Waismann Method® #health #holistic

Waismann Method® specializes in the treatment of opioid dependence by using medically assisted detox. The majority of patients undergo anesthesia-assisted rapid detox in which they are placed under sedation, allowing them to sleep through the most painful period of withdrawal.Patients are admitted to a private room in an accredited hospital at least one day before their treatment begins. They undergo a comprehensive medical examination, which may include blood work, EKG, and any other tests recommended by the doctor. Patients also receive IV fluids, vitamins, and electrolytes to flush the system of impurities. They may also receive non-addictive medications to blunt the withdrawal response and relieve any discomfort. The following day, patients receive the rapid detox treatment which takes place in a private room in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Patients remain in the hospital overnight or until the doctor says they are ready to be discharged and transferred to Domus Retreat, a private recovery center where guests receive around-the-clock aftercare including medications like naltrexone or Vivitrol to help control cravings.Since Waismann Method® is primarily a medical procedure, it differs from the typical rehabs that are reviewed in this section of The Fix. Because of this, the following alumni-provided details mainly describe the aftercare component of treatment, which takes place at Domus Retreat. For more information about Waismann Method’s medically assisted detox, please see their website.Waismann Method® specifically treats patients who are dependent on opioids. The alumni who took our survey report a variety of opioid drugs of choice and patterns of abuse as well as variation in length of treatment. Some clients arrived dependent on heroin or methadone while others reported an addiction to Oxycontin, for example. One patient who was “addicted to prescription pills for 7 years,” stayed about two weeks in treatment, while another who had been addicted to methadone was home in less than a week. This is not a long-term facility.When asked why they chose Waismann Method®, the vast majority of respondents placed quality of treatment and privacy above all else. While undergoing the detox process in the hospital, patients do not interact with one another. Once they have completed detox and move on to the Domus Retreat, there is some interaction with other residents. For the most part, other patients were “respectful and helpful. There was a feeling we were all getting our lives back and so we could appreciate each other’s experience.”Accommodations at the retreat were very highly rated by former clients. Rooms were described as “big, private and clean,” all with televisions, internet access, and private bathrooms. There is a private chef and maid service. Clients do not do any chores.Treatment at the retreat is “centered around physical recovery along with emotional recovery.” To that end, clients avail themselves of any of a number of services including individualized psychotherapy, massage, acupuncture, and yoga. There are no group therapy sessions and no 12-step meetings. Those looking to stay fit can choose from an array of activities such as “basketball, swimming, Jacuzzi, exercise equipment...things to keep you occupied.” There is also art therapy and Tai Chi. Unlike typical treatment centers, there is not a lot of structure and scheduling. Clients are free to choose how they spend their days. There are no restrictions on phone, internet, or TV but “You are encouraged to not do too much work so this can be a respite.”All meals are prepared to order for each client by a private chef. The menu consists of “very healthy meals (fresh salads and smoothies, for example) along with immense flexibility in our choices.” If clients have any specific requests, dietary restrictions, or food allergies, accommodations are made. Clients described the food as “healthy,” “gourmet,” and “delicious.” Favorites were steak and vegetables for dinner as well as fish, chicken and pesto pasta. “It was like dining out all the time,” said one client who “Couldn’t have been happier.” When a client didn’t like a particular item, they would request something different for the following day.Patients spoke highly of the staff, describing them as “always friendly and respectful.” When asked how infractions are handled, one person described staff as “very accessible,” and that they “explain the rules in a way that helps you feel safe and helps with relaxation.” Additionally, “The staff was open to the patients’ input and they helped us understand the thinking behind each decision.” Most clients felt infractions were rare or non-existent. “Everybody seemed civil and well taken care of.” For example, one alum who was smoking near the house “was asked politely to move further away.”For the most part, clients gave high marks to medical personnel, both in hospital during the detox and at the retreat which has full-time nurses in residence as well as a visiting physician who is also on call. Doctors and nurses were described by one client as “compassionate, respectful, and humane.” While one alum felt the doctor should have been more attentive in the period post-detox, another described him as “extremely helpful and knowledgeable and he never treated me like an addict but instead like a patient with respect and kindness.” This sentiment was echoed by others who appreciated the medical approach to their addiction. One client described it as “different than a rehab. I was treated like a medical patient and received therapy.” When asked what was most memorable about treatment at Waismann Method®, there was a variety of responses. Many clients appreciated being in a place that offered an alternative to 12-step programs. Several people gained insight from the one-on-one psychotherapy, which was “Very helpful - I gained a real understanding of some of my concerns.“ Another alum recalled “Being treated with such respect and empathy while going through such a rough time in my life.” Another was grateful for the speed with which they were able to detox from opioids, appreciating “How good I felt, and how fast I recovered.” One person did not have a good experience and said that withdrawal symptoms remained after the procedure.The alumni who took our survey have been doing well since treatment, with some reporting multiple years clean. Their parting sentiments were overwhelmingly positive, with comments such as: “Very satisfied and happy. Getting off methadone maintenance can be difficult but it is possible.” And “Excellent experience. Top level care which minimized my discomfort and helped me get better quickly.”

from Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Recovery News | Resources – The Fix https://ift.tt/2eJi53M
via IFTTT

3 Alternative Therapies for Treating Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder #health #holistic

There are many stereotypes about therapy and counseling. When you think about drug and alcohol treatment, you might picture yourself facing a therapist on an opposing couch, or sharing your worries and concerns in a circle of other people in early recovery. While those are common experiences, quality treatment centers provide an array of therapy options so that you can choose one that’s right for you.Trying an unconventional approach to therapy can give you a new perspective. If you’ve felt stuck with therapeutic approaches in the past, a novel therapy approach might help you break through, giving you better understanding of the issues that contribute to your drug and alcohol abuse.Here are 3 types of therapies that you might want to try.Equine TherapyEquine-assisted therapy allows clients to build their self-esteem and mental wellness through interactions with horses. During equine therapy, you’ll spend time with horses — grooming them, leading them, patting them — but you usually won’t be riding. Equine therapy is different from hippotherapy, which involves riding horses, usually to improve physical abilities and coordination. Instead of focusing on physical wellness, equine therapy encourages people to explore boundaries and emotional responses through their interactions with horses.“The horses become metaphors for whatever the client is working on,” says Mark Frankle, M.A., LMFT, who offers equine therapy at Oceanside Malibu, a California treatment center.During equine therapy, you’ll be guided by a mental health professional, who can help you examine your responses to various situations that you encounter with the horse. You’ll also benefit from interacting with the animal, Frankle says.“There’s always an emotional feedback loop occurring, horses have similar neuro responses as humans”, he said. “It’s two mammals interacting; if a client is brushing or petting the horse, the horse relaxes, the person relaxes.”Art TherapyIf you have an interest in visual art, art therapy can be a great option to explore. During art therapy, you use visual mediums to express yourself. That could mean painting, sculpting, or drawing your feelings. An art therapist will guide you through talking about your work and understanding what it might reveal about the underlying issues that could be contributing to your substance use disorder.Many people feel that making art — rather than talking about their feelings directly — is a more comfortable way of understanding themselves. It can be less intimidating and confronting than needing to talk about your feelings directly. If you find yourself stuck around certain issues, art therapy with a qualified therapist can help you break through and make progress on your road to recovery.PsychodramaIf you have a flair for the dramatic or have always loved being on stage, you might want to give psychodrama a try. Psychodrama often involves role-playing or acting. By examining your response to different situations, you can gain insight into your own emotional motivations. Your therapist can act as the director, urging you to try different approaches problem-solving and conflict resolutions. That way, you’re able in order to practice various solutions in a safe space.The role-play aspect of psychodrama isn’t just fun — it also allows you to practice what you’ve learned in therapy, perfecting it before you have to use it in the real world.What to look for from a therapistWhether you’re doing traditional talk therapy, or opting for a more unique approach like psychodrama, equine therapy or art therapy, you should always look for a qualified provider. The tenets of cognitive behavioral therapy, a proven method, underlie all of these different approaches. Look for a counselor who is knowledgeable about CBT, and certified in the specific form of therapy that you’d like to explore.Learn more about Oceanside Malibu at https://ift.tt/2YrFRKm. Reach Oceanside Malibu by phone at (866) 738-6550. Find Oceanside Malibu on Facebook.

from Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Recovery News | Resources – The Fix https://ift.tt/2BMxIpx
via IFTTT

Higher Palooza #holistic #health

Cleveland Freethinkers and Agnostics are presenting the first annual "Higher Palooza" on Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 3:00 PM GMT, 10:00 am EST, and 7:00 am PST. The event will be held on Zoom and will include three speakers, Annie H.G. from the Molesworth Group in Ireland, Leslie R. from Davenort, Iowa, and Sri from Cleveland, Ohio. 

from AA Beyond Belief https://ift.tt/2D7JtHr
via IFTTT

Seeking Wholeness | Returning to the Source #holistic #health

My spouse and I were recently conversing about who we’ve been before and after. Before and after we met. Before and after I hit bottom and got sober. Before and after our daughter died. Before and after grandchildren began to fill our lives. Both of us, often felt incomplete and desperately sought wholeness.

from AA Beyond Belief https://ift.tt/2C97kpE
via IFTTT

God on Every Page #holistic #health

When he opened the Big Book for the first time, he thought ... How will I ever fit in? Recently I visited a relative in Maine who asked me only one question about AA: “Is it religious?” My first thought was, Of course it is. Instead I paused, and told her she had asked the $64,000 question.

from AA Beyond Belief https://ift.tt/3iwb31g
via IFTTT

Unacceptable #health #holistic

Even if they’ve only dipped their toes into Alcoholics Anonymous, recovering alcoholics and addicts are familiar with one of the organization’s go-to passages: the Serenity Prayer.God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,courage to change the things I can,and wisdom to know the difference.True to its first line, the recitation’s overarching message is that most matters are beyond our control. The vast majority of items within our power to change are internal: our thinking, our actions, our sobriety. Many of us, myself included, are recovering control freaks accustomed to banging our heads against the wall in vain attempts to get the world around us, including its inhabitants, to bend to our will. In sobriety, we learn that placing outsized expectations on others invariably leads to disappointment and resentment.As someone who is decidedly not a “God person,” I have found the Serenity Prayer refreshingly non-religious and spiritually simple. Its first word aside, the passage logically dissects the overwhelming majority of situations into two columns: those that I can do something about, and those that I can’t and must therefore, however begrudgingly, accept. All that is required of me is an honest assessment of which column any given matter occupies.This binary system has helped successfully steer me through nearly nine years of sobriety and all the marital, financial, interpersonal and attitudinal progress it has made possible. For someone who lacks a traditional God, it has been... well, a godsend.Until now. Until COVID-19.A Delicate DanceAfter three months of house confinement, Americans are beginning to reemerge and reengage. Vaccine or no vaccine, the reopening was inevitable because the opposite was unworkable: if we didn’t start returning to some semblance of business as usual, there wouldn’t be an economy to return to. Unemployment figures exceeding 40 million simply aren’t sustainable. Zero income is not an outcome and, while many of us can work effectively from home, most can’t make a living from their laptops.So here we are, restrictions easing, preparing to head back out into the world. Successfully reopening the economy will require a critical mass of people to perform a delicate dance of mask-wearing and social distancing. And already, the Serenity Prayer's well-founded advice of limiting our expectations of others runs into a stubborn contradiction: it is one thing when the actions of others merely threaten to impinge upon our spiritual well-being; it is quite another when those actions threaten our very lives.Expert simulations have shown that if 80 percent of the population wore masks, infection rates would plunge by more than 90 percent; a study published by the World Health Organization on June 1 aligns with these findings.Americans' response has been... mixed. A USA Today poll found that 84% of Americans have worn masks in public, while other surveys put the total closer to two-thirds - figures that, unsurprisingly, include a gap according to political leanings. The protracted nature of our efforts is an additional hurdle, as many are understandably fed up with treating every excursion like a germ gauntlet; even in epicenters like New York, there are signs of citizens waning on safe practices, prompting warnings from government officials.My daily life reflects these concerns. Each day, I go into my empty office (my colleagues are currently working from home; I have a visual disability, and the customized setup at my office makes working there far easier). While offices are mostly empty, the building manager has taken the opportunity to undergo a renovation. The number of workers wearing masks? Close to zero.A few weeks back I got into the elevator. Then a worker – sans mask – got on with me.I got off the elevator, shaking my head. The displeasure on his bare face was evident. Apparently my self-preservation had offended him.This isn't a spiritual inconvenience; it's a potentially life-and-death health issue. The two choices I had were physically endangering myself and my family, or offending someone. I chose the latter, because the former is simply unacceptable.It is a microcosm of what recovering alcoholics everywhere now face. In exercising the courage to change what we can – in my case, proximity to someone who refuses to abide by the simple recommendations of health officials – we will inevitably do something else we are taught to avoid: cause friction and conflict with those around us.With COVID-19, we are living through a crisis that is both all-permeating and all-important. Efforts to mitigate the spread of a deadly, highly contagious disease have touched every single American and stretched into every corner of the economy and society at large. Everyone has been forced to react to it as best they deem fit.Therein lies the rub: something all-encompassing and lethal has been foisted upon society without warning, causing a widely disparate set of perceived best practices to combat it. Many of us are on the same page – wearing face masks, socially distancing – but many are not. And considering the stakes, the majority of responsible citizens are ill-advised to tolerate the significant minority of those literally throwing caution to the wind around their bare faces.In this fashion, COVID-19 has drawn a red line between recovering alcoholics and the crucial tenet of acceptance espoused by the Serenity Prayer.An Inconvenient Lack of TruthI feel comfortable sharing exactly none of what I just wrote in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Why? Because AA is a strictly apolitical organization attempting to navigate a society in which indisputable facts have become politicized.Until COVID-19, this was manageable, because topics whose facts have been tainted by politics – climate change is a prime example – are easily avoided. They don’t directly factor into our day-to-day recovery.In stark contrast, the coronavirus pandemic has affected everything. It saturates every aspect of our lives, including AA. For example, we aren’t meeting on Zoom because of climate change, or the #MeToo Movement, or Donald Trump’s latest Tweet. And even if we were, it wouldn’t trickle down into essentially every action every person takes.But such is COVID’s cascading impact: an unprecedented health crisis has caused an unprecedented recovery conundrum – and one that we can’t even talk about as a group, no less. Unfortunately, a sizable subset of society seemingly doesn’t believe in simple science; and AA, of course, is simply a subset of society. The problem is societal, and we are part of society.Regardless, even if I could share this in AA, it wouldn’t change the current contradictions of applying my recovery’s teachings in the outside world. That guy is still getting on that elevator without a mask, AA or no AA. I cannot choose to just stand there, and a proselytizing conversation only invites further conflict and confrontation. My only answer – the least bad option – is abrupt, unsettling, silent avoidance.In this fashion, COVID-19 has made recovery more brusque, curt, cold. I cannot convert the maskless masses, nor can I abide them. I did not recover from a progressive, incurable and potentially fatal disease, alcoholism, only to succumb to another.

from Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Recovery News | Resources – The Fix https://ift.tt/3inAOAT
via IFTTT

Episode 177: Atheists in Recovery #holistic #health

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Adina Slvestri from Life Cycles Counseling in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Silvestri is a licensed family therapist who specializes in treating women with substance abuse issues, children impacted by trauma, and helping people cope and better handle anger. She is also the host of "The Atheists in Recovery Podcast", which features guests with an expertise in addiction whether they be professionals or people with first hand experience with addiction and recovery. 

from AA Beyond Belief https://ift.tt/2ZuHKUp
via IFTTT