How can you help?

[talkhealth]

Experts,


What would you say to people who say “How can you help me, you’ll never understand unless you are an addict?”

[Gary Turner]

I would say that no-one, apart from yourself, can understand what you are going through. Not even fellow addicts. Your experience will be completely unique from everyone else, and is dependent on how you have learnt to be this way, and the impact it has in the wider environment in your life.

To work with you I don’t need to ‘understand’. It isn’t necessary, and to be totally honest, I don’t want to take the baggage with me!

Instead I look for your patterns of thinking. How your personality works. The thought structures that support and sustain the addiction. Your motivations, emotions and feelings.

I look to target interventions to help you change the way that you think and act around your addiction. Help you with motivation, will power, strengthen your personality, release your identity from addiction, lessen any effects of cravings, and to help you find alternative behaviours that satisfy you every bit as much physically yet even more so emotionally always in a way which is safest healthiest and best for you. I give knowledge and help you make the changes you need to get your life back on track.

Most of all, I don’t tell you what you want to hear, yet I do tell you what you need to hear.

I conclusion, no-one can understand what you are going through except yourself. Fortunately, I don’t need to understand to be able to help you.

[Mark Dempster]

This attitude from clients with addictions can obstruct and potentially kill the individual. I have worked and managed teams with staff who are both in recovery from addiction and staff that are not. I have often witnessed clients manipulating the fact that the staff member doesn't have personal experience of addiction as a way to distract from doing the work required to stop. I am fortunate professionally from this perspective, i have a history of addiction and long term recovery, so can therefore ensure client's have no get out clauses as regards this issue. The counsellor or support worker is there to provide a safe place for the client to disclose their issue, thereafter the therapist help's them address the addiction and take appropriate actions. You dont need to be in recovery from addiction to help someone in addiction. Just like a doctor does not have to have had a broken leg to help a patient with a broken leg

[@epicpgc]

I am a recovered pathological gambler who transacted £4.8m over 8 years using 93 different betting accounts whilst also having a successful banking career and raising a family.
I now run the UK primary problem gambling consultancy - EPIC Problem Gambling Consultancy - concentrating on Education, Prevention, Identification and Control of problem gambling.
My experience of suffering the addiction, and beating it, has been invaluable in writing the EPIC programme. I do believe gambling addiction to be slightly different from drug and alcohol addiction in that it is truly psychological rather than substance based. I know how a gambler thinks, I know how a gambler's thought processes evolve through the recreational/problem/compulsive/pathological stages and I know what needs to be done to overcome this illness. These personal experiences are infinitely more valuable than reading 1,000 text books or going on 1,000 training courses.
I do believe CBT, mindfulness, counselling and NLP have a part to play in gambling treatment but it is very dangerous to try and treat every gambling addiction as though it is the same like you would take Beechams for flu. No two addictions are the same with different triggers, different motivators and personal experiences.
Paul

[Gary Turner]

Hi Paul, great work you are doing!

It is not just wrong to treat all addictions as the same, it is also wrong to treat all persons as the same. Everyone is an individual. Individuals need treating as an individual.

Knowing how to discover how the individual thinks acts and behaves allows me to target the right intervention in the right way - for that individual. Again, you don't need to have been an addict to help an addict.

With any addiction there are common neurological processes, such as the reward centres of the brain. How people access these is obviously individual, yet there are common processes nonetheless.

Experience does count, that's for sure. Yet that experience doesn't have to be from first hand experience.

Kind regards,

Gary

[@epicpgc]

Hi Gary

Thanks for the reply. You are absolutely right and when I am looking for people or organisations to fulfill the 'C' part of EPIC (Control) I think it is effective to have the balance of people who have experienced the addiction in addition to people who have studied and experienced helping addicts with this illness.

Please feel free to have a look at my website www.epicpgc.com and it will give you a flavour of what we are trying to do. The NHS have a fantastic problem gambling clinic in London run by Henrietta Bowden-Jones and Neil Smith but there is only so much they can do on limited funding.

There are also a number of quite expensive rehab clinics who deal with gambling such as sporting chance, Priory, etc but unfortunately those who have already dropped off the edge of the cliff seldom have money to pay for this treatment. EPIC tries to prevent people and businesses getting to the edge of the cliff in the first place.

Paul

[Dr Kostas Agath]

Experts,

What would you say to people who say “How can you help me, you’ll never understand unless you are an addict?”

Whilst it is true that people know things about themselves that no one else knows, it is also true that our friends/ family/ fellow students & work colleagues know things about ourselves that we are blind to. This partly explains what happens at the early stages of addiction, when the addicts believe that they are in control of their drug use - contrary to the viewpoint of all those around them.

Professionals try skilfully to bring that second viewpoint into consideration - so that the addict makes an informed choice about what s/he wants to do next.

Professionals are trained to remain objective whilst they slip into other people's shoes. Furthermore, in specialist services (such as Addaction and others) there are professionals who have already conquered their own addiction and are invaluable in assisting others in their recovery journey.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that making an informed choice means knowing relevant facts - that a professional has a duty to share with an addict. Those facts are usually statistics that come out of research. Whilst it is true that not everyone will be a statistic, some of us would. It is thus useful for addicts to know, for example, that there is a considerable chance that they will conquer their addiction (whatever that addiction is), and that the earlier they seek help the better those chances are.

However, it is also worth knowing that using illicit substances is never safe and that it is one of the highest causes of mortality amongst young people. Most people will never buy a supermarket product without reading the label, or, take medication they bought from a pharmacy without reading the instructions. But it is also true that a few people will take an unknown substance bought from an unknown person in a dark alley or a club.

With the help of a professional, addicts can reflect on their thoughts, feelings and behaviour so that they can choose the future they want to be in. The addict's understanding of their own predicament is the starting point in that journey, but the contribution of non-judgemental professional help is crucial.

[Mark Dempster]

Dr Kostas i firmly agree with the remark you made concerning specialist addiction services usually having professionals which have conquered their own personal addictions. This mirrors my personal history. I came from a family of addiction where i witnessed from toddler- hood the dereliction, despair and destruction that both alcoholism and drug addiction bring to the family unit. However being in 12 step recovery for 17 years and remaining abstinent for that whole time provides me the tools to remain sober regardless of what life situations present or throw at you. My father died sober last year with 14 years sobriety in 12 step recovery and my mother has 6 years sober. I have witnessed thousands of people in my recovery and professional journey get clean and remain clean from alcohol and drugs. Often the hardest time is in the first year of recovery when beginning an intimate relationship or dealing with negative emotional states and irrational thought processes. In my experience drugs/alcohol are the clients solution in dealing with his/her uncomfortable feelings such as shame, low self esteem, poor self concept, over-critical dialogues and over sensitivity. The drugs and alcohol completely change their perception of self and reality, to such a degree, that they never wish to return to those uncomfortable feelings, however the drugs and alcohol eventually stop working. They say in one of the fellowships ' alcohol showed me how to fly but it took away my wings'. When i work with clients with addiction putting down the drugs/alcohol/gambling/sex etc is only the very beginning of a long journey that effectively last the rest of your life. There is no cure for addiction but only a daily reprieve. The good news is that you can have an amazing life if you just follow a basic programme which involves continuing to work on oneself. 12 step fellowships have the biggest evidence base as regards success for full recovery from alcoholism and addictions. The family anonymous programmes such as ALANON and ALATEEN are invaluable and off course these meetings are all free,