What’s Different: Addiction Treatment For Professionals
When professionals skilled and licensed in public safety-sensitive professions grapple with alcohol or drug addiction, the implications for the individual, their families, and the public can be devastating. This is particularly true for first responders, executives, attorneys, airline pilots, and healthcare professionals such as physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, counselors, and other types of professionals. A few bad decisions or circumstances can result in the loss of professional reputations, family relationships, and the ability to practice or work in their area of expertise.
Professionals typically have spouses and children expecting them to be full participants in family life and to support the family financially. When professionals become impaired because of addiction, the individual and their loved ones bear the pain.
Additionally, professionals often work in careers requiring a great deal of public trust. Addicted professionals destroy that trust. They can put members of the public, their patients, clients, even bystanders at risk.
What can we do to help?
Because of their professional training and education, this group often develops coping mechanisms that require specific intervention and treatment methods. Our program is staffed by a multidisciplinary addiction team that addresses the related challenges faced by this particular group. Our experience and expertise can help addicted professionals get on a path that helps restore their careers and their lives.
Diamond Tree Recovery first conducts a detailed evaluation to determine the nature and circumstance of the individual addiction, then determines the extent of treatment and recovery needs. The clinical team then evaluates the patient’s psychological and emotional, as well as physical health.
There is a comprehensive review of psychosocial and occupational history, family and relationship issues, psychological testing, neurocognitive assessment, and a complete medical exam.
We work closely with professional boards, employee assistance programs, and other referring organizations to assure treatment accountability and complete compliance with required licensing standards.
The stakes are high for professionals, so it’s critically important that those impaired choose a treatment environment offering a specialized program for addicted professionals. Diamond Tree Recovery provides addiction treatment for impaired professionals that uniquely addresses their individual addiction.
– Jordan Burningham
A Happier, Healthier Life
It is our honor to help addicted professionals recover from substance use and find relief from debilitating co-occurring disorders. Assisting others to achieve a happier, healthier and more peaceful life is our only objective. We take this responsibility seriously and provide professionals with top-quality medical and clinical care, including confidentiality, compassion, and respect throughout their experience.
The Missing Link to Overcoming Addictions
Nutrition: Essential Fatty Acids and Anti-inflammatory nutrients
Have you ever noticed how behavior in children changes dramatically when they are hungry? This is even more true of addicts, who, over time, have starved their brains of vital nutrients critical for optimal brain function, thereby exacerbating their behavioral disorders and inhibiting effective recovery.
Alcohol is not the only abused chemical, but perhaps the most and yet surprisingly unacknowledged worldwide cause of brain damage, cognitive impairment, and dementia. Many substances abused over years cause mental impairment. And let’s just state the obvious, when your brain isn’t working, you will struggle with mental illness.
Interviewing many of our patients, they tell us their addiction was about just needing something to get through the day, then fall asleep at night. Sometimes that was alcohol, cigarettes, or cannabis, other times it was harder substances like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines. Still, others were on prescription medications, like antidepressants or benzodiazepines, and had no idea how they could possibly live without them
Upon entering the program at Diamond Tree Recovery, nutritionist Amanda Kotter, MH, CN, author of “Mother Nature’s Medicine”, provides nutrient-rich meals to patients, most of whom would rather have a hamburger and fries. Very soon, however, they begin to feel differently. Their attitudes shift as they feel their health returning. Often times they assist in the food preparation and planning. By the end of their stay, they are asking for her cookbook.
Celery is not cookies. Essential nutrients are needed to help minimize withdrawal symptoms during detox and reduce cravings during recovery. Any plan for long-term abstinence must include an optimal nutrition plan.
– Amanda Kotter – MH, CN
In his book “End Your Addiction Now”, Dr. Charles Grant, physician and psychiatric consultant, says, “Unless the biochemical imbalances which are the true causes of substance problems are corrected, the benefits of psychological counseling will be marginal for most people.” (1)(2)
Recent studies reveal that drugs physically change the structure and function of the brain, which can lead to cravings. (A full list of studies is available for download at the end of this article.)
Several studies show a relationship between vitamin and mineral deficiencies and metabolic imbalances that tend to create addictive cravings. One such study by Dr. Roger Williams, the biochemist who discovered pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), showed that rats deficient in certain vitamins consumed more alcohol than those not vitamin deficient. But when those vitamin deficiencies were supplemented, alcohol consumption decreased.
It is well-established that nutritional deficiencies affect brain health in critical ways:
- abnormal neuronal development
- disruptions in regulatory processes, such as the sleep-wake cycle
- sub-optimal performance in global measurements of cognition, motor skills, and social-emotional behavior
- cognitive deficits associated with reductions in learning capacity and productivity.(3)
Ultimately, these nutritional deficiencies can cause fatigue, depression, and irritability, all triggers that can block recovery and lead to a relapse.
The good news is those high-quality bioavailable nutrients that are so important to combating and correcting all of this are readily available to us in good foods and supplements. Contact Diamond Tree Recovery today for more information!
1. Grant, Charles, M.D., Ph.D. and Greg Lewis, Ph.D. End Your Addiction Now. (NY, NY: Warner Books, Inc.), 2002
2. Nutrition in Addiction Recovery – Many Hands Organic Farm http://www.mhof.net/sites/default/files/Addiction%20and%20Recovery%20Report.pdf
3. NIH Public Access Neurodevelopment and Childhood Behaviors http://www.talkingaboutthescience.com/studies/Hibbeln2014.pdf
For a list of studies supporting brain nutrition, click the button below
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