I had a chance yesterday to tour the new Sunrise Detox facility in Ft. Lauderdale. You can see some more photos here at the blog. If you’re interested in more details, leave a comment or use the contact link.
Where the chefs work their magic
In the 12-Step programs we’re encouraged to develop a routine of little rituals that begin our day in a recovery-oriented way and set the tone for the hours to follow. Many people meditate, perhaps after reading a bit of program literature. Some of us have an exercise routine that goes along with it. Others sit and think about their plans for the day, make notes in a journal, and then consider the best way to apply their program to the day’s progress.
There is no best way to do these things, but it is vitally important that we do something of the sort. Getting up and immediately plunging into the chaos of daily life can be daunting. A period of calm and consideration beforehand can make the difference between a serene approach and the hit-or-miss fumbling that is characteristic of the “old me.”
For the past few days I’ve been checking out a recovery app called “Today’s Step.” It’s available for both iPhone and Android, and is an interesting approach to say the least.
I like that they refer to the suggested activities as “practice,” rather than “working the program.” I have always thought that recovery is just that: practice in the sense of “The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method as opposed to theories….” We can sit around talking about our program for a long time, but if we don’t do anything about it we’re like the guy leaning on his shovel in the shade, telling everyone about how someday he’ll own the company.
The practice laid out in Today’s Step is easy to accomplish and deceptively simple. There is a theme for each day — “persistence,” for example — along with suggested ways to put it into practice. A daily video guides simple exercises based on Qigong, a gentle Chinese system of moving meditation, to stretch muscles and get the blood flowing. There are stories of people in recovery, and users are encouraged to submit their own. I read a couple. They’re pretty good. Just about any addict could relate. Keep an eye out for mine.
You can skip around in the app and check out past quotes, etc. There is even a system of rewards for completing various numbers of days practice, similar to the chips and key tags familiar to us all. The free demo has limited material, but is enough to get a feeling for the practice. The paid version (a great big four bucks!) has additional features. I plan to purchase it for my Droid as soon as I get finished writing this.
Here’s the developer’s list of features (paid version):
• Daily motivational quotations
• Weekly themes and actions
• Easy-to-follow exercise videos to promote health
• Audio guided meditations
• Share with a friend
• Favorites and previous history
• See additional quotations with “Skip Around”
• Inspirational success stories from the recovery community
• Virtual rewards for progress milestones
Verdict: Five stars from the old timer.
A recent study has indicated that teen drinking is strongly related to problems in the neural network that controls impulsive behavior. Professionals have long known that the two go together, but had no indication of which came first.
This study settles that, and other questions regarding ADD and drinking.
Faced with a choice about smoking or drinking, the 14-year-old with a less functional impulse-regulating network will be more likely to say, “yeah, gimme, gimme, gimme!” says Garavan, “and this other kid is saying, ‘no, I’m not going to do that.’”
More from the Sunrise Detox Blog:
We all know that most relapses occur in the first few months after we get clean and sober. Many of them are related to Post-acute Withdrawal Syndrome. We talked about PAWS in a previous post, but I wanted to go into it more specifically here….
http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2012/05/04/paws-post-acute-withdrawal-syndrome/
More details here: PAWS: Why We Don’t Get Better Overnight
This just went live over at the Sunrise Detox Blog, if anyone’s interested.
The comedian Dave Gardner used to remark, “Folks are always saying, ‘Let’s do this again!’ But friends, you can’t do anything again! You can do something similar!”
I think about Gardner’s bit of wisdom when I hear people in early recovery talking about returning to their families and friends and “making it up to them.” (This also brings to mind the idea of pushing toothpaste back into the tube.) We say these things with the idea that we will be able to return things to the way they were “before” — if there ever really was a before.
That’s a lovely idea, but it’s not the way reality works. Read More…
Bain Capital is trying to consolidate an unlikely industry: addiction treatment centers.
Ignore the political references. I didn’t think they were appropriate either. They polarize, to a degree, what should be an objective article.
After you read the article, why not come back and tell us what you think. If you’ve been in treatment, tell us about your experience, and how you think something like this might have impacted it. Of course you have an opinion. All addicts do; we’re overloaded with them!
Without the binge drinking—and possibly drugging—there would have been no prostitutes and no scandal. But risky boozing has a dark history in the service’s old boy’s club dating back at least to the Kennedy assassination.
In my own case, I knew it some time before I got clean and sober, but I just didn’t think it was possible. I knew what happened if I went even for short periods without alcohol or a substitute, and there was no way (that I could see) to quit. But did I want to be free? Oh yes, desperately!
Read more… Sunrise Detox Blog
I just heard a discussion of the film “Bullying” on NPR, and the asshole who opined that we “need” bullying because it teaches us to “stand up for ourselves” so enraged me that I had to turn it off.
I haven’t seen the film, and I don’t intend to. I know all too well what it’s about. I lived it, and that I survived had more to do with my ability to withdraw into books and similar pursuits, shutting out that part of my world, than it did with the quality of my character. I completely understand the kids who chose to leave theirs.
There’s no point in going into details, because I’m not looking for sympathy here. What is important in this is that I was bullied continuously from first grade through what they now call Middle School, and that it shaped my life. Rather than going through whatever normal evolution I would have, and becoming whatever I might have, I ended up with a fixation on martial arts, a fascination with firearms and other means of committing mayhem, and in a profession (police officer) for which I was spectacularly unsuited.
Until my alcoholism and other addictions made it clear to me that I didn’t belong in that line of work, and until my recovery forced me to look at my real interests and calling, I spent nearly forty (that’s 40) years fumbling around trying to find out who I really was. That’s what bullying accomplished for me. It taught me to stand up for a self that I wasn’t, and kept me from becoming whoever it was I would have been.
I’m pretty much OK now. I didn’t die, and I’m comfortable in my own skin. But it could have gone a different way. I wish the sphincter on NPR could have experienced one week of what it was like from the other side of the fence. Maybe he’d keep his mouth the fuck shut about things he has no chance of understanding.
On the other hand, maybe he did. The bullied sometimes make the best bullies. On the job training, sort of.
Not all of the terrorists are “out there.”
As wired as I am, spending hours a day online, working on a computer, a smartphone with me 24/7, I still find myself oddly resistant to some of the cutting edge aids to recovery. I understand how the old-timers feel when they say “all I needed was the (whatever), and that’s all anyone needs now,” and speeches to that effect.
And yet, I’m committed in my own way to “cyber-recovery,” as is apparent from what I do. I have to remind myself that the digital natives look at the world differently than us digital immigrants who learned to type on typewriters — and, in my case, not even an electric. They communicate differently, relate to the outside world differently, have different kinds of relationships, and are in touch with each other and the rest of the world with a scope that was unimaginable when I was their age back in the 1950′s and ’60′s.
Researchers now tell us that our grandchildren have begun to think differently than any other humans in history. They are restructuring our language, our ideas of community, and doubtless their own concepts of self. It is totally unreasonable to think that they won’t recover differently, using different resources, or to assume that they will not do so as successfully as my generation or that of their parents.
So us old-timers need to understand that we are dealing with an evolving species. If we’re not to be left in the dust of their changing worldview and thought processes, we need to force ourselves to understand and admit that we don’t have all the answers. In fact, when it comes to these newcomers, if we don’t keep up we are likely to be left behind entirely.
There is absolutely no reason why addicts shouldn’t attend AA meetings. However, AA has traditions that are important to the fellowship and to many of the members. One of those is that they generally confine their discussions to alcoholism and recovery from alcoholism….
http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2012/03/29/addict-aa-recovery-addiction-alcoholism/
If you hang around treatment centers for any length of time, you will eventually hear someone say (or say yourself) something on the order of “I already know this stuff. Why should I stay here?”
This makes perfect sense, from the standpoint of someone in very early recovery. In treatment, there are things that get repeated over and over. That’s because we learn by repetition. If we were studying for a part in a play, we would think nothing of going over our lines and actions repeatedly. In recovery, we’re trying to replace old ways of instinctive thinking with new ones. Repetition helps, but it can be the “same ol’ same ol’” after a while.
We know, however, that addicts often need a second or third trip through treatment before they actually learn what they need to know to change old behavior and stay clean and sober. More…
(From the Sunrise Detox Blog, which I write.)
Addiction Recovery: 1 In 10 U.S. Adults Has Recovered From Drug Or Alcohol Problems, Report Finds – The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/03/07/addiction-recovery-america-drugs-alcohol_n_1327344.html
One of the first things we hear in recovery, both in treatment and around the rooms of the support groups, is “No new relationships in the first year.” If it’s not one of the first things we hear, it’s certainly one of the first things that get our attention.
That’s hardly surprising. Emotions that have been suppressed by alcohol and other drugs are suddenly bubbling to the surface with none of the edges knocked off. Add to that the fact that we’re feeling at loose ends, with all that time on our hands that we formerly spent using, and the fact that we really don’t want to face life directly yet, and we’re ripe for distraction. Since rehab romances are one of the most common issues in early recovery, it crosses our minds, “Why not, as long as the other person is in recovery too? We’ll have so much in common!” Read more..
Copy could use some editing, and the site is search engine optimized to the point of almost sounding silly at times. Nonetheless, there’s some useful, if superficial, information.
Rehab Alert: Finding the Best Drug Rehab Centers in the US http://goo.gl/mag/ovq3D
