Life Recovery
Life Recovery will work privately with patients, families, and provider agencies to determine appropriate treatment plans for chemical dependence which offer long-term benefits with a high incidence of success in a cost effective manner. Life Recovery believes in efficient, solution focused treatment working towards reducing individual and family conflict, and improving health. The procedure is to combine cognitive behavioral and/or rational emotive therapy with medication management to alleviate symptomology.
The Treatment Services to be used by Life Recovery detailed herein are the combined efforts of researchers, clinicians, physicians, and administrative personnel, and would be considered the most up to date process available for the treatment of chemical abuse. These protocols tend to be more sensitive to the realities of causation and cravings, and the overwhelming effects of deprivation, in part due to:
— The historically relatively poor success rate of current treatment protocols.
— The traditional system of abstinence/detox as a prerequisite for treatment, public self-disclosure and group therapy, which has been the standard of care for the past 65 years, may not work effectively for most alcoholics/drug abusers according to the majority of recently published studies.
— The achievement of abstinence as a primary treatment goal is most efficiently accomplished via a process of pharmacological elimination of cravings and systematic abuse reduction combined with individual and personal therapy.
The protocols to be used and detailed herein, are successful because they utilize psychopharma-cological and non-addictive anti-craving FDA approved medications, which normally increase the patient’s motivation to achieve abstinence after initiating control over relapses, together with a regimen of cognitive behavioral therapy, with emphasis on underlying causation.
Patients, families and employers will seek treatment because:
1) For most, alcohol and drug craving is significantly diminished, if not eliminated.
2) Outpatient treatment is cost effective and patient friendly.
3) Services are available for people who have previously failed to stop drinking or using drugs, refuse current methods, or would otherwise remain untreated for substance abuse.
4) Privacy and strict confidentiality is assured.
5) Life Recovery has proven methods of treatment.
6) The legal system reports 80% of criminal and civil cases involve abuse of alcohol or drugs, therefore court ordered treatment rather than jail for alcohol/drug related violations is becoming a standard across the nation. Drug Courts are seeking more effective treatment methodologies.
7) Life Recovery provides a treatment program with medications to reduce or eliminate alcohol or opioid craving, accompanied by cognitive-based therapies, case management and aftercare, including web support to address personal issues, data tracking for validation of long-term outcomes and the use of ASI and CGI assessments during treatment to provide measurement markers and accurate outcome measurement reports.
8) Emphasis will be placed on the need for more productive and empathetic care and treatment of elderly patients and especially on the need for dual diagnosis which is recently becoming more recognized as crucial to a successful outcome.
9) A growing recognition that alcohol drinking and opioid abuse results in a rewarding stimulus, increasing the probability that a person will continue to seek and maintain contact with the particular stimulus. A patient who finds alcohol/drug use rewarding may subsequently abuse more often and in larger quantities.
10) Use of acupuncture, massage, nutrition and spiritual/meditation therapies within a holistic health and wellness environment will assist certain patients having difficulty or struggling to reduce their drinking or drug habits.
11) Tested and refined protocols have produced patient abstinence exceeding 25% for alcoholics with significant harm/risk reduction and sobriety reached by an additional 55% of heavy drinkers. Additionally, a 90% remission of opiate drug abusers, including those who wish to get off of methadone maintenance has been achieved.
Many of the people treated for alcoholism, under methods where abstinence is a prerequisite for treatment, have a very high rate of relapse. Statistically, 8 to 12 percent of the people who attend alcohol support groups attain a long-term record of sobriety. The problem when asking someone to commit not to drink before beginning treatment and while they are craving is that this is a difficult promise to keep, especially when the alcohol deprivation effect overwhelms many patients. When the promise is broken as it most often is, there is reinforcement to a cycle of failure. It is not uncommon for people to seek treatment often with the best of intentions, at various inpatient treatment centers, sometimes repetitively, and then return to their former patterns of abuse. The craving is intense, causing this type of pattern to develop in so many patients who, one way or another, earnestly try to deal with overcoming their drives, just to “fall off the wagon” after periods of sobriety. Similarly, opioid drug abusers face daunting challenges in overcoming their addiction(s), because until recently the only solution was detoxification and a probable lifetime on methadone maintenance. The new protocols using Buprenorphine has revolutionized treatment alternatives.
Life Recovery knows that the philosophy of inpatient treatment, 12-Step programs, NA and other community services can work and save lives, families, and marriages. Life Recovery pro-actively makes referrals of our patients, once they have reached sobriety or are known to be abstaining from drinking/drugging, to traditional 12 Step groups and other community services as an additional support to his program services.
The problem is that the majority of excessive abusers have not sought, and will not initiate to seek treatment, without a precipitating crisis. This is because sobriety is a difficult decision and a dauntingly difficult achievement in the face of the persistent cravings, especially when aggravated by an underlying diagnosis. There have been no truly effective medically-based treatment programs to reduce alcohol and drug craving in the United States until very recently. Contrary to other health abusive disorders, many treatment providers insist upon abstinence immediately or a chemical detoxification as a prerequisite for treatment.
Life Recovery maintains access to and will hasten to utilize the newest approved medications breakthroughs to diminish alcohol and drug craving, using an opiate antagonist such as Naltrexone, the new injectible formulation Vivitrol, the craving reducing medication Acamprosate, and the partial agonist Buprenorphine. Pharmacology research is focusing on new medications for coexisting conditions that can threaten recovery, particularly depression and anxiety. There are currently 33 major clinical studies under way, the results of which could be instrumental in additional FDA approvals in the future.
Treatment protocols are designed and planned to participate in the emerging disciplines of dual diagnosis for frequently co-occurring disorders, effective brief behavioral therapies, the new field of coaching and where appropriateness is clearly indicated, alternative medicine options including nutrition, meditation, massage therapy and acupuncture. Of most significance today, is the breakthrough finding that using Naltrexone prior to alcohol consumption supports a reduction in the craving for alcohol which is beneficial to the majority of drinkers who are currently resistant or non-compliant, while Buprenorphine for opioid abuse has created new potential for successful outcomes, because of the efficiency of its beneficial properties in relieving withdrawal symptoms, anxiety and stress.
Life Recovery will focus on updating the available treatment protocols when new medications and procedures are approved by the FDA or validated by published clinical studies. All of this will be integrated with the effective use of internet technology, and the assembling of patient tracking data which will enhance convenience for patient/clinician interaction in the maintenance of long-term abstinence and healthier lifestyles.
Until the therapeutic use of Naltrexone, there had been no effective medication to treat the alcohol craving which often leads to escalated abuse and which also leads to relapse. Research and everyday clinical experience has proven that many problem drinkers, who would otherwise be most likely to remain problem drinkers, can learn to decrease alcohol consumption and become abstinent if they follow specific guidelines, eg. protocols, and are medically monitored. A high percentage of patients do reach abstinence, the ultimate goal of treatment services. Acamprosate, with its anti-craving and GABA balancing qualities in the brain, is the latest tool for alcohol treatment and is used in a combo-therapy protocol with Naltrexone.
We believe above all in the promotion and maintenance of abstinence as this becomes a realistic opportunity resulting from the advantages which our protocols provide. We expect that our outcomes will verify the results of a much higher abstinence potential than currently measured by all other treatment services. We believe in the seriousness of alcoholism and drug abuse, that both are learned behaviors because of the reward stimulus effect and can become a disease of the mind and body, and can lead to death. In the case of opioid treatment with Buprenorphine outcomes are far superior to Methadone and offers the hope of eventual elimination of medication maintenance altogether.
Life Recovery gives patients who otherwise may never have identified with a promise of cure, and their families, a chance to achieve harm/risk reduction and sobriety and to attain realistic short and long term goals to better manage his or her life, and the opportunity to end his or her alcohol or opioid drug consumption. Patients are provided a concentrated rehabilitative effort and all conceivable tools to encourage responsiveness, and to relearn positive behaviors to ensure long lasting successful outcomes.
Please Call: 407-829-8588
Please Call: 407-829-8588