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Rick Ohrstrom is Sober but Pissed
We in the recovery community are digesting with difficulty the stunning news that 180 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were written in the US last year.
When will therapists and counselors cease the endless pursuit of searching for pathology and begin to use a lens that builds on strengths? Few would argue that helping individuals and families find what is positive in their lives is an efficacious method of providing counseling. However, when the session begins, the default position is almost always the search for pathology. There is once again a proliferation of born again therapeutic techniques that attracts sheep-like counselors in search of “the answer”. Empowerment more often relates to the therapist rather than clients and families.
After many years one becomes less than enthusiastic regarding old theories being presented as new-- just in fresh wrappings. Such quick fix methods of providing service like CBT, client centered therapy, EMDR, psycho drama etc. amount to trying to bang square pegs into round holes or making a dog a cat. Without much effort one might
at random bring a seemingly healthy individual into the office, ask them to relate disappointments and regrets in their lives and quickly create what some might label depression. This is similar to the rationale applied to the use of so many of these easy-to- learn, fairly short-lived, so-called techniques. Some have gone as far as to create workshops to perpetuate the myth and even worse, certifications for these black box voodoo methods.
It is time for counselors and therapists to abandon their Guru like position for one of truly meeting clients in their space and fostering change in their direction not the therapist’s. The carnage in the name of therapy must stop. When cookbook methods of providing treatment are used, both clients and therapists leave satisfied while recovery remains elusive. Therapist and client struggling together-- both reap the benefits, what a concept. When clients are given the responsibility for driving their own care, the path to recovery becomes possible.
It is no surprise that many counselors and therapists are attracted to narrowly focused diagnosis often resulting in knee jerk therapy. No wonder it is difficult to find two therapists who agree on the same practice direction for similar clients.
Yes. I believe that for some there is a serious ethics question when car payment therapy becomes the pratice model . "Just come twice a week for several years and you will feel better" sounds a bit like some Chiropractors I have met.
Hey, I am not saying that these counselors have poor intentions or are bad people just poor training and supervision. How can one blame individual therapists when they are supported in their practice methods by Universities and some ivory tower Professors who wax poetically with great authority regarding theoretical nonsense that has little foundation in real practice. No surprise that so many graduates of these programs hit the road with a backpack filled with therapeutic tools searching for victims to carve into their therapeutic images of what a client should look like: it is simply the case if the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like nail.
The sad truth is that so many fragile clients become doubly victimized, once by their poor lot in life and again by the poorly trained and supervised therapist. I often ponder which is worse- to be over medicated by knee jerk MDs or probed to death by robot therapists!
No my friends I am not cynical, just THERA-pissed.
The Dawg came across this interesting to say the least "take" on the current over prescribing of psychotropics binge that the field is currently indulging in. It is a balanced and fair take in his opinion and provides a valuable "new prism" to view psychotropics through.
The Bulldog is rejoining after a too long hiatus and apologizes....he will be a regular attendee and blogger from now on......He does have - to mangle a metaphor -- a bee in his bonnet this AM....it's the "I've got mine, screw you" mentality that increasingly seems to pervade the 12 step rooms these days.....Where has real 12 stepping gone? No I don't mean that erzatz bull shit that passes for same these days i.e. a welcomer who greets folks at the bottom of the stairs.....newsflash they are the lucky ones....for every lucky person walking down those steps there are 100 out there suffering...what about them.
Increasingly as the Dawg prowls the rooms in the US, Europe and other more exotic climes, there is an aura of I've got mine, screw the rest of them....I'm here to lifestyle dump and the hell with the rest of you......how many groups keep a 12 step list any more....run temporary sponsorship programs...this is aall both sad and predictable....12 step groups usually mimic society as a whole and society as a whole has become a very self centered....I know that supposedly the crash will lead to some quote on quote social introspection, but we all know that rarely lasts.....so I am asking the question that always makes them squirm in the room these days...."When was the last time you shared your experience, strength and hope with some one outside the rooms?"....Do you even care........
If your answer to the first is recently and the second is yes, then ignore this rant. If, as I suspect for most of us, it is not then as was once said "We have met the enemy and it is us."
I would like to introduce the band, Thrown Alive, a new, all-original showcase act from Tampa Florida with a body of material that is refreshingly varied and steeped in the message of recovery and hope. The reaction from the recovery community to such Thrown Alive songs as “Won’t Get High”, “Yesterday” and “The Insanity” has been huge to say the least and the band hopes to continue fulfilling it’s primary purpose through as many radio shows, conventions, and festivals as possible. The band’s first EP was released April 22, 2009 and features the singles “Yesterday” and the acclaimed, “Won’t Get High”. Thrown Alive enjoys a 20-year musical partnership between Roger Hemond and drummer, Joe Dixon at its core and Jimmy Irish on bass guitar to complete the line up. The music ranges from the hook-filled hard-rock sound of “Yesterday” and “The Insanity” to the softer, nearly Country music sounds of “Won’t Get High” and “Another Side to Mountains”. The band’s name, Thrown Alive is even meant to be symbolic of the process of choosing a new way of life, in that we are brought back to life, somewhat quickly as we re-discover our senses of spirit and hope. Thrown Alive members, Roger Hemond and Joe Dixon and their music have been recently featured on Prescription Addiction Radio, Recovery Nation Live, and Recovery Radio 101 with several more radio appearances scheduled. We are also very excited to announce that the band has just committed to perform at the 2nd Annual 12 Step Music Fest at Sugarloaf Key in November 2009 and are working toward confirmation to appear at several other Recovery-related events throughout the country.
I am writing at this time having just returned from a most extraordinary descent into a world that few have ever experienced. Unfortunately, the effective screening of news in the US by media-Nazis such as the out-Fox (ed) "not really the news" and other not so creative screening so-called news agencies leave Americans with a view which is very different than the one from the ground. Until this time I have been reluctant to write freely knowing that my mail was being well screened and not wanting to end up in the cross hairs .
I am going to first relate some of my Gaza visions and in a later mail perhaps more on the West Bank. My plan is to eventually write a publication from a more scholarly perspective. For now, this is both my reacclimation and personal debriefing in addition to being driven by my life long belief in social justice activism.
The Bulldog has had enough; he had to sit through yet another tedious discussion of the infamous "S" and I don't mean the sex word Stigma. Once again the liberal do-gooders were pleading their case for yet another uniquely (not unique) useless education campaign.
We (the alcohol and addiction field) are surely the only altruistic human endeavor in history to eloquently educate over 70 years without any discernible effect on either public opinion or policy.The facts on the ground remain depressingly similar. There is still absolutely no moral or more importantly political price to be paid for crapping on alcoholics and addicts. Until there is a downside to trampling roughshod over the right of recovering folks the behaviors of those cretins masquerading as policy makers will continue ad nauseam.The two truly successful social movements of the late 20th century, HIV/AIDS and Mental Health (NAMI) only gained traction when they started to literally and metaphysically throw a little pig's blood around. We must do the same. It is time for us (the Recovering Community -- strike that there is no such thing) to "Get Mad, Get Smart and Get Even." If some cowering, cringing AA pseudo historian - Nazi big book basher brings up Anonymity, I will rip their head off -- just kidding -- maybe. The two founders of AA, Bill W and Dr. Bob, were both on the original board of the NCA, founded by Marty Mann, the first woman to get sober in AA and a personal protégé of Bill W's. The NCA was founded to advocate for the rights of recovering folks in a way consistent with the principals of AA. Stigma is the kind face of the problem -- the truly ugly, operational face of Stigma is the daily discrimination in every area of their lives that folks suffering or in recovery from Addiction face.There is little or no excuse that any of us who have benefited from the efforts of our predecessors have for not acting to pass along the benefits of their labors to our succeeding generations. Didn't I hear "Pass it on" somewhere? Not if the panicking panjandrums of upper Riverside Avenue would have anything to do with it. They have allowed real twelve stepping, and by that I mean the twelve-stepping that takes place outside the rooms, to be expunged from the AA vocabulary. Shame on them and shame on us who sit here contentedly thinking "I got mine. Screw them."
The elusive sweet spot. Dang it -- I know it exists and I'm not talking about the latest Cosmo super sex turn-on that we can all injure our wrists trying to find, but that elusive policy place somewhere between outright prohibition and the madness (surely more than reefer induced) of legalization. We the masses and our cynical, though rarely ignorant, political masters have certainly thoroughly explored the poles but never the center.Now with Obama and his putative breath of fresh air, the legalizers sense it’s their turn of the screw. Soros, Nadelman and their merry crew of pot-puffing assistants are determined to skip the public health median on their way to full-scale, open-access of state of affairs that will inevitably be in the Bulldog's book create a legitimate public health crisis. Why can't the ideologues ever learn to steal their opponent’s best stuff-- that's always been the mark of master politicians since time immemorial? They're just too sure to find a cure. Why not combine the best of early client engagement (harm reduction) from one end with lifetime incarceration for professional traffickers from the other? Why can't we ever have the whole menu to choose from? Because ideologues are profoundly in love with Mencken's dilemma, which for those of you who are ignorant was the following, "For every complex problem there is usually a simple answer, and...it's wrong."For ideologues there are always simple answers to complex problems and the simpler they are the more wrong they are. We certainly know that by now. The Bulldog's plea is, just this one time let's look at the whole menu. Let's dig a hole in the policy morass and put Nadelman and crew in with the Bush bunch and bury the policy of the poles forever. Otherwise to continue to mangle the metaphor we will continue to starve….
In last month's Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, University of New Mexico addiction specialist William Miller and his colleagues presented findings from two controlled trials in which patients underwent drug treatment. Some of the patients received spiritual guidance as part of the treatment — learning such practices as prayer, meditation and service to others, all of which are central to 12-step programs. Others received secular psychotherapy. Because of the enduring popularity of AA and similar programs that involve a spiritual component, Miller and his team expected the patients in the spiritual group to do better than those in the secular group. They were wrong — at least in the short term.
The Bulldog is not that surprised by this result. For me (and this is one man's opinion) spirituality was the most difficult piece of the Recovery puzzle. Being a recovering Catholic, I had a punishing stern Higher Power (HP). One of the best pieces of advice I received was, "If you are afraid of your higher power, trade he, she or it for a new one". For many adding the challenge of the spiritual component on top of just trying to be abstinent and less crazy was too much.
Eventually, I got it and with the addition of a good relationship with my HP moved from abstinence into true recovery. Perhaps the better study would be to see how many folks obtain long term recovery (lets say 5 years plus) with no spiritual component. Methinks not many. Your comments please.
The Bulldog is returning to somewhat tangentially familiar territory because the issue must be discussed until something is done -- people are literally dying out there. A close friend of the Bulldog's (8 years sober) walked into a meeting looking like a zombie thanks to careless, clueless attentions of her local "pill pushing" shrink. I cannot nor will not use the term mental health professional in conjunction with a psychiatrist who is operating a pill dispensary. How does the Dawg know this? Because my friend's husband -- suspicious after the third visit and umpteenth prescription -- started timing the patient visits. He watched 10 clients go in and out. Not one was with the "pill pusher" more than 7 minutes and every one walked out with a script. The saga of M (as I will call her) is an all too typical tale these days. About 3 months ago, she experienced severe depression and anxiety because her husband had suffered extreme reverses in the stock market. She visited the "pill pusher" informing him that she was a recovering alcoholic having a bout of severe depression. Then the saga began. He rewarded her honesty by playing psychotropic darts with her psyche. Lets start with this: oh that didn't work well why not this? Oh you can't sleep too? Well here's some addictive sleeping medication...and on it went...until the Dawg encountered an almost senseless M at the meeting. Shocked, I referred her to an actual mental health professional who was stunned. She was on 10 times the normal therapeutic dose of anti depressants -- highly addictive benzos (that's tranqs) and sleeping medications. All the result of what any competent therapist would have assessed as temporary life style related depression and recommended CBT (talk therapy). As I write this, M is on suicide watch being detoxed. This is happening every day. When are we going to demand that mental health professionals actually be professional and be trained in addiction? For that matter, GPS are prescribing psychotropics far more often than mental health experts. When are we going to make proper addiction studies (not just the current 1-3 days) a mandatory part of medical education? Folks there are 1000s of Ms out there. I dare say many of you know one...but did not want to ask. If you are in recovery always ask any medical professional that you deal with if they have experience with addiction. If they don't, drop them.....
This blog is being submitted in an efffort to be more effective when working with others. The focus is on helping others through the ammends process.
I encourage feedback and shared experience so I can be more effective to the new man in this process.
My experience in this process is this. I had my list from the 4th column and was directed to add any other harms that were not connected to a resentment or sex relation. I then put each ammends individually on a 3 by 5 card with the name of the person, institution, or principle in the left hand side. On the right hand side I put contact information, if I had any-phone #, address, friend or family member info, etc. In the body of the text I wrote down the exact nature of the harm . In the upper right hand corner I put a plus sign for willing to make the ammends or a minus sign if I were not willing. Eventually they all turned into plus signs through praying for willingness. These directions were handed down to me as were handed down to the man giving them to me.
I'm sitting in a Big Book Step Study meeting, and going around the room, many attendees pass, as is the rule of the group, because they haven't "gotten to the other side." Finally a group member has met the groups requirements to share. To my surprise, he has nothing to say about ammends, which I assumed he had completed, or prayer,meditation, and working with others. More are sharing , meeting the "requirement of being on the other side," but the message is generic, no talk of current experience, only experience from years past. I learn that the reference of getting on the other side is the fact that they have completed a 4th and 5th step.
I just picked up the following information from one of my trade publications....FYIIn a massive triumph for mental health care in America a new law has been passed that requires insurance companies to cover mental health services at the SAME level they do for physical services. The bill is the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 and it passed October 3rd of this year as part of a measure that included the $700 billion financial bailout plan. The parity law takes effect on January 1, 2010.The article goes on....Psychologists have been fighting for mental health parity for almost 20 years, and they finally won and won decisively. The 2008 bill closes several loopholes left by the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act by barring insurance companies from arbitrarily limiting all aspects of mental health coverage including the number of out-patient treatment sessions, or assigning higher co-payments or deductibles for those who need psychological services. The law also ensures mental health and substance use coverage for both in-network and out-of-network services when a plan provides for the physical health services.There is more detail, but that's the substance of the article....Sounds like good news to me.
As a recovering addict and a web professional, I am really impressed by the New Wired-in website in the UK. The site is located at http://www.wiredin.org.uk/
All the folks at Wired-In and especially, Professor David Clark, have done a wonderful job and we wish you the best. I am the Sober Bulldog ComputerGuy and the Bulldog has asked me to send his Congrats and Kudos. When I looked at the site, I decided to join your community and give you some thoughts from my experiences in recovery in the US.
The time has come or might I say has long gone by to ask 2 rather basic questions. First, when shall we begin to take an honest look at outcomes in the treatment for drug dependence and more importantly why have we not been more concerned about treatment efficacy? Not sure how many folks would approve of their MD operating on a vital organ with 30 year old instruments and then blaming their patient for treatment failures or even worse asking them to receive more of the treatment that did not work in the first place. Sounds like malpractice to me!
Timing was as always everything and you can’t beat mine the Dawg mused as they zipped through Jordan en route to Damascus. He would have to pick the very day the “Bushie Boys” bombed Syria and depending on whom you listened to either killed 8 innocent villagers or took down the mastermind of the Iraqi IED campaign. Who would ever know – the only thing murkier than US Intel these days were Syrian government intentions…it had all gone too smoothly anyway…
Forget that it was a drug and alcohol treatment center Abi Mussa would still have been one of the ten most remarkable places he’d ever visited run by one of the most remarkable people he’d ever met…it was in the middle of the desert about 20 miles from Jericho…a yellow stone castle that dated to the 12th century when Saladin had it built as a garrison
The dawg was headed for Dubai, the ultimate antidote to the Occupied West Bank; there was just time for one last Israeli memento an extremely thorough, completely surly customs search. Then they were back in a land where security folks smiled and people actually seemed glad to see you.
As always Infidel Bulldog felt good to be back in the Holy Land. A couple of deep breaths of the burnt sand desert instantly dispelled the chokedamp chill that always seemed to envelope him in Britville. The airport was a good omen, Jordan seemed to be one of the few non-Gulfie Mena states that was open for business. There was none of the amiable chaos that blanketed Hariri airport in Beirut or its counterpart in Cairo. They were headed into Amman on a good highway in minutes. The traffic, which the driver complained about due to the Aid holid
ay which marked the end of Ramadan, was absurdly light........what was even more shocking was that there was a functional traffic signal system that everyone obeyed. Truly a miracle that made the loaves and fishes pale into insignifigance.
We in the recovery community are digesting with difficulty the stunning news that 180 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were written in the US last year.
My math has never been the best, but that equates to roughly one out of every two Americans seeking solace in little purple, yellow, green or whatever colored pills. Am I the only one left who thinks occasional bouts of lifestyle depression are not only a necessary part of the human experience -- how could we be happy without them or for that matter, learn basic psychic coping skills -- but an affirmation of our innate humanity?
