Recognize that the economy goes through regular upturns and downturns. The cyclical nature of the economy is such that one usually follows the other. While this may not be comforting when you’re drowning in debt, it at least lets you acknowledge that you will probably be able to overcome your financial and economic difficulties at some point in the future.

• Take a tip from financial planners and organize, pare, and prioritize. Sort bills according to due dates, amount due, and prioritize according to most important. These include your mortgage or monthly rent, car and insurance payments, utilities, food, and recurring medical expenses. Eliminate all but essential expenses – at least until you’re back on solid financial ground. When you get back to work, set up an automatic deduction for the high-priority obligations (mortgage payment, car payment, etc.) from your checking account. This will ensure that there are no late payments and you won’t be tempted to spend the money instead of taking care of those bills. Just be sure that you deduct that amount from your check register so that you don’t overdraw your account – and incur overdraft fees.

Loss of a Loved One

Your biggest support will come from your loved ones – your spouse or partner, your immediate family. When you lose a loved one, however, your entire world is thrown into turmoil. You are at great jeopardy of relapse, as the loss of a loved one is one of life’s traumatic stressors that do the most damage. This is true of nearly every human being, but even more so in the case of those in recovery whose emotional state and ability to overcome cravings and urges is so fragile.

Where you once had the constant presence, love, encouragement and support of your loved one is now a gaping hole. You feel the pain as if it were a physical wound. Nothing cuts the pain – except going back to your addictive ways. This is a common trap that recovering addicts often fall into. They feel that there is no way out except to go back to a coping mechanism they’re familiar with – their addiction.

How do you survive the loss of a loved one without having it trigger relapse? This is a tough situation. There’s no getting around that fact. Platitudes about time healing all wounds will bounce right off you – as they do to most persons in the first stages of bereavement. People utter those words because they don’t know what else to say, and it is also true that time will help ease the pain. But, right now, that probably won’t do you any good.

What you can do to keep yourself on the straight and narrow road to recovery is to surround yourself with others who understand your situation, your addiction, the tremendous desire to escape your pain by succumbing to your addiction. Step up your participation in 12-step meetings. Go every day or several times a day if that will help. Ask for a referral to a grief counselor or participate in online grief counseling meetings, blogs or chat rooms. Ask your doctor for assistance in finding some help for you to cope with your grief.

Other tips to help you in your time of bereavement include:

• Spend time with friends. – Don’t sit at home alone and allow yourself to wallow in self-pity or remorse.

• Stay active. – Get involved in physical activity, exercise, sports, recreational activity, intellectual pursuits, going out to entertainment venues.

• Find solace in spiritual comfort. – Whatever your religious background or spiritual inclination, many persons in recovery find comfort in seeking the assistance of a higher power to help them weather this very emotionally-draining time. Prayer may work for you, or meditation, or going to church or contemplating the power of the universe. Listening to motivational and inspirational tapes may be helpful, or reading books on overcoming grief, especially those that are available through addiction recovery websites.

• Take it one day at a time. – This often-repeated mantra really does work. You can’t expect that you’ll have all the answers for all the days ahead, but you can do everything you can to engage in positive behaviors today. Be sure that you take care of yourself, including eating properly, getting enough sleep, and tending to your physical and emotional needs. Cut yourself some slack as well. You don’t have to be perfect, and there’s no timetable that you need to adhere to in terms of when you’ll start to heal from the loss of your loved one.

Source: Drug Addiction Treatment

If you have severe alcohol and other drug problems, you should know that successful recovery from these problems involves significant changes over time in:

• personal identity and beliefs
• family and social relationships
• daily lifestyle

It is about where you live, how you work and play, who is included and excluded from your life, and how you cope with the stresses of daily life. Recovery is more than just not drinking or using drugs; it is about putting together a new and meaningful life in which alcohol and drugs no longer have a place. Recovery from addiction is not like getting over an infection for which we can rest and take medication for a week or two and then get back to our otherwise unchanged lives. Those who view treatment for addiction in this way make up the group for whom treatment does not work. Recovery from addiction is closer to how someone successfully manages diabetes or heart disease – conditions that require sustained decisions and actions for life.

The Good News

• The positive effects of addiction treatment are substantial, as measured by sustained sobriety (about one-third of those treated) and decreases in substance use and substance-related problems.
• Active participation in treatment aftercare meetings and recovery support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous can significantly improve your chance of permanent recovery, improve your quality of life and prolong your life expectancy.
• Combining professional treatment and attending recovery support meetings improve your chances of recovery better than either activity alone.
• Lifetime recovery rates of people with a substance use disorder approach or exceed 50%. There are millions of individuals and their families in long-term recovery from the effects of severe substance use problems.
• There are multiple pathways and styles (secular, spiritual, religious) of long-term addiction recovery
• Recovering people can go on to lead lives of significant achievement and community service

How Does the Brain Become Addicted?

Typically it happens like this:

• A person takes a drug of abuse, be it marijuana or cocaine or even alcohol, activating the same brain circuits as do behaviors linked to survival, such as eating, bonding and sex. The drug causes a surge in levels of a brain chemical called dopamine, which results in feelings of pleasure. The brain remembers this pleasure and wants it repeated.
• Just as food is linked to survival in day-to-day living, drugs begin to take on the same significance for the addict. The need to obtain and take drugs becomes more important than any other need, including truly vital behaviors like eating. The addict no longer seeks the drug for pleasure, but for relieving distress.
• Eventually, the drive to seek and use the drug is all that matters, despite devastating consequences.
• Finally, control and choice and everything that once held value in a person’s life, such as family, job and community, are lost to the disease of addiction.

What brain changes are responsible for such a dramatic shift?

Research on addiction is helping us find out just how drugs change the way the brain works. These changes include the following:

• Reduced dopamine activity. We depend on our brain’s ability to release dopamine in order to experience pleasure and to motivate our responses to the natural rewards of everyday life, such as the sight or smell of food. Drugs produce very large and rapid dopamine surges and the brain responds by reducing normal dopamine activity. Eventually, the disrupted dopamine system renders the addict incapable of feeling any pleasure even from the drugs they seek to feed their addiction.
• Altered brain regions that control decisionmaking and judgment. Drugs of abuse affect the regions of the brain that help us control our desires and emotions. The resulting lack of control leads addicted people to compulsively pursue drugs, even when the drugs have lost their power to reward.

The disease of addiction can develop in people despite their best intentions or strength of character. Drug addiction is insidious because it affects the very brain areas that people need to “think straight,” apply good judgment and make good decisions for their lives. No one wants to grow up to be a drug addict, after all.

Co-occurring Addictions: Compounding Complexities

It is not unusual for an addicted person to be addicted to alcohol, nicotine and illicit drugs at the same time. Addiction to multiple substances raises the level of individual suffering and magnifies the associated costs to society. No matter what the addictive substance, they all have at least one thing in common – they disrupt the brain’s reward pathway, the route to pleasure.

What is the best way to treat people who are addicted to more than one drug?

• Medications. In some cases, medications developed for one addiction have proven useful for another. For example, naltrexone, which can help former heroin users remain abstinent by blocking the “high” associated with heroin, has been found to be effective in treating alcoholism.
• Behavioral therapy or other psychotherapy. Behavioral therapies do not need to be specific to one drug and can be adapted to address use of multiple or different drugs. It is the disease of addiction that the therapy addresses.
• Combined medications and behavioral therapy. Research shows that this combination, when available, works best.
• Multipronged approach. Treatment for multiple addictions should be delivered at the same time. This is especially true because there are always triggers, such as trauma, depression, or exposure to one drug or another, that can put the recovering addict at risk for relapse. In addition, treatment must consider all aspects of a person – their age, gender, life experiences – in order to best treat their drug addiction. Although the type of treatment may differ, it should always strive to address the entire person through a multipronged approach that tackles all co-occurring conditions at once.

Relapse: Part of Addiction as a Chronic Disease

Despite the availability of many forms of effective treatment for addiction, the problem of relapse remains the major challenge to achieving sustained recovery. People trying to recover from drug abuse and addiction are often doing so with altered brains, strong drug-related memories and diminished impulse control. Accompanied by intense drug cravings, these brain changes can leave people vulnerable to relapse even after years of being abstinent. Relapse happens at rates similar to the relapse rates for other well-known chronic medical illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and asthma.

How is relapse to drug abuse similar to what happens with other chronic diseases?

• Just as an asthma attack can be triggered by smoke, or a person with diabetes can have a reaction if they eat too much sugar, a drug addict can be triggered to return to drug abuse.
• With other chronic diseases, relapse serves as a signal for returning to treatment. The same response is just as necessary with drug addiction.
• As a chronic, recurring illness, addiction may require repeated treatments until abstinence is achieved. Like other diseases, drug addiction can be effectively treated and managed, leading to a healthy and productive life.

To achieve long-term recovery, treatment must address specific, individual patient needs and must take the whole person into account. For it is not enough simply to get a person off drugs; rather, the many changes that have occurred – physical, social, psychological – must also be addressed to help people stay off drugs, for good.

Repeated drug exposure changes brain function. Positron emission tomography (PET) images are illustrated showing similar brain changes in dopamine receptors resulting from addiction to different substances – cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol, or heroin. The striatum (which contains the reward and motor circuitry) shows up as bright red and yellow in the controls (in the left column), indicating numerous dopamine D2 receptors. Conversely, the brains of addicted individuals (in the right column) show a less intense signal, indicating lower levels of dopamine D2 receptors.

by Nora D. Volkow MD from HBO.com

There is help to deal with cravings. It all begins with you. Here are some tips that may prove useful – as they have for countless others.

• Recognize the feeling – It’s important that you recognize the craving for what it is. Some addicts in recovery refer to the craving as a kind of freebie, something that you get without having to pay for it – in the sense of consequences. That’s not to say that many treatment professionals would refer to it this way, but the fact of the matter is you know what that pleasure feels like, so acknowledge it, recognize it – and then you can deal with it.

• Don’t be afraid of cravings – When cravings occur, don’t allow yourself to feel fear – or guilt or shame or regret. You don’t have any say over when cravings hit, and it certainly isn’t anything that you consciously do that prompts them. Don’t give the craving power by giving into it. By not fearing it, you are less likely to act out and use.

• Understand control – The fact that you recognize the craving for what it doesn’t mean that you can control it. You can’t. Cravings will occur regardless of how you feel about them. Everyone has cravings of one sort or another. It isn’t the existence of the cravings, but what you do about it. So there are two issues of control here. You can’t control when cravings occur, but you can control what you do about them. Always remember that you are the one in control. You are the one who determines what you will do or not do.

• When you’re overwhelmed – Sometimes the cravings are just too much to bear. You feel as if you’re destined to fail, to relapse. It’s as if you’re falling into an abyss and you can see yourself slipping back into your habit. This is a particularly vulnerable time for you – and, don’t you know it – it probably occurs when you are least able to handle it. Now’s the time to activate your coping mechanisms. Get in touch with your 12-step sponsor immediately. Don’t worry that it’s the middle of the night or Easter Sunday or whenever. Your sponsor has pledged to help you through such difficult times – that’s what he’s there for. One day you may be able to help another recovering addict in the same situation, but for now, you need the help. Reach out and take it. If you don’t have a 12-step sponsor, make sure there’s someone else you can trust. This may be your therapist, counselor, parent, spouse, other loved one or trusted friend. It doesn’t matter who it is, just that you have complete trust in the person – and know that they will be there for you when you need them most.

• Learn about craving triggers – Do yourself a big favor and become educated about the triggers that produce cravings. Write down situations, circumstances, events, people, sounds, smells, even thoughts that occur just before you’re aware of the craving. These are your triggers. Rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest or most intense craving. Now, write down next to each type of craving the techniques or things that you have done that seem to minimize the cravings. Do you notice a pattern? Are the coping mechanisms you use for little cravings the same as for the more intense ones? Are there ways that you can modify the effective ones to work on all your cravings? You don’t have to be an expert at this for it to have some benefit. The point is that you are teaching yourself to see the relationship, the cause and effect, of triggers and cravings – and how what you do can help reduce, minimize or eliminate the craving. You will, in effect, be learning how to manage your cravings, and this is a big part of recovery.

• Utilize the 5-minute rule – While cravings are different for each individual, they do have one thing in common. They tend to last only for a short time. One of the most practical ways of dealing with cravings, then, is to get through this brief period. Addiction treatment professionals refer to this as the “5-minute rule” or “5-minute contract” or “anti-craving behavioral strategies.” Basically, you pledge to yourself that you will not act on the desire – the craving or urge – for 5 minutes. In the interim, distract yourself with some activity that requires your complete concentration, or do mind exercises, crossword puzzles, counting, or physical exercise – whatever works to pass the time. Keeping your brain and your body occupied will help you get through this period of craving – without acting on it.

• Get professional help – You may benefit from professional counseling to help you better manage your cravings. If you have aftercare as part of your treatment program, you have access to a counselor or therapist who can help you with behavioral techniques to manage cravings. If aftercare is not part of your treatment program or if you haven’t been through treatment, look for counselors and therapists that may be available through federal, state or community addiction treatment resources. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one technique that has proven very effective in helping addicts to manage cravings – but this is something that you need professional help to learn. There are other behavioral techniques that may also be employed, in conjunction with CBT or separately.

• Anti-craving medication – If your cravings persist, your therapist or physician may recommend anti-craving medication. Some cravings, particularly for certain types of addictions, can occur so rapidly and feel so overwhelming that, without medication, you may not be able to get through them – even with your arsenal of coping strategies and techniques. The point of anti-craving medication is only to get you to the point where you are better able to work through the craving without acting on it. It is not to get you dependent on medication. In fact, anti-craving medication has been the subject of a great deal of recent research. Medications to combat nicotine cravings and those to counter cocaine and methamphetamine cravings are currently in development and show great promise. If your therapist or physician does prescribe anti-craving medication for you, be sure to take it exactly as prescribed. Note any disturbing side-effects and alert your doctor immediately. Your dosing may need to be reduced or another medication substituted. Use medication only as part of multi-faceted therapy, including counseling, and when appropriate, your doctor will gradually wean you off the medication.

• Alternative treatments – You may also wish to consider alternative treatments to help put you in a better mindset to deal with cravings. Some addicts in recovery have found acupuncture or acupressure to help, while others report success with therapeutic massage, hypnotherapy, meditation, or other approaches. Look at it this way: If it makes you feel better, restores your strength, peace of mind, and gets you through the craving, why not make this part of your coping mechanism toolkit?

• Get out and get physical – Many experts in the field of addiction recovery recommend physical exercise to their clients. Why? The reason is simple: When you exercise vigorously, your body produces the natural feel-good chemical that helps elevate mood, reduces anxiety, stress and depression. It’s also great for your physical well-being in that it helps improve cardiovascular systems, tones muscles, helps you sleep better, aids in digestion, even cognitive abilities. In fact, rigorous physical exercise is like a highly-competent utility player – good at any position. Besides, when you’ve engaged in a vigorous bout of physical exercise, you feel a good kind of fatigue – the kind that makes you feel good about yourself. When you feel good about yourself, you’re better able to tackle everyday issues and challenges, including cravings that may pop up uninvited.

• Remember nutrition – In line with taking good care of your body with adequate physical exercise, remember your nutritional needs as well. Eat a well-balanced diet that consists of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat, good oils such as olive, fatty fish (salmon, mackerel), and reduce your intake of sugar and empty calories. Keep to a regular mealtime schedule. This is important because cravings can occur if you are hungry (or when you are sleep-deprived or stressed out). It’s also important to keep your body fueled with the nutrients it needs in order to ward off illness, maintain strength and vitality.

• Celebrate victories – As you grow more confident in your ability to fight off the urge to use, give yourself the credit you deserve. It’s not easy overcoming cravings, as you well know. Give yourself a reward for your victories. When you have reached milestones (weeks, months, years, etc.) of sobriety, have a little celebration – minus alcohol or drugs, of course. By celebrating your sobriety you are reinforcing your mastery of successful coping techniques – and the fact that you’re getting stronger in recovery.

• About relapse – What happens if you relapse? Well, it happens, and to some in recovery, it happens several times before they develop sufficient coping skills. But it isn’t the end of the world. You just pick yourself up and move on. Don’t beat yourself up over it. That won’t do any good. There’s no shame in relapse – so don’t even let that thought come into your head. Recovery is not a straight-line process for everyone. There are victories and set-backs, some major, some minor. Remember that it isn’t what happens that counts, but what you do about it. Re-double your efforts. Re-examine your strategies. Get help to deal with the problems. And keep moving forward in your recovery. You will have learned from your relapse and will be stronger as a result of the knowledge. Think of it this way: You have accumulated even more wisdom about what triggers affect you the most – and what to do to counter them.

Will Cravings Ever Go Away?

Chances are, no, but they will diminish over time. The key point to keep in mind is that the more knowledge you amass about cravings, what triggers them, what works best to eliminate them or get through them without acting upon the craving, the less they will trouble you when they do occur. Over time, you will find that cues or triggers that used to cause you great distress either no longer bother you with the same intensity, or they don’t bother you at all. You are able to recognize them, distract yourself while they pass, and get on with your life.

Source: Drug Addiction Treatment

Addiction Alchemy

The power of the Medicine Wheel is in its shape; It is a circle. Life is cyclical, it is not a linear process. Consequently complete recovery isn’t about just getting from point a to point b. The wheel makes recovery an organic process, helping you to master your life by giving you the keys to bring into awareness the interconnectedness of all things through the very process of life itself. Addiction Alchemy and the Medicine Wheel is a portal to the place beyond sobriety.

The strength of the Medicine Wheel lies in its ability to provide immoveable context to help you “track” your life experience. North, South, East, West, Up, Down and Center are inarguable guide markers and yet remain relative to YOU! You are the center of your universe and you are the one making this trip. Addiction Alchemy allows you to meet yourself where you are at on the map of your own consciousness, and as such can help you navigate your life with a better sense of direction and momentum in time and space.

Each new direction on the wheel will fine tune your awareness, alerting you to signs along the way to help keep you on path, giving you often hidden information about yourself and your world, validating that you are exactly where you should be in your process and most of all that you are making progress! As you work with your own energies, environmental energies, unseen forces and most importantly other people the wheel helps you to remove negative influences and increase the flow of positive energy into your life. Through your power of choice as you make better decisions you develop greater peace, clarity, focus, courage, wisdom and understanding.

As we travel the wheel we become ever increasingly aware of how to get present to our life, transmute our past, re-script our future, by living in the now, we transform our life by becoming centered within our Self. We heal our lives on every level as we heal our relationship to our self, to others and to the world. Addiction Alchemy helps us to reconnect to our center and integrate all that we are, not in spite of our addiction(s), but because of them. Exploring our addictions can bring us into contact with parts of our psyche and our potential that we would otherwise have never known existed.

We ultimately come to understand as we come full circle that as bad as it might have been, the seeds of our own greatness have lain dormant within our darkness and those things we could not face. We see the whole truth about ourselves and that we do have the courage to face the truth, integrate it into the light and own our legacy because that is where our true fulfillment lies. Every human being that heals the process of addiction within themselves heals the world. This, in fact, is one of the key messages of addiction: Physician Heal Thyself.

Addiction Alchemy helps us work through addictions, not around them. Paradoxically, as we travel the wheel we find that our addiction and the pain it has wrought in our life has actually served us. It opens inner doorways to places within ourselves that have been hidden from view. The good news is that through this time of restriction as we work in our process, the true power of our ability to create our life may come into sharper focus than ever before and as we own our choices we begin to understand the depth and breadth of our creator skills.

As we begin to take more and more responsibility for ourselves, we start to get a glimpse of the possibilities and the magnitude of who and what we truly are. We may come to know that our ability to create through the power of love is even more potent than our ability to create out of suffering. For many of us this realization is the beginning of a new level of consciousness, a new way of being, and a whole new way of life, nourished and nurtured from within and not helplessly bound to something outside of our highest desires for ourselves.

Addiction is our bodies way of letting us know that something is amiss and out of order. If we suffer from addiction our body and mind is making a cry for help and a call to be heard. Humans are incredibly self-healing beings. Our bodies are designed to be self-healing. Many people who suffer from addiction think that they are weak willed. In reality, it is that personal boundaries have been drawn around a set of mistaken or distorted beliefs that may be fostering the need for the addiction. In other words, the will is very strong, just misdirected and protecting an illusion. I believe it is a case of mistaken identity and we often become trapped because of this mistake.

In a sense, it is like we have ventured into quicksand. In fact, it is my personal theory that addiction comes from a misguided attempt to create balance and to raise our vibration and energy levels, much like a moth mistakes the light source of the flame for it’s true geomagnetic guide, the moon; or the whale is lured to the beach by underground sonic disruptions.

It doesn’t matter if it’s shifting tectonic plates or Naval sonar that causes the disturbance, we need to find out what is rocking our world. For it is through the discovery process of our unsolved personal mysteries that we are able to re-establish the flow of the blocked energy and create a life that naturally sustains and maintains the higher energy and the healing that we have been seeking, in a way that supports and enriches our life. And there is only one way to accomplish this and that is with some help. It is absolutely vital that we exercise our power of choice and seek and ask for help. There is no way out of quicksand without assistance. That’s just the way it is.

Addiction Alchemy is not just about the healing of your addiction to ‘some thing or some one’, it is about the healing of YOU and the recovery of your hi-jacked personal power! Not only can Addiction Alchemy and the medicine wheel help facilitate the healing of addictions, it can actually help you go beyond healing and into a true fullness of life, acting as a gateway to the fulfillment of your highest and finest good and laying the groundwork for the realization of your deepest callings and desires in life.

Many people maintain sobriety at great cost: their ability to have a full experience of life. They still are not truly free, because now their addiction is fear. Haunted by a pervasive fear of the addiction recurring, they tip-toe through life. Although it is crucial to recovery, the prize is not sobriety. The ultimate prize is life and the ability to experience it in true freedom. If you have been sober for a significant amount of time, yet still struggle with fear and anxiety, the Medicine Wheel can help you work through and release your fear by actually treating it as an addiction. The wheel can help you go deeper in your process and become aware that there is more, much more to discover and explore.

Addiction Alchemy will help you explore the shadow and light of addiction. We all know about the dark side of addiction all too well, the shadow and specter of pain and suffering that looms over every addicts head, but have you ever thought about what separates addiction from passion?

If we take the personal energy out of the process of addiction and look at it’s archetypal energy (an organized pattern of behavior), the Addict (which resides in us all) has much to teach us. For at the opposite spectrum of the path of pain, suffering, destruction and the imprisonment of our Free Will, lies the absolute freedom and peace to create an amazing life through the positive forces of love, passion, devotion and choice. Energetically speaking, the slave can become the master.

Depending on where you are now, it may be difficult to believe that a habit that is destroying your life can be shifted into a miraculous, healing, renewal of the spirit that creates magical transformation in your life. I can tell you that it is possible. That’s where the alchemy comes in: You will learn, see, smell, taste, hear, feel and experience the answers to your questions and the darkness will be revealed by the light. You will become a light worker, shaman and an alchemist in your own life and you will come to understand that the power of the light is carried forth through the medium of truth. The alchemists most powerful tool is the truth.

Addiction wreaks havoc not only on our bodies and minds, but attacks and cripples our Will – bringing darkness to the part of us that drives our ability to create a beautiful life, filled with peace, joy, love and light. Addiction Alchemy can help you to restore the function of your Will Center to it’s rightful owner: YOU. In order to do this it is important to understand that your center, your inner flame, which is at your core and encompasses ALL of you is already complete. You are not flawed. That’s why it’s called addiction recovery. You can’t recover something you don’t already possess. Your connection to your core has simply been cut off or suppressed for one or more of all the various reasons that thoughts, feelings and beliefs can distort our ability to connect with our power center and consequently robbing us of our ability to be truly free to stand in our own power. Re-establishing that connection and that flow of information is our main goal.

Once that connection is restored your Will Center can be clean and clear to inform your life so that you can create a new reality or you will see your existing reality in a new light and you will regain your freedom. Some people report a feeling of the addiction being “taken from them” as the Will Center is re-integrated. If there is no void, there is nothing to fill. When you are operating from your core you are connected to all that is and your highest and finest good will take you out of sorrow and suffering and into grace and gratitude, wellness and wholeness. As your cup begins to overflow, your healing and empowerment will naturally serve all those around you. As you heal, you will notice those around you begin to heal, as well.

The best way to experience the power of the Medicine Wheel is to take a journey on the wheel. After all, no two people have the same experience of life and no two journey’s are the same. Yet, this is precisely what empowers the Medicine Wheel journey. When the diverse energies that are brought forth by a group of people who are journeying together is co-mingled, powerful healing, enlightenment, consciousness, transformation and massive openings of creativity ensues. The wheel is the mechanism that releases these energies and allows the members of a group to heal each other by healing their own self.

Addiction Alchemy supports integrative medicine and holistic recovery. Not only is it a complimentary modality in and of itself, it can play an important role in the world of self help in treating addiction by guiding us into accurately reading and charting a course for our own deeply personal and profound menu of care, assisting us in forming a complete integrative medicine plan for our own recovery and empowerment. It takes an army to move through our own personal Armegeddon and integrative medicine can help us draft that army into service! Integrative Medicine is the marriage of mainstream medicine with energy medicine and alternative practices. Integrative medicine is slowly becoming recognized and introduced into mainstream healthcare. Why? Because it works.

Consider adding Addiction Alchemy to your Addiction Treatment and Recovery Plan now. If this is your first time delving into your addictions or if you are not even sure you have an addiction, Addiction Alchemy is a great way to explore all your options. Beyond healing there is peace, purpose and passion. Get on the Recovery Medicine Wheel: Let your life speak!

Source: Addiction Alchemy

Sometimes to stay becomes too painful for the partner of the recovering addict. This goes beyond the issue of a broken heart, lack of trust, even loss of love. When the debris of the past has intruded into the present, no amount of wishing can make it go away. Perhaps walking away is the best choice in the situation. It may be only temporary, while the recovering addict and the spouse or partner continues counseling, 12-step group attendance or other therapy. It may also turn out to be a permanent solution. There is no one right answer, no single way to walk away that works for everyone.

How to Leave the Recovering Addict

For many women stuck in a relationship with a domineering alcoholic or drug addict, whether or not the individual has completed treatment for their addiction, it’s not a question of wanting to leave, but how to leave. These women face difficult choices, since many times they are completely dependent on their husbands. They have limited options, but that doesn’t mean they have no options.

If you are one of these women who wants to leave, but fears you can’t, don’t just suffer in silence. You need to set healthy boundaries with your husband. This will allow you time to get your plan together so that you can safely leave. Healthy boundaries are those that any reasonable person would agree with. You need to set these boundaries during a time when your husband is not drunk or high. Do not threaten him. That will backfire and may lead to arguments or worse. For example, you could tell your husband that you will go to your mother’s house if he comes home in a drunken stupor again – and stay there until he has sobered up. You need to mean what you say and be ready to follow through on it. If you set a boundary and don’t follow through on it, you have just created other problems for yourself.

Next, you need to take small steps to work toward your own independence. If you don’t have a job, you should try to get one, even if it’s part-time employment. This will get you out of the house and allow you to earn some money. To leave, you will need money and resources. Talk with your relatives, friends or a counselor about being able to make a life for yourself.
You may also wish to consider joining Al-Anon. This 12-step organization for those whose lives have been affected by another’s alcoholism is a fellowship whose members are dedicated to helping others in similar situations. You may be able to find help there in obtaining employment as well.

Source: Drug Addiction Treatment

One of our biggest stumbling blocks is that we try to manage our pain and addiction by ourselves. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous states, “Without help it is too much for us.” In moving toward a solution, the book also states, “Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.” There are many people who have suffered as you are suffering, and whose very lives depend on helping people who are where they used to be, such as you. There are thousands of Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous meetings scattered throughout the United States. There are also Chronic Pain Anonymous groups, although they are usually found in larger cities, being that they are fairly new.

There are many pain support groups that are not twelve-step in nature, but they offer the support we need from other people who also suffer from chronic pain. Treatment centers will usually help you locate these meetings, and can sometimes provide you with the name of a person who can help you get started.

The dawn of a new day

 Reading this  may have made you angry or sad. Many of us who are taught the tools of recovery initially think that we will be enslaved by it, that recovery is a prison sentence where we have to carry a ball and chain the rest of our lives. We do not realize that recovery is a quality way of life that can provide us with many rewards that most people do not receive. The Big Book states, “We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will know how to handle situations, which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”

These are known as the Promises. They are not called “maybes” for a reason. These are not things that might happen to you if you enter recovery, they are things that have to happen to you… I promise!

Ultimately, you want your loved one back. You want that person you love free from drugs. You want that person to live a healthy and productive life. By asking the right question on each of the following areas when choosing a residential drug treatment center, your chances of making this happen for your loved one will increase.

1.Success Rate –
What is the success rate of the residential drug treatment center? Obviously, the higher the success rate, the more likely your loved one will succeed. Ask to speak with graduates of the drug rehab facility or their families. Get real opinions from real people.

2.Methods –
What method does the drug treatment center use? Ask yourself if they are addressing all aspects of your loved one’s addiction, including what led them to drugs in the first place. Methods that only deal with one aspect of addiction are more likely to fail. Remember addiction results from a combination of many factors, including a lessening of morality and integrity and an increasing burden of guilt and shame. The life of an addict includes bad habits, poor health and difficulty facing problems. After speaking with the facility, ask yourself if they are handling not just the psychological aspects, but also the physical and mental aspects of addiction as well. Are they providing practical skills that will help your loved one succeed once the drug rehabilitation program is completed?

3.Services –
What services does the residential drug treatment center offer? This is not only for your loved one, but for you as well. Will they help with legal issues? Will they assist in an intervention? In other words, to what length will they go to make certain your loved one gets the drug treatment they need?

4.Staff –
Who are the staff members at the residential drug treatment center? The best trained staff will have had experience with drug addiction. They will not have learned about it in a book. Are they qualified for their positions? What real-life knowledge do they have with drug addiction? What is their reason for working in this field?

5.Follow-up Program –
What type of follow-up program does the residential drug treatment center offer? This is important. Sending a newly rehabilitated drug addict back into the world without any follow-up can be disastrous. Make sure that there is a program of this type in place. Good programs keep in touch over the phone regularly after one leaves the program.

6.Location –
Where is the residential drug treatment center located? A residential drug treatment center should be protected. Ask how easy it would be for your loved one to leave. Many addicts when first coming off drugs want to leave. Ensuring that this is difficult, while not seeming like a prison, increases the chances that the person will stay to finish.

7.Length –
How long does the residential drug treatment center take? Although the standard program is 28 days, if the residential drug treatment center offers a longer program, it is more likely your loved one will succeed. However, if the residential drug treatment center allows your loved one to work at his or her own pace, without imposing time constraints, your loved one has an even greater chance of overcoming drug addiction.

8.Price –
How much does the residential drug treatment center cost? Before eliminating any program because of its price, ask yourself this: What are they offering? Look back at the points above and determine what the drug rehab is truly giving to the one you love. Yes, the more it offers, the more likely the price will be higher. However, your loved one will have a greater chance at becoming a healthy productive member of society. How much is that person worth to you?
Choosing a residential drug treatment center can be difficult. Dealing with a loved one suffering from drug addiction is devastating. By breaking the process down into what is important and finding out the answers to the questions above, you will be able to make an informed choice as to which residential drug treatment program can best help you and your loved one. Drug addiction can be dealt with and overcome.
By John Frank