Over the past thirty years, one thing has stood out to me more than anything else.  You must have accurate information to recover from substance abuse and addiction.  The more you know about addiction, recovery, and relapse prevention – the better chance you have of making a full recovery.

You must have accurate information 
to recover from addiction.

Whether you know it or not, accurate information is your most important recovery tool. You cannot recover from something you do not understand.  Therefore, my primary goal is to help you understand what addiction is, how to recognize it when you see it, and what you can do about it when you do see it.

I want to make this material easy to understand.  As a result, I have chosen to use a style of writing that speaks directly to recovering people and their families.  In this way, professionals, as they read this material, can benefit and pass it on to their clients to speed up the addiction education process.

Reading these blogs will give you a solid understanding of substance abuse and addiction.  Unfortunately, understanding alone is not enough. To recover you will need to take ownership of the material.  You will need to apply the information to yourself and put what you have learned into action.

Information alone is not enough. 
You need to apply what you have learned to yourself and put the new knowledge into action.

In learning about addiction, recovery, and relapse prevention it is critical to apply the information to yourself and those that you love.  If you just read the material as some abstract information that doesn’t apply to you, it won’t help you or those you love to strengthen your recovery program.

A formula guides many people in their recovery: This formula is: accurate information plus effective action equals the ability to recover. To recover you will need to apply what you have learned about addiction to yourself.

Accurate Information + Effective Action = The Ability To Recover

To learn you must become actively involved in what you’re reading.  This means reviewing the information with an open mind and seeing if the information fits your own experiences. Some of the information in these blogs may challenge the way you currently think about yourself and your understanding of substance use, abuse, and addiction. I promise you this – these blogs will contain the most recent science-based information that clearly shows that addiction is a progressive Biopsychosocial disease and presents effective tools that can help people to recover and avoid relapse.

The problem of addiction progresses because of a complex interaction among four things.
Addictive Brain Responses :The unique way the brain of addict responds to a drug);
Addictive Psychodynamics: The unique way the mind of an addict responds to a drug,
Addictive Behavior:   The habits that addicted people develop that constantly put them around people, places, and things and things where alcohol and other drugs are readily available.

Addictive Social Systems:. The way addicted people structure their lives to make heavy, abusive, and addictive alcohol and drug use possible.

You must address all four of these areas simultaneously to increase the chances of recovery.  This means that you need to take ownership of this information.  Taking ownership means finding what applies to you and then using it to make sense out of what is happening in your life.  As you read these blogs I want you to see that accepting the truth about your addiction help you. It will make it easier for you to think about and talk about your problems with alcohol and other drugs. It will make it easier for you to determine if alcohol and drugs are causing problems in your life.  If they are, itwill make it easier for you to seek the help you need to recover.

There was once a man named Al who had severe diabetes.  Al did not want to believe that he was sick.  Whenever his doctors tried to explain what diabetes was and how to manage it, Al would get upset.  He would tell his doctors that he was not sick.  He would refuse to listen to or follow their advice.  He would not regulate his diet or manage his stress. He would not take his insulin. According to Al, his doctors were crazy. They did not know what they were talking about.

Even though Al kept getting sicker, he would not believe that he had diabetes. His diabetes got so bad that he had to have his legs amputated, but even this did not change Al’s mind.

Right up until his death Al insisted that he did not have diabetes.  Al did not care about the facts because his mind was made up.  He was right and everyone else was wrong. He went to his death insisting that his doctors were wrong — insisting that they did not know what they were talking about.

The real tragedy is that Al’s diabetes was treatable.  If Al had been willing to learn about his illness and apply that information to himself, he could have lived longer and had a higher quality life. His doctors constantly put accurate information before him, but Al refused to listen.  The price he paid was a horrible and painful death.

As you start learning about substance abuse and addiction, you are facing an important decision.  Will you listen with an open mind, or like Al, will you close your mind to the information that could save your life?

Relapse! It’s a frightening word for many addicted people and those who love them. It is especially terrifying for people who have established what they believed to be a stable recovery and the suddenly, for reasons they don’t understand, start using alcohol or other drugs again.

My name is Terry Gorski and I work at Challenges in Fort Lauderdale as the Director of Relapse Prevention Services.  We see people in this dilemma every day.  The recovering person thinks everything is going well, then things just start going bad.  Old problems come back and the harder they try to fix them the worse they seem to get. The pain and problems become so bad that nothing seems to help.  This sets the stage for the addictive thinking and craving.  “Alcohol and other drugs can fix my problems and make me feel better.  I want5 relief real bad and to get relief I need my drug of choice.  The craving grows until it seems unbearable.  Then the person gets into a high risk situation where alcohol and other drugs are available, people will support their use and there is no one around to support their sobriety.  So, in a moment of weakness, they give up and start drinking and drugging.

I have been working in the substance abuse field for almost forty years.  During that time, I have seen many people recover from addiction.  Tragically I have also seen many people relapse. Some of these people who relapsed died as a direct result of returning to their addiction.

These deaths affected me deeply. It seemed to me, as a young man and a new counselor that more could have been done.  The problem was, we didn’t know what to do.  As a result, early in my life, I made it my primary mission to help suffering addicts, their families, and their communities.  I was determined to find more effectively ways manage addiction and its related problems.  I committed myself to develop new and more effective systems for promoting recovery and preventing relapse.  In this series of blogs I want to share with you some of the key aspects of what I learned.

In the next blog I’ll continue sharing with you what I’ve learned.