Drug & Alcohol Intervention Help - We Get Them In to Treatment : NYC Intervention Specialists

Sad news coming out of LA this evening. A family loses a son, a brother, a dad. And a nation loses a performer who for all his strange quirks and oddities, spoke to people of all colors and got our toes to tapping.

This photo is from 1984. The year I graduated High School, and before his own personal fall along the lines of molestation and chaos. Also happens to be before the addiction which had already began in my own world got the best parts of me.

I remember this time. Things were still 99.9% good.

Whatever the cause of death is determined to be, families have power in the funk, the crisis, the darkness. That’s what we’re here for in so many instances – to shed light in the darkness. To make hope happen in the face of a loved one who spirals and is in pain.

So tonight I think of a family in pain. And a guy that seemed to be in pain for a long, long time.

Looking for the help to arrive like the cavalry seldom occurs. The change we seek begins right here, and now with a powerful loving invitation to make change begin  – not later, but now. Right now.

Onward, Brad

Alcohol abuse by GIs soars since ‘03

Soldiers diagnosed by Army substance abuse counselors with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, such as binge drinking, increased from 6.1 per 1,000 soldiers in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March 31, according to the data. The latest data cover the first six months of the fiscal year that began in October.

“We’re seeing a lot of alcohol consumption,” Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, told top officers during a briefing on the Army’s growing number of suicides.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed concern. “I’m sure there are many factors for the rising numbers (of enrollments) … but I can’t believe the stress our people are under after eight years of combat isn’t taking a toll,” he said.

Likewise, Marines who screen positive for drug or alcohol problems increased 12% from 2005 to 2008, according to Marine Corps statistics. In addition, there were 1,060 drunken-driving cases involving Marines during the first seven months of fiscal 2009, which began in October, compared with 1,430 cases in all of fiscal 2008.

In an interview last week, Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent said alcohol abuse is an indication of the stress, particularly with the ongoing cycle of combat deployments. “Alcohol can tie into a lot of things, and we’re just keeping a close eye on it,” Kent said.

Mullen and Chiarelli said the U.S. needs to reduce the overall number of deployed troops as planned to ease the strain.

Concerns about alcohol abuse led Chiarelli to issue a memo in May urging commanders to treat and, where necessary under Army rules, punish soldiers who test positive for substance abuse or fail blood-alcohol tests. During a visit to six Army installations this year, Chiarelli said, he found hundreds of cases where soldiers who failed those tests, in some cases more than once, were not treated for the problem or processed for possible discharge, as required by Army regulation.

Enrollments in drug abuse treatment programs have remained largely unchanged in the Army during the war, rising from 3.7 per 1,000 in 2003 to an estimated 4.2 as of May.

Chiarelli said top staff officers might not properly deal with the problem because of a need to “keep their numbers up” for combat deployments.

He said identifying and treating substance and alcohol abuse will help improve the Army’s mental health care and curb suicides, which reached a record 142 cases in 2008. There have been 82 confirmed or suspected suicides this year among active-duty, compared with 51 for the same period in 2008.

Just home this evening from the Association of Intervention Specialists (AIS) conference in Denver. What a great time! I presented a case study on Jason B.. With his family we intervened to help three + years back. I hadn’t spoken with Jason in over a year, and moments after I presented an email arrived from him, sending love and gratitude and good weather wishes from Hawaii. I share it with you because it means a lot to me:

___

Aloha Friday!Brad,
Sending a little shout out from the big island of Hawaii.
Congratulations! you are a wonderful human being. Thank you for all
the help along this journey. We are grateful for the important work
you bring into  this world. it would be great to hear an update of
your story. what is new? what is old? is the book out yet? inquiring
minds would love to know.
talk to you soon, Love Jason

___

UKESAD

Heading to London on Wednesday next to present at UKESAD. Very exciting times these are. To change!

- Brad

Interesting article. Check this out!
Some will say, “a pill?! never!!!”
I’m not so sure. A small percentage of folks who express a desire to stop, will actually stay stopped through 12 Step. So here’s to medicine and thought and remaining teachable.
___
CLICK CLICK:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102974699&sc=fb&cc=fp

The deal is this – it’s not metabolism or genes. It’s the food we put in our bodies that make them swell and hurt and grow beyond what they are intended. From the headlines today, the not-so-shocking claim that one in five preschoolers are obese.

We see them on the street, at the store, in our own home. It’s not the food – but it’s the food.

Huh!?

We confuse our wants with needs, then over time these become cravings answered as a matter of habit. We are dying to eat.

So here is the wake up call to every parent, caregiver, aunt, uncle, brother or sister – the answer starts with you. I call you to share and model how to eat, how to move, how to live in relationship with food rather than being enslaved by it.

You are the change you seek.

Talk it out and be in relation with one another instead of in relation to food. Listen for that tiny bell that signals FULL. Let your conversation expand; allow your love and care be a balm to living. A thing that fills you up on the inside that doesn’t expand your outside.

- Brad

____________________________

20% of U.S. preschoolers are obese

Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.

“The magnitude of these differences was larger than we expected, and it is surprising to see differences by racial groups present so early in childhood,” said Sarah Anderson, an Ohio State University public health researcher. She conducted the research with Temple University’s Dr. Robert Whitaker.

Friends – Come March 19, 2009 we will be in Chicago at the Center on Halsted talking about CHANGE. Come join in, as we look at how to help CHANGE SOMEONE YOU LOVE. This one-night event is sponsored by PRIDE INSTITUTE. Go to our website to register for this powerful & life-affirming no-cost event:www.ChangeSomeoneYouLove.com

I was thinking this morning, here in Toronto, how resilient we are. Am at the airport now, heading home to NYC. Home to the pooch and the love and warmth. I gotta say this little City Centre Airport in Toronto is the best airport experience I’ve had since 911. True. Easy in. Comfy lounge. Human, with wireless. What could be better!

We had an intervention with a family in San Jose last night. Not by the playbook, much behind the door was other than expected. But we made it through and got her the help she was literally DYING for.

Make it through. Overcome. Wade across. Get to the other side. This is on my mind this morning.

Feel discomfort. Eat or drink or drug or rage or do… RELIEF! Numb. Make it through. Repeat enough times, and the body starts responding by storing the overflow. The body responds. Stores. Stretching.

See we get through. My goal is to get through intact. Or at least with as much skin still on me as possible, with a calm mind, a happy heart and a good supply of JOY. Because at the end of the day, our personal stories are made up in large part by the relationships that dot the landscape of our lives.

I’m heading to London in May to speak at a conference. Exciting times. Change begins!

- Brad

Before and after pictures. Amazing!

It is terribly freeing. The act of honesty. For some it is natural. For me, it was learned. Each creaky bit of truth I spoke generated through sheer will and force of spirit.

The act of honest is enormously freeing. Of stepping out, in faith often, to be who you are called to be. The one who speaks, lives and breathes the truth. In and out. And when you fail at it, you admit to yourself and another this truth – that you have slipped off honesty but are redoubling your efforts right now to get back on that beam.

I was speaking in New York City on Tuesday in front of a crowd, talking about CHANGE, and I asked, just what is this problem of yours costing you!?

Ask yourself that question. What’s the cost? Sure there’s the financial piece. That usually springs to mind first. “We’re in the poorhouse cuzza your damn drinking!” I’ve heard more than a time or two. But really, what has been the cost? In the past, what has filled the place of a full life because of the interruption brought by addiction, and dependency?

The cost of my addiction was well over a three quarters of a million dollars. A lot. That’s not counting lost wages, productivity, dreams, schemes or what ifs. That’s just the dollar cost, makes no sense. I estimated that over the 20 years of active addiction, I spent on average 40K per year. Between the alcohol, the pills, the coke and the crystal, the cigarettes and the nonsense, it was buckets and buckets of dough.

What has it cost you? Come’on. Be honest with me. Level with me here.
Consider this question – WHAT HAS IT COST? In the broadest sense?

The addiction that ran laps around my head occupied the same space that a family might have. I will never know that particular cost. I was an absent son, brother, uncle. I was an addicted spouse, a troubled partner. It took a long time to get honest on this line-item rigorous bit of truth.

It cost a lot.

Grab a pen and jot down what it’s robbed from you. This exercise is not to paint you in to the victim’s corner. Just the opposite. If you desire to really get honest (and you must if you wish to heal, help and hold) then the list of real costs is an invaluable step in seeing where you really are in all this.

“REAL COSTS”

As the result of my ______________________’s addiction, I have lost out on:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

So that’s your start. Your silence won’t protect you; not one ounce. That’s what counts, really. Honesty is more than a saying or a slogan or a hope. It is the absolute fundamental foundation of helping someone you love, get out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. By taking an accurate inventory, through understanding the costs in real terms, we can move forward with a clear sense of the deficit that’s been created in this whole big ball of bad.

Email me your costs. Really. It matters. Share that with me. It will free something inside you. Free a part of you that’s been too busy holding it together.

A week ago a dear friend was in my home, and a crystal pipe fell out of her jacket pocket. The mood in an instant changed. She had been sober a great many years, yet in that moment I knew she had relapsed and no matter what words she strung together next, I knew in my gut that the words she said were in contrast to what her eyes were telling me.

It took about fourteen minutes for the truth to squeeze out. I didn’t squeeze her. I just made it safe for the truth to be spoken. So speak your truth with me, really, it is critical. When we share it with another human being, when we really get honest and talk nickels, dimes and dollars, we talk  cost.

My life since I stopped, has been nothing short of tough. And beautiful, and beyond my wildest dreams! Honesty is a cornerstone. Let’s do this, together. – Brad@InterventionSpecialists.org