Getting to the Roots of Addiction

I frequently work with addiction as part of my Family Therapy Practice.  Shamanic Healing, Sound Healing, Jungian Analysis may be used as well as traditional medication for chemical imbalance prescribed by an M.D.  Any or all of these practices may be applied over time in an attempt to help an addict recover a life and, hopefully, let go of the hold a drug or drugs may have on him or her.

Addiction is one of the leading causes of crime, incarceration, disruption of life, loss of family and severe illness among people of all ages and contributes to an early death for most addicts. It is also a signal of deeper wounds within the psyche.  The addict looks for something outside himself/herself to ease an often strong desire for relief or fulfillment. The drug or substance the addict takes does not help for long.  The drug is viewed as almost an other world experience that brings thoughts of joy and sense of freedom the addict’s actual life often lived on the streets where added abuse, homelessness and physical illness are rampant.

There is also a physiological root to addiction.  This chemical shift within the brain of an addict often begins in a childhood of abuse and emotional or physical abandonment.  Most addicts begin their drug use as young as 11 years old. The life of an addict continues to create altered brain chemistry and returns the addict, after the “high”, to even more of what he or she is trying to escape.  It becomes a catch-22 situation.

As a therapist, my work is to listen.  I do not judge or blame. I am compassionate so I strive to understand and to care.  I am kind.  I am empathetic. I may hug the distressed addict and may cry with them. I hear the stories and offer alternatives in counseling through methods such as story (rewriting a narrative), shamanic healing with its offer of deep meditation and an alternative state or way of viewing the self and the world, and sound healing which is a nonverbal way of reaching through the body to shift the chemistry with tuning forks and chanting.  I invite, if possible, the whole family or those family members who are willing and/or able to participatem to sit with the addict and open up the roots of the addiction in past experiences in the home, streets, and school. It is a deep and emotional experience that results creating a positive force.  

I offer a doorway through my practice.  I continue to try to open that door and encourage, help the person who is addicted, walk through. I also then always send my clients and patients to a qualified M.D. with experience in addiction or who can offer residential treatment and outpatient treatment for those who can accept that.

My overall resolve is to try and help an addicted personality to ease the terror caused by a belief that he or she is trapped, without substances, in an unending abyss of dark emotions.  It is the kind of work that as a therapist, I find truly rewarding when I can help someone through the darkness.

New Workshop: Vibrant Aging - Storytelling in the Oral Tradition

I've just launched a new workshop geared towards the aged called "Vibrant Aging: Storytelling in the Oral Tradition."  As we age, something wonderful happens, and that is we become wiser because we have accumulated so much wisdom. My new workshop harnesses that wisdom by weaving it into a storytelling format.  As we get older, it becomes more and more important to create a legacy, something for future generations to remember us by.  The oral tradition is a personal and intimate form of storytelling used for centuries by many cultures that creates and deepens the human connection. Early storytelling combined stories, poetry, music, and dance and those who excelled at it became educators, cultural advisors, wisdom keepers and historians for the community. The history of a culture was handed down from generation to generation through these storytellers.

I conduct this Vibrant Aging Storytelling Program for retirement homes, assisted living and other elder care communities in a 45-minute format, by artfully using my storytelling skill to enable the aged to reach within to tell their stories creatively in a way that leaves a powerful impact and legacy.  Participants learn how to use the wisdom of age to its fullest potential to create compelling stories in the oral tradition to gain a sense of fulfillment in their lives with a renewed vibrancy to unlock their creative inner core and share it with others. 

Contact me if you know of a community that would benefit from this program.

A Peek into “The Foot of the Lion”

During the past few weeks, I have been deeply involved in finishing my novel, The Foot of the Lion.  I am in the midst of wrapping up the last chapter.  Here’s an exclusive preview:

The Foot of the Lion is a fictional story about a man who returns to his father’s house to die.  He is attended to by a fifteen year old girl servant who washes and oils his feet as he tells her stories.  Without his knowledge or approval, she goes to his father’s library and rewrites the stories, adding her point of view.  In the end, her benefactor dies, leaving his father’s house and fortune to the servant girl and their daughter.  The central relationship and main thread of the novel is between the benefactor and his cousin - all told in story form to the servant girl.  His cousin whom he refers to as “his beloved”, had died suddenly and mysteriously in a swimming accident at the age of seventeen.  The benefactor mourns that death and hopes for a reunion with his cousin in the afterlife.  The young girl hopes with him and wishes him peace and joy on his path into Paradise.

My editor in England is current with my work and is encouraging. I also am scheduled to attend the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in July and the Tomales Bay Workshop in October in order to network with agents and other writers and plan to receive guidance from Luis Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, and Dorothy Allison, 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award Winner for Fiction and member of the board of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Information about the publication and availability of advanced readers copies will be forthcoming.

This, along with poetry, keep me content and inspired.