My perspective of addiction by SB Kent

A few days ago I discovered that a childhood friend of mine is an “alcoholic”. His family have been a part of my life forever and as a child I had been envious of the love in their house.  My memories of our families together were always “those were the days!”   I had been oblivious to the destruction that went on around me and as I tick into my 40’s I find myself being less and less tolerant of “the good old days” and start to recognise that there was very little good about any of it.

So here I am looking back at all my friends families that helped define who I am today and I realise that those comfy old rooms aren’t quite as comfy as I recall – the wallpaper is definitely peeling off!  It strikes me that there is no such thing as a functioning family.  Addiction captures every household in some shape or form.  For some it is nothing more than an eccentricity, a foible but for others it is entirely consuming.  We all approach it from a different angle, some of us will choose to ignore what’s happening – perhaps they’ll grow out of it, or they might need to just “get a grip or get out!”  Some of us will want to skirt around the issue and others will want to attack it head on.

But we all have one thing in common – we want change but without change!  We look at the person we love and the addiction we hate, we want to keep the person we love and lose the addiction we hate.  We are united in the terror that in losing the addiction we are also going to lose the person.  And so as they head off toward the first step of change we find ourselves siding with addiction. We become overwhelmingly fearful of change.  We’re so busy looking at who our loved one is going to become in the ensuing weeks, months or even years that we lose sight of who they are in the here and now. We’re terrified that this person who we love and know is going to become a happy-clappy-daisy-chasing-Moonie! Perhaps the drinking isn’t that bad, maybe this relationship will turn them around, possibly a little more time – after all doesn’t time heal? And let’s not hide from the financial aspects of curing addiction, that’s definitely on the list!

Several years ago my younger sister came to me to talk, I had long suspected that her world was spiralling out of control and so was relieved when she told me that she needed my help.  We sat at our kitchen table and she told me that she had regularly been using drugs, she had a serious eating disorder and that she could no longer hide the scars of her self-harming.   Over the next hour or so my relief that she was finally sharing gave way to horror (which I tried desperately to conceal from her).  When she was done telling me her life at that moment she asked “Can you help me?”   I panicked, I had suspected that she might have food issues and I thought she occasionally cut herself but I had always envisaged that when this day came I’d be able to help her out with a cup of tea, a little chat and maybe a visit to the doctor.  This was unbelievably out of my league!  I said the only thing that I could – “No, but I have a good friend who can!”

So in answer to all of the above – yes, my sister changed.  She became an incredible, amazing and beautiful being.  She is still vulnerable yet stronger with it, she still relies on friends and family yet she is independent, she’s accepted what she needs to change in herself and what she can’t change in others.  And she can still party without becoming someone she doesn’t like!

And as ugly as it is, I’m closing with the financial aspect.  The phrase “it never rains but it pours” comes to mind, if any of the above is relevant then let me tell you – right now it’s chucking it down and this is the rainy day you’ve been saving for, so get your feet wet!

Stress and Addiction

The fact that stress is causing an increase in alcohol consumption and prescription/over the counter drug use does not surprise me. Sadly though this is a pattern that becomes increasingly habitual and with trouble usually hot on its heels.  We cannot control what happens in life, but I maintain we are responsible for how we behave in response to life’s curve balls. Drinking or numbing yourself from reality – indeed anything that fosters an attitude of fear, procrastination, deceit and denial – will only delay the inevitable, amplified by that delay.  Drinking should be a pleasure not an escape; prescription drugs should medicate diagnosed mental illness, preferably by a psychiatrist or psychologist; over the counter medications should provide temporary relief for physical symptoms- and counselling provides a forum where you can ventilate your emotions and learn how to live apace with the highs and lows in your life without compromising your integrity – now theres a thought!

Charter gains a touch of Alchemy…

UK’s top Addiction Specialists launch Charter Adolescents

Have communications with your adolescent broken down? Do they seem unhappy or anxious?  Are you concerned they may be drinking or using alcohol or other addictive substances? 

Then Charter Adolescents can help.

Research shows that Adolescents are more vulnerable than any other age group to developing, alcohol and other drug addictions in fact drug use is higher among young people than the adult population as a whole[1], yet there are a lack of specialist facilities to help them.

[1] http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/drugs-misuse-dec-1112-tabs/extent-young-tabs

Which is why Mandy Saligari, Founder and Director of leading London addiction facility Charter Day Care, Residential and Counselling Centres has joined forces with Stephen Noel-Hill of Alchemy to form Charter Adolescents.

Stephen has extensive experience working with adolescents and young people spanning twelve years working at the Priory Hospital Roehampton and Adolescent Units in Holland.

Mandy has a well-established presence in independent schools lecturing on addiction, parenting for prevention and self-esteem. She has long since wanted to set up a service especially for adolescents addressing the issues that are brought to the surface in these school talks.

“Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to self-defeating coping mechanisms, our main aim with this service is to encourage a valuable sense of self, working with the young person and their parents – many of whom just don’t know how to cope with the issues their children are raising or the behavior they are presenting.”

Both Mandy and Stephen understand that that early intervention and prevention are fundamental to successful outcomes. It is this common vision that led them to merge Alchemy into Charter.

Charter Adolescents is an exciting new service that will do what Charter does best: intensive non-residential treatment and multi-disciplined counselling and therapy. The focus is on early intervention, education, emotional development and appropriate referral to give the adolescent and the family a new lease of life.

With a counselling team who are specialists in this area and experienced in work with young people, alongside Stephen’s expertise and Mandy’s guidance, this service will be dedicated to young people.

Working in groups, individual and family sessions and workshops, after school hours and at weekends, Charter Adolescents is an intensive and brief intervention and counselling service targeted to work with addictive disorders and emotional disturbance.

Charter is well established as a leading London addiction facility offering focused, flexible and effective day care for all addictive disorders at competitive rates.

For more information visit www.charterdaycare.com or call 020 73234970 or email  info@charterdaycare.com

Charter Day Care, 15 Harley Street, London W1G 9QQ

 

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Repeaters…

My son introduced me to a movie last night called Repeaters about 3 addicts in rehab on Step 9. It was brilliant and displays a real understanding of recovery. I found it both shocking (possibly because I  was watching it with my son) as well as deeply reassuring and exciting that such a clear interpretation of Step 9 is out there from mainstream Hollywood – and WATCHABLE, gripping even! I won’t say much more apart from advice NOT to watch it if you are in early recovery as may well trigger craving…but otherwise it was brilliant.

Place in Fiction

The ancient Willow tree stood sentry at the mouth of the tarmac drive that once shone its gleaming route, liquorice black and definite, to the house. Now with edges crumbling into the ditch the drive was over grown and potholed, like stale biscuits forgotten in a tin.

I stood motionless in the unseen footprints of my youth beneath this great tree where giant branches draped like patient arms in play, as gates to a castle where childish battles could be fought and won; where as I grew I had lain hidden in deep cool grass, looking up through fluttering green to the watercolour skies and dreamed of love.  It was here beside the gnarled trunk too wide to reach my arms around, that I had sought protection and cover when later love too had proved fallible.

Looking up in the breathless August evening I could see my old home, nestled amongst extensive orchards where trees stood like children, arms aloft in play.  Dark red tiles sat like a warm hat over the pleasing symmetry of this Sussex house, and English roses climbed the sunny whitewashed walls in an embrace before stretching their myriad ways unpruned towards the skies where white trails crossed and petered out into the endless blue. It was as if summer never left this place for even in the depths of winter when clouds like dark fortresses launched their stormy attack, Orchard House sat calm and square puffing gentle coils of smoke from the Aga that lay at her warm heart, unmoved by centuries of Nature’s temper.

And yet this was her greatest tragedy for despite her protection against the elements, Orchard House had provided no defence against the storm that raged within. The windows were all dark now, with glass that reflected back the steely light of dusk like eyes in death.  I could go no closer but watched as the tendrils of willow hushed and soothed around me until the night cast her cloak of impenetrable darkness, releasing me from the spell.

Parenting for Prevention Workshops

I have been presenting Parenting for Prevention workshops in schools across the UK for around 10 years and am now planning to bring this material into the treatment environment as a workshop targeted towards helping parents whose children suffer from addiction.

Every parent with a child of any age who is acting out in an addictive way needs to be aware of their boundaries, be able to present a consistent response to any demand or behaviour, and to feel that their decision is seated in respect and self esteem.

I often get asked where the line is drawn between good parenting, ie the duty to love, guide, punish and teach, and unhealthy enmeshed parenting where there is often an over involvement and overt sense of responsibility and resentment. Although the age of the child is relevant in this discussion, the core principles are the same and a big question is who is in charge?

In a family where addiction is present it can often appear as if the addict is running the show, able to hijack any interaction or event and frequently create worry and drama. But of course it is not the addict per se, it is addiction itself that is operating within the family system. Once parents and family members start to behave in a coordinated and healthy way, changes always happen.

This workshop is specifically designed to illustrate adolescent reactions that can feed conflict and splitting which are instantly recognizable. There is usually a lot of laughter in this workshop before parents get down to working on understanding and then practicing the simple responses that can make all the difference.

These patterns always exist in addictive relationships and it is vital that those close to the addict know how to navigate them, to feel confident that they are supporting the solution not feeding the problem.

Please contact the office if you are interested in attending any of our workshops in the future: 020 7323 4970

Parents – Are you really aware?

I was speaking with a parent who was at their wits end with their child who was showing zero respect and basically running the show. The home atmosphere was being completely comprised by this child in their late teens, as were any rules. We looked at boundary setting, exploring the possibility of establishing small easily maintained boundaries to begin the process of taking charge again. I was unsure of the parent’s capacity to set and hold a boundary so we were exploring some very basic and simple ideas.

Suddenly the parent joked that this ‘boundary’ would only be maintained when it suited them to do so, as sometimes they liked their teen e.g. lost in TV. I was struck by the complete lack of awareness in this parent of the damage they were doing – i.e. by indulging and then blaming, the so familiar ‘all or nothing’. It reminds me that although we may see the problem in the difficult or obese child (as per article attached) we must not forget that sometimes the parent(s) directs their child towards these ways of passing the time to get them off their hands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18930131

Family Groups

Family Group is a very important part of Charter’s addiction treatment programme.  Currently costing just £150pa per family member for unlimited access, the groups provide an introduction to addiction and vital peer and counselling support for family members of an addict.

The familiar position of lose:lose is the domain of the families of addicts, where it is so hard to know what to do as your loved one perpetually holds the proverbial gun to their own head and, finger on trigger, reacts what you say and do.

At Charter we advocate re-establishing a sense of nourishment and self respect in the family member so that they too can make a decision instead of just reacting to a situation:- fire fighting. This takes time and commitment and I am proud to say that we have a core group of hard working family members cementing the changes with their increasing understanding and personal growth. When one person changes, the dance changes. So whether your addict is on board (yet) or not, working in the family group can make all the difference to the possibility and nature of recovery in your life.

We also hold family workshop weekends that provide a more intensive introduction to letting go with love, enablement vs tough love and how to take care of you – many family members recoil from such apparently new age statements (as did my own parents many years ago) – but these workshops have proven to be of fundamental use to those struggling to gain purchase on this slippery and destructive condition in the life of someone they love.

Addiction is all consuming, self centred, provocative and relentless. It takes experience to know how to behave around it, and courage and compassion not to feed it.  The group will support you while you learn…

UK cyclist Bradley Wiggins admitted to a history of binge drinking

I am over the moon that UK cyclist Bradley Wiggins admitted to a history of binge drinking yesterday as the shame that surrounds addictive patterns prevents people from seeking help. The more people of note speak up the less humiliating it should be to admit a problem.  Thank you Bradley for your courage and integrity.

Sadly though my guess is that the interested population will be more likely to line up their next pint ‘just one more before I do the tour, mate’ than to shake their head amidst roars of bullying derision with ‘no thanks, mate, I’m going to see if I can stop’.  Such is the grip alcohol has on our society that even with evidence of damages caused by binge drinking (conservative estimates rate at over one person a day to die from alcohol over the next 20 years) and with 1.5million UK dependent drinkers of which only 8-18% are in treatment, our culture continues to neck alcohol in huge proportions, becoming a European leader in alcohol consumption. The prospect is not good.  Alcohol damages must not only be measured in terms of the direct hit to the drinker (physical, emotional, mental, financial), but to their families, to their social context, to their work, to our social services, our police, our NHS – to each and every one of us intimidated or harmed by someone under the influence. Of all those drinkers too, many have families, and the children of these unions of active addiction grow up to become Adult Children of Alcoholics – a self destructive legacy all of its own.

The cost is far too high and the justification to drink is that of an addict. I am a supporter of early intervention, of treatment, of minimum pricing and of education – to children and their parents. We must start with the parents…

(The statistics cited have been taken from Druglink Magazine, May/June 2012).

Co-dependent love Kills

The recent tragic death of Eva Rausing, daughter of a Pepsi executive and married to the heir of the Tetra Pak billions is yet another sad addition to the long list of deaths claimed by addiction. In a relationship fuelled by co-dependence, it is clear that neither partner would ever get recovery long enough to have a proper chance at life.

This situation is so familiar to those of us working in the field. Over and over again I warn my clients about getting into a relationship in treatment or early recovery and those who don’t listen – self will run riot – (and who stay in touch) have almost always found themselves in difficulty later down the line. And although it is the truth, to say ‘almost always’ to an addict they will illicit an attentional bias towards ‘almost’, encouraging the inherent arrogant belief that every addict has that they will be the exception.

It is so obvious to me that in rehab where you are putting down your drug of choice, you are wide open to an alternative, something to fill the gap, the void that any addict in early recovery feels – indeed must feel and learn to tolerate. For this lack of tolerance IS the addictive process in action. An inability to not know, to feel exposed, alone, afraid… – to feel vulnerable generates the compulsion to use. So a relationship in early recovery is a collusion between addicts to mutually fix and avoid this seemingly intolerable void, dressing it up as something worthwhile.

Sadly most of the time the addicts themselves are completely unaware of what is going on, usually insisting that they do know and they are actually in love, and treating those who seek to challenge the addiction (family, sponsors and therapists) as lacking in understanding, punishing and unreasonable. In turn this can drive the couple into secrecy, into the false yet seductive intimacy of ‘them and us’… as the  examples given by the journalist of this article displays, feted couples Burton and Taylor, Cobain and Love, Britney and Kevin, Whitney and Bobby – all very Bonnie and Clyde: over romanticised sickness ending in disaster.

At Charter we work on co-dependence and relationships (with self and others) as a mainstay of our programme. Addiction is at its roots relational and addicts need to be able to have healthy interactive relationships that nourish them, or they will relapse. I have had the privilege to support many people to avoid an ending such as Eva’s despite all the priming that might make that their destiny, and I am grateful for these clients’ willingness and trust to follow my direction. It is not easy, never easy, but it is most definitely worth it.

Read more:  http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/us-news-blog/2012/jul/13/drug-using-couples-eva-rausing?cat=uk&type=article