VistaTaos

No licensed and certified counselor believes that an addict can achieve recovery based on individual, group, and family therapy alone. While they are essential components of any treatment program, it’s also important to engage a person’s emotional and behavioral self and teach him how to be comfortable, once again, in his or her own skin. The Rosen Method of bodywork is one way to do that.

Meet Marion Rosen

The Rosen Method of movement was initially developed by a physical therapist named Marion Rosen, who lived in Germany up until 1940. At that time she was forced to emigrate because of her religion, and she came to California. With her she brought her knowledge of bodywork and relaxation techniques, trained to make a connection between a person’s physicality and emotional state. She loved dance, and she incorporated music into her therapeutic regimens.  Her main focus was the development of bodywork that anybody could do, without stressing joints or hurting muscles.

Rosen worked at the Kaiser Medical Center in California and then started her own private practice, and the Rosen Institute opened up in the 1970s. Gradually, Rosen Method became an accepted form of treatment to help people reach inner peace through expression of the outer body. Marion Rosen passed away in 2012, but the bodywork techniques that help a person rediscover his body are her legacy.

Why Rosen Method Works

Unlike typical exercise routines that can actually cause pain, the movements are simple and basic, and they are a great way to keep the body moving and flexible.  A typical Rosen Method class utilizes movement routines set to music, taking patients through motions that stretch every muscle and move every joint, but slowly and without any pain.

Focusing on breathing is an essential part of Rosen Method bodywork. People who are stressed out from the challenges of life often forget to take those long, slow, deep breaths that relax us. They have lost the ability to express their true emotions.

The techniques that retrain people to taking those revitalizing breaths are so important because deep breathing carries many benefits. It triggers the release of endorphins into the brain. Deep exhalations rid the body of toxins. Improved blood flow means boosted energy levels.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Breathing exercises also help the person to respond to the right-side of his brain, the emotional and artistic part. Some studies indicate that addicts struggle with the more creative right side of the brain: Normal right-brain function occluded by norepinephrine and serotonin levels mixed in with the experiences of pleasure can stymie the addict’s recovery efforts. When breathing exercises take a person into that deep, quiet part of himself that recognize his emotions, he can regain a sense of rediscovering or renewing himself.

Looking inward and reaching a point of renewal is so important to recovery from substance abuse or addiction. A person loses a sense of who he is when he’s struggling to regain a sober balance in his life. Besides the physical and mental effects of his substance of choice, there are the conflicts with family members and the battle to maintain his position in society, with his career and his social network.  

Therapeutic experiences such as equine therapy, massage, art or music therapy, acupuncture, and bodywork like the Rosen Method take the patient to the right side of the brain, so that he can explore and relate to his inner self without the conflict that comes with addiction. It’s a real way to regain the essence of one’s own personality. For more information on the Rosen Method at Vista Taos Renewal Center, call 1.800.245.8267

References:

Deans, Emily. Dopamine, the Left Brain, Women, and Men. Psychology Today, 5/17/2011. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201105/dopamine-the-left-brain-women-and-men

Sober Recovery.com. What Side of Your Brain Are You Using? Left or Right? http://www.soberrecovery.com/alcoholdrugtreatment/article/drug-treatment/what-side-of-brain-you-are-using-left-or-right-brain.html

People seldom go into drug or alcohol treatment unless there is some imminent threat to the status quo of their daily lives: Maybe the spouse is giving up on them, an employer has required substance abuse treatment, or the person is backed into a legal corner, to name a few reasons. Anybody who goes into treatment deserves credit for admitting the need for help. If you know why some people drop out early, you can be forearmed with knowledge that will keep you from doing the same.

Once someone enters treatment, whether it’s outpatient or residential, he has to understand that the treatment will last over a period of many weeks and even months. One of the most common questions that people ask is, “If I do well, can I get out of treatment early?”

Even if treatment is undertaken with reluctance, it’s not a punishment. Most rehab centers will not accept someone as a patient unless he says that he wants to go. Even if he is faced with legal consequences, he is still making a choice for treatment, because the fact is that many people choose jail.

So the answer to that question is that there is no “early release” for treatment. Treatment programs comprise a series of therapy topics that the patient must complete before he is ready to move to a new level of care. They include things like understanding the full effects of the drug of choice, recognizing the role of family in the recovery process, understanding triggers, putting together a support network and an aftercare plan, and much more.  If the person has been admitted to a 90-day residential treatment center, then it will take 90 days to get through all the material that the counselor wants to cover with him.

Most Common Reasons People Give Up

• Most people drop out because they believe that once the drugs are out of their system they will be fine. The truth is that they need to work on understanding those triggers that make them use plus the neurobiological effects of drug use or they will be right back where they started.

• Many people fear they will lose their jobs if they go into treatment. The fact is they are more likely to lose their jobs if they discontinue treatment. The boss will be less likely to tolerate the next relapse, and the person’s benefits and insurance, protected while he is on the job, will evaporate.

• Women with children drop out more often than their male counterparts or women without children. They feel the pull to go home and take care of their family, but the reality is they are putting their family at risk to suffer during their next relapse, and they are also modeling poor behavior to their youngsters.

• Those addicted to stimulants such as amphetamines or cocaine have a higher level of difficulty. Facilities that provide alternative therapies such as acupuncture, biofeedback, massage, or other regimens often help such patients maintain focus on recovery.

• A majority of patients suffer from a co-occurring diagnosis such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or some other mental health issue. It’s important to find a treatment center that will work on both diagnoses in order to make the person feel well again.

The profile of the person most likely to stay in treatment is the employed, educated, affluent male over the age of 40. Whether or not you fit that profile, you can withstand risk factors that may paint you as a potential drop-out. The first week to 10 days of treatment are very difficult. The patient has to get to know his counselor, the staff, and the other patients. A rehabilitation center that can help you work on your entire self, on a plan for renewal, will provide the best chance of success.  Once you leave the treatment center, it’s important to attend 12-step meetings and work your aftercare plan. Staying in treatment for the full course is the only way to reach that all-important stage of aftercare.

The Texas courts are working out a deal for Ryan Leaf, convicted of abusing pain medication in Texas when he was coaching the quarterbacks at West Texas A&M way back in 2008. It’s possible this former QB, identified by the NFL network as the biggest all-time NFL quarterback bust, will be permitted to serve his sentence concomitantly with the sentence he is now serving in his home state of Montana.

Leaf’s career took off like a rocket during his junior year at Washington State University—he quit his senior year to be signed by the San Diego Chargers. However, his cocky attitude garnered him little favor among his teammates. Winning his first two games in the NFL, he completed only one of fifteen passes in his third game and then was caught on film hollering at a camera operator after the game.  The next day, he screamed at a reporter. After his fourth game he was benched. The next season, he missed the start because of a shoulder injury. He was fined and suspended shortly afterward for hollering obscenities at his team’s general manager.

His third season saw him with a wrist injury, ironically sustained while throwing an interception, which plagued him for the next couple years and eventually required surgery. He played for Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Seattle—seeing little actual time on the field—and retired just before training camp got underway in 2002. He had only four career wins and fifteen losses.

Some speculate that his unrelenting, overall poor attitude resulted in a reluctance on the part of coaches to help him with physical therapy that could have helped him come back from his injuries.  Regardless of the truth in that, he ended up on pain medication therapy that graduated into addiction.

Leaf eventually returned to Washington State, earned his degree, and worked as a financial consultant in San Diego. However, he took a job coaching Texas A&M’s quarterbacks in 2006. In 2008, he resigned when a story broke that he asked a player to give him a pain pill.

In the spring of 2009, still in Texas, Leaf was arrested for burglary and for attempting to obtain a controlled substance fraudulently. He was doctor-hopping in the hopes of getting enough hydrocodone to satisfy his addiction, and there was evidence he had burgled an apartment, although this latter charge eventually was dropped. By the time the indictment was issued, he had conveniently checked himself into a rehab center in Canada.  When he returned to Washington, he was arrested, and he posted bond for his charges in Texas. In 2010, he received ten years’ probation for the felony charges.

Early in 2012 in Montana, he was arrested twice in a four-day span for burglary, theft, and drug charges. He plea-bargained this down to one felony for burglary and one count of criminal possession of a dangerous drug.  His prison sentence of nine years included nine months of lock-down residential substance abuse treatment, and if he complied with treatment, two years of his sentence would be suspended.

However, toward the end of his treatment period, he violated the rules of the facility and then in his typical blustery fashion threatened a staff person at the facility, which won him a ticket back to the state prison.  Leaf is a shining example of the immature personality with passive-aggressive (in Leaf’s case, mostly aggressive) behaviors that often accompany addiction issues. Maybe in addition to settling on a sentence for abusing pain killers in Texas, the court will finally order some treatment for his co-occurring emotional disorders.

A new study is making the rounds of professionals in recovery centers about how men behave when they reach the codependent stage of a relationship. It describes the family therapy that men should receive when their partners are in rehab treatment. Authors Dan Griffin and Rick Dauer have published “Rethinking Men and Codependency” in the online Addiction Professional journal, and they express some surprising viewpoints about male codependency and addiction.

Some Codependency Is Natural

The first posit is that codependency makes up a natural part of any relationship—that all relationships comprise independent, interdependent, and codependent interactions. However, based on the theory that men lack skills in relationship maintenance, their codependency often manifests in ugly and undesirable ways.

The authors assert that we all benefit from some level of codependency in our relationships. If codependency means that we take away a good feeling from the fact of the relationship, there is no harm in some level of codependency. The negativity of codependency comes when relationships are defined by one partner’s self-worth based upon the behavior of the other partner.

In terms of addiction, this means that the male codependent feels validated when he responds to save the addict from herself. Since addiction can be such an all-consuming force in the life of the addict—and the people around her—it’s not long before her partner gets sucked into an ever-widening spiral of codependency that obliterates the balancing forces of independence and interdependence.

The Male Behavioral Model

The next posit of the authors surrounds the behaviors that boys are taught as they grow into men: Don’t cry. Be tough. Never give way. Don’t ask for help.

Men generally do not work to sustain relationships in the same way as women.  They are not good at interpersonal skills like communication, conflict resolution, setting healthy boundaries, identifying personal needs, self-care, emotional expression, intimacy, or a willingness to ask for help.  

Codependence can generate feelings of being powerless, vulnerable, fearful, and insecure. But men express those feelings with arrogance or detachment. They are good at hollering and raging around the house. They are manipulative and controlling or even paternalistic.

When Codependency Takes Over

If you are the male half of a relationship in which your partner is using alcohol or drugs, your codependent behaviors will soon become the dominant part of your relationship. By their very nature, you are most likely to express your feelings by avoiding intimacy or cheating outside of your relationship. Your actions toward your addicted partner will involve verbal abuse and threats. You will watch her carefully and try to control everything she does. Your fear of abandonment—nobody wants a relationship to end simply because of addiction—could result in a lasting distrust in your own instincts and a cynicism toward others.

Family Counseling for the Male Codependent

The authors of this study say that a healthy relationship is one that can adapt to the needs of the partner. If your partner is in a recovery center, you should be willing to adjust your needs and schedule so that she can receive the treatment she requires. However, you are not responsible for her recovery—that’s up to her.

The professionals at the recovery center can work with you in family sessions to achieve a better level of interdependence in the relationship and less codependence.  You can develop improved skills for communicating with your loved one. You can learn fair ways to resolve conflicts and how to set boundaries for acceptable behaviors. You will need to recognize your own personal needs and allot some time for your own self growth. That’s your job: Participating in family counseling is up to you. When loved ones participate in the Family Program they gain understanding of how addiction has impacted their lives and can begin their own recovery in a sense while supporting their loved one while in treatment.  For more information on the Family Program at Vista Taos Renewal Center contact them at 1.800.245.8267.

Residents of Colorado can expect a new kind of tourist spending money to fill up their state coffers: They are about to receive visits from all kinds of people who want to smoke dope. The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado puts a whole new spin on the words “Rocky Mountain High.”

In Colorado, the new law allows each resident of the state to cultivate six plants, only three of which can be mature. If this law goes unchallenged by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a husband and wife team recreationally using marijuana could own a total of 12 plants.

In addition to the growing plants, each person can possess up to an ounce of harvested marijuana and can give—as a gift—up to an ounce of marijuana to another person. Visitors to the state are also permitted to possess small quantities of marijuana for personal use.

That brings a new kind of carpetbagger to Colorado: Where some states have casinos and others offer internet betting cafes, organized and well financed businessmen are looking to cash in big time on tourists coming for recreational marijuana in Colorado. You can bet that the people who bankroll these recreational operations will keep a close rein on their interests.

Almost 55 percent of voters approved the measure in November. However, the highest concentrations of yes-votes came from tourist centers such as Aspen, Vail, and Telluride. Residents of urban areas such as Denver were less enthusiastic.

An excise tax of 15 percent will be charged on the wholesale cost of nonmedical marijuana, and establishments that want to process it or sell it must pay an application fee of up to $5,000. Facilities that are already approved for the manufacture or production of medical marijuana will not have to pay more than $500 for the license. The new amendment requires that the first $40 million raised shall be allocated to the Public School Capital Construction Assistance Fund.  There is also the promise of less money spent on prosecuting adults who possess small quantities of the drug.

The new law regulates the concentration of THC to be no more than 0.3 percent of the cannabis product. Individuals who grow it must do so behind locked doors and not in public view. Licenses, required for cultivation facilities as well as production plants, testing facilities, and retail establishments, will not be issued until October 2013.

That gives plenty of time for opponents of the amendment as well as federal officials to debate the merits of this new state law. About 20 million people smoke marijuana in a given year, and according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 9 percent of them will go on to become addicted. NIDA states that chronic users exhibit poor memory retention and substandard learning aptitudes that can last for many weeks.

Clinicians who treat addicts express additional concerns about their patients in substance abuse treatment who have used marijuana regularly over extended periods. Typically they suffer from panic attacks or anxiety attacks, and they lack motivation to do positive things with their lives. Now they will be told this drug is legal.

If you have concerns about a friend or family member who is already using marijuana—even as Coloradoans wait to see how the federal government will respond to this law—contact a substance abuse treatment center. Recreational marijuana in Colorado or in Washington, where it has also been approved, instigates serious repercussions that will need to be addressed.

Reaching your goal of recovery involves a lot more than just stopping the use of alcohol or drugs. It means learning once again just who you are and what you stand for in this world. There’s no better place to work toward that goal than in a rehab center in New Mexico, a place where recovery can happen.

New Mexico is known as the Land of Enchantment. It is a place filled with the lore of the native wise ones gone before us, a sanctuary for deep exploring rituals that teach us who we are. Embedded into the culture of this area among the people who know how to make a difference is a sense of Earth stewardship. The Earth matters. The animals are important to us. We are here to help one another as well as ourselves.

You cannot attain the next level of recovery if you do not believe in yourself. As you work toward a natural, holistic healing of your body and soul, you will begin to remember the things about yourself that were true a long time ago, things you haven’t thought about in ages: You were good at writing. You loved to draw. You knew how to set words down as poetry.

No matter what your skills were, the things that made you unique, you will rediscover them as you move closer and closer to your goal.  You never really lost those skills; you just buried them beneath the layers of addiction. As you move further away from addiction and dependency, you will slowly reawaken and remember the person you actually are deep inside. 

Recovery begins when you come to New Mexico and experience an infusion of hope. It flows into your body as you approach the city of Taos. There is truly no sight on Earth as stunning as driving up the Rio Grande Canyon, and, at the top, coming upon the gorge bridge. You experience a spiritual chiaroscuro of your somber past limned—enlightened—by the muted, majestic reds and browns of the earth and mountains before you. The blue skies embrace the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance.  

When you come to a rehabilitation center in New Mexico, you are not far from the Taos Pueblo, home of the Tiwa Native Americans for over a thousand years. They are a people steeped in spirituality, and they believe the single most important event in their history has been the recent restoration of Blue Lake to their lands. Their legends hold that the Tiwa people originally came from the lake itself.

Characteristic of the Tiwa is their feeling of community, the feeling that they are “all in one nest,” as they say. Each adult in the community has a responsibility to provide service for others from time to time, to ensure that no single person’s desires can ever eclipse the good of the community. 

The beauty of the land, the spirituality of the Tiwa, and the power of the mountains will imbue in you a sense of belonging to a therapeutic community as you enter into recovery. Treatment is holistic, and recovery becomes natural. You can meditate and you can lift your face into the sun. Adjunct therapies including equine therapy restore you emotionally and acupuncture, if you choose it, can make a physical difference. You can relearn who you once were in a rehabilitation center.  New Mexico is a place where you can begin to heal. For more information contact Vista Taos at 1.800.245.8267.

Whether you’re seeking help from a drug abuse treatment center or you’re the family member of someone who is using, it will help you to understand the connection between the addict and her drug.  There is a relationship between the addict and her drug of choice that is more important to her than any of the relationships she has with the people in her life.

Think about the obstacles she overcomes to maintain her use:  She’s fighting with people, struggling to sustain some semblance of a daily life, and possibly even backed into a legal corner. Despite those negatives, she really enjoys the way that substance makes her feel. It’s a relationship that she never wants to end.

She puts more work into that relationship than with any of her real-life relationships.  Consider the qualities that go into a relationship: You think about commitment, dedication, faithfulness, honesty, and communication. But those qualities demonstrate themselves in a kind of twisted way when it comes to drug addiction.

She lies to the people in her life because she is committed to maintaining her addiction. She is dedicated to maintaining a façade that will protect her ability to use.  No matter what opportunities are presented to her, she remains faithful to her addiction.

Just how does that relationship become such a reality for the addict? As she descends into an ever-deepening abyss of addiction, she rationalizes her drug use by telling herself that she is different from other people and she can handle the drugs. That means that people are wrong about drugs being bad.

She has to believe that in order to maintain a positive self-image. The alternative is accepting that drugs generate negative behaviors, and she will have to despise herself for her use.  She must then despise the people who love her because, since she’s not worthy of love, the people who love her must be stupid. All of this unhealthy reasoning is exacerbated by her use.

Loved ones ask, “Why are you doing this to us?” Initially the addict promises over and over again to stop using. But she doesn’t stop. The satisfaction she gets from her high becomes the primary motivation in her life. Nobody and nothing matter as much as the substance of choice.

How does she shut down the people who are interfering with her drug of choice, the real love in her life?  You’ve heard that the best defense is a good offense: So the addict responds by lashing out at her family members.

She’ll begin with something like “I’m not hurting anybody but myself.” But she will spiral downward to horrible things like, “I don’t want you to interfere in my business” and “I hate you—I will never forgive you—leave me alone” and even “Why don’t you die.” She will say and do anything to get family members to back off.

If you are dealing with an addict and you feel that you are not as important to her as her addiction, you are correct. That’s why recovery requires involvement of the entire family. The addict is still fighting you when she says “I got myself into this—you can’t help me get out of it.” Recovery is not something she can do alone. A drug abuse treatment center can bring her to communicate with honesty. Only when she accepts the truth that her addiction affects her entire family, and only when she begins to work with her loved ones instead of against them, will she truly be able to achieve recovery.

One of the most recent fads in drug abuse is the ingestion of dextromethorphan—a common ingredient in cough and cold medications. So, just what is the biggest risk of DXM? The very fact that it’s a legal substance, contained in over-the-counter cough-and-cold medications, renders it very dangerous. When you ingest mass quantities of it, your brain forgets to tell your lungs to breathe. And then you die.

It’s Not New

Dextromethorphan crossed the radar of the drug-using public in the 1950s, and it didn’t take long for people to find out it could get you high. Once codeine was banned from over-the-counter cough syrups, drug manufacturers settled on dextromethorphan as a favorite new active ingredient. By the 1970s people began sharing exciting stories about the great highs they got from cough syrups like Robitussin and similar brands.

Nobody wants to single out Robitussin as the sole culprit, because other brand names (Delsym, for one) include DXM as well. Abusers also go for generics because they are more affordable. The point is that the Robitussin brand name became assimilated into users’ vocabulary—to druggies, “robotripping” means you’re up for a good time.

DXM dropped off the popularity scale in the 1990s, overshadowed by other ways to get high.  Lately it has re-emerged as a favorite drug of choice because it’s easy to access, both legal and cheap.  

Myths and Misconceptions About DXM

• First and foremost, people think they can take a safe trip as long as they look for cold pills that are mostly DXM. They think that DXM by itself is not harmful.  

• They have no idea how to calculate an effective dose for their high. The effect of DXM depends on body weight. That means the dose that puts a 150-pound person on a pretty neat high can be deadly for his 120-pound friend.

• People also believe that since DXM comes in commonly available over-the-counter medications it cannot possibly harm them. After all, the government wouldn’t put anything on the market that could kill them, right?

One Dose Leads to Another

Once someone goes down the road to dextromethorphan abuse, he may begin to explore ways to maximize his high. That’s when a user takes the cough syrup and cooks it down to extract pure DXM. The process involves the use of hazardous chemicals like naphtha, a flammable solvent used by wood workers.

If it weren’t so dangerous, it would be almost amusing to hear DXM abusers caution one another against ingesting anything except pure DXM. They simply don’t worry about blowing up their kitchen trying to extract it.

People tire of drinking so much cough syrup just to get high, so they often look for cold pills. Taking somewhere between 10 and 20 cold pills gives them a feeling of being drunk. When they take higher doses, 30 or more, they experience actual hallucinations. Taking more than that will put them face down on a sidewalk—or face up in a casket.

The Dangers of “Other” Ingredients

Most DXM products come with added common ingredients that are harmful when taken in excess. There is acetaminophen (think Tylenol), chlorpheniramine (an antihistamine), and guafenesin (an expectorant). The repeated ingestion of large amounts of Tylenol damages the liver permanently. Chlorpheniramine induces rapid heartbeat, and it also has been associated with seizures and coma. Guafenesin causes vomiting.

If you are using DXM or you know someone who needs treatment for dextromethorphan abuse, side effects include muscle spasms, panic attacks, delirium, loss of motor coordination, and, of course, that fatal suppression of the respiratory system. Don’t stop to take a breath—get help now.

Money doesn’t mean you can keep your children safe and sober. Just ask Michael Douglas, whose son Cameron Douglas, age 34, is back in court appealing an addition to his 5-year jail sentence. The actor’s son was sentenced in January 2010 when he pled guilty to narcotics distribution charges. Now a judge wants to add almost 5 more years to the sentence because he obtained drugs while in jail, and he lied to the court about how he got them.

The younger Douglas’s problems started way back when he was 13. Was he enabled by rich parents too busy to care for him? That’s the claim of Paul Schechtman, Cameron’s lawyer, in a brief filed during the appeal of this extra sentence. 

An enabler is someone whose actions make it possible for a person to get away with some negative action, such as substance abuse. Do you ever wonder, are you an enabler? Consider these statements:

• You overlook the person’s negative behavior, but just to keep peace in the house.
• You tell yourself that the problem is not really that bad.
• You have the patience of a saint, telling yourself that sooner or later things will change.
• If you’re guilty of anything, it’s of covering up for the person who’s using.
• Things would be better if that person would just do everything you say!

Who knows if Michael Douglas and his then-wife, Diandra Douglas, were guilty of enabling? It’s hard to know the truth of any family’s inner dynamics, especially when the people involved wield both money and power. But Manhattan Judge Richard M. Berman has cited Michael Douglas’s repeated staged interventions as an indication that the father had indeed taken notice of Cameron’s flagrant and increasing use of drugs. When those attempts failed, Douglas cut Cameron off from access to family funds.

Nevertheless, Cameron has undergone two decades of drug treatment. His longest period of sobriety occurred during his incarceration.

As a teenager, Cameron drank and snorted cocaine. He claimed his drug use prevented panic attacks and depression. By the time he was 20, he was injecting cocaine, and a few years later he turned to heroin. By the time he was arrested in 2009, he was mainlining up to six times daily.

At that point he was put on house arrest and placed at his mother’s home, but soon after he talked a girlfriend into bringing him heroin. He was caught and jailed. Instead of the 10-year sentence that the charges carried, he texted his suppliers and led law enforcement officials to two of them. Their arrest cut his sentence in half.

But even before the ink was dry on his court papers, he had sweet-talked a lawyer into smuggling Xanax pills into prison. Then he was caught again, this time with Suboxone and heroin, which he claimed he found on the floor of a chapel during a church service. Did you ever hear a better story told by any druggie? Unfortunately an unnamed “cooperator” told officials that he actually brought the stuff to Douglas in his cell. And now Douglas is trying to squirm out of his additional 4.5-year sentence.  

Michael Douglas, in the meantime, seems happy to know that his son is safe in a jail cell. It’s true that Cameron has suffered a broken femur sustained during a handball game—maybe courtesy of a drug lord who reached into jail to punish him for snitching. But he’s safer in jail than he would be on the street, dealing with the worst kinds of people and putting poison into his veins.

Douglas has stated for the record that his son’s prison sentence is a blessing in disguise. It’s hard to reach that level of peace and self-assurance of your actions when you have to help a loved one seek drug treatment. But if you wonder, are you an enabler, test yourself and get your loved one some help. You just might save his or her life.

Hopefully, you’ve already read information in this space about the various types of group therapy in which you’ll participate as part of your rehab experiences.  All groups are by nature dynamic, even emotional encounters, and they function generally within a set of guidelines that keep everything on an even keel. Here are the basic “rules” of group therapy for alcohol or drug rehabilitation centers.

It’s Like Vegas…Maybe it’s not; but just like Las Vegas, whatever goes on in group stays in group. The things that are said and the emotions that are revealed belong to the people who participated in the group—the property of the group, if you will. Whatever you say, it’s protected by the confidentiality that everybody agreed to upon entering rehabilitation.

Be a Joiner. It’s not fair to sit back in group and watch everybody else yet hold yourself apart. You are expected to give feedback, including what you see or hear and how you feel. Some group leaders get things rolling by having everybody take turns stating their high points and low points of the day. The more you put into group, the more you’ll get out of it.

Me, Myself, and I. Most people don’t realize that when they talk in the second person—When you do this or When you feel like that—it puts people on the defensive. When people hear you, you, you they automatically think you’re pointing a finger at them. Get in the habit of using “I” statements as a way of expressing yourself. People will apply more focus to what you’re saying without wondering if you’re picking on their behaviors.

Closed Minds Prohibited. Speaking of picking on other people, in group you’ve got to be more tolerant of them. Even if you wouldn’t normally associate with a certain person outside of group, you have to accept the others in the group for what they are—a part of your drug rehabilitation therapy—and listen to what they say. The standard prejudices you carry with you in your everyday life are checked at the door.

Bring In the New.  Along with your new open mind, you should look at group as a time to practice some of the new behaviors you’ve talked about with your counselor. It’s a way to develop the mindset you’ll need in order to succeed outside of group. Think of how you can apply what you learn in group to your real-life situations in the outside world.

No Drama, Mama. While it’s true that sometimes group members might reach a new level of self-awareness as a result of group, don’t sabotage group by dropping bombshells or telling your war stories. Dramatic, shocking revelations made just before the end of group suck the life out of other people’s recovery efforts. They’re simply not fair.

Keep War Stories in Perspective. You’ve probably seen 12-step meetings depicted in movies in which people talk about the baggage of their former lives. Well, the keyword here is movies. In real life, it’s destructive to the group to glamorize your old exploits or adventures. If everything was so great before you entered drug rehabilitation, you wouldn’t be here now.

No Rescuers Needed.  Despite the last couple rules, there are times when someone reaches a level of healing, which can be quite emotional. Respect the person by listening quietly. Do not offer tissues or go over and touch them while they are talking. Sit quietly and listen to them—follow the group leader’s cues. Don’t tell them how to act or what to feel.  The person deserves your attention and respect; if the time comes when you want to open up about something in group, you would want the same respect accorded to you.

Never Apologize. No matter what you say, you never have to apologize about who you are or what you’ve done. You’ve earned your place in this group.