- Mental Health
I’m a clinical director, and I am a licensed professional counselor and licensed addiction counselor. On a daily basis I do client care and group and individual therapy with clients who have substance abuse disorders and co-occurring mental health disorders. I treat females in general, so the biggest issues I see along with substance abuse are bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, eating disorders, family problems and issues related to children. I see a lot of trauma and grief.
I don’t believe that addiction is caused by anything other than the disease. People will start using because of something that happened in their life like experiencing a traumatic event as a child or because of peer events or family events. I don’t think people become an addict or alcoholic because of an event, but because they have a disease. When they get in treatment, we have to address those underlying issues, because that’s why they’ll pick back up and kick off the disease that causes them to be unable to stop without intervention.
The biggest reason people decide not to find treatment is fear of change. By the time they have been using so long and coping that way for so long, their brain has learned to handle stressors that way. Their brain has changed and been wired to cope this way. They have to rewire their brain to change, and there’s fear of that. I don’t think a person doesn’t want to change; they don’t know how to.
Change involves learning new coping skills, learning the basic disease model and learning that the brain has been hardwired a certain way and will take time to change. It involves learning how to deal with cravings, how to deal with triggers and how to address underlying issues. Acceptance of emotions and acceptance of feelings is a big issue, and people need to learn how to feel those negative emotions and get through them without getting loaded and without getting drunk.
I can hardly put into words how I’ve seen people change. This is the stereotypical story: Somebody walks in off the street, and they’re pale and gray, and they walked out a changed person. People who have been stripped of their morals and their values don’t know what to do with their lives. They say, “I have to change, but I don’t know how. I don’t want to do this anymore. Why do I keep on using? I feel horrible because I keep using.” At the end of the process, however long that process may take because it’s usually not just 30 days, they feel like they actually have some control in their life. The first step is admitting, “I’m powerless over drugs and alcohol, and my life has become unmanageable.” If you take that step, you gain control over your life. Addiction doesn’t mean you’re powerless over your life. It means that you’re powerless over some things and that your life has become unmanageable. I think a lot of people get that confused. They think, if they say they’re powerless, they’re saying they’re weak, when they are actually gaining control over their lives.