Thirty Years is Enough…Almost

I was planning to write my mid-week post about the synchronicity of my first writer’s conference coming the week before my leap of faith into semi-retirement and how that reinforces my goal to spend more time in creative work.

But then I read this  NPR article about the hope and controversy of medication assisted treatment for opiate addiction, and I decided to share my experience on this topic. After working as a substance abuse counselor for roughly 30 years, about 20 of those years working with clients on Methadone or Suboxone, I’ve learned a few things.

The most important thing I want to pass on about Methadone and medication assisted treatment, is that the medication is only one piece of the recovery pie. I’ve seen clients who did not change their lifestyles and thinking, did not learn new coping skills, and were not successful on the program.

I’ve also seen clients who followed recommendations and worked hard on their recovery, mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and spiritually. For those people, the medication combined with counseling and lifestyle changes, has worked amazingly well, and often better than other treatment modalities they had tried. These are the clients who have kept me working in the field for thirty years, along with the ones who I didn’t think were going to make it, but they surprised me and turned things around. God gets a lot of the credit, too. I couldn’t have hung in there this long without my H.P.

Now, it’s time for me to step back. Because I’m tired. Not so much tired of working with people who suffer from addiction. I can understand and accept that some people are not going to do the work, and that hurting people hurt people, including themselves. That’s part of the misery of addiction.  It’s the @#*!… paperwork that I can’t keep up with anymore if I want to have a healthy life. I’ve watched the amount of paperwork (now it’s computer work, but we still have to print a lot of it out and put it in a chart) grow and grow year after year. There have been times when I’ve felt emotionally buried by the paperwork.

I believe I’ve done my share. But I still don’t want to let go completely. Next week, I go to the writer’s conference, and the week after that, I’m cutting back to just one day a week at the job that paid my bills for 30 years. The other days will be for me – for writing, art, my home and my relationships. I think I’ve earned this time. I’m so grateful to have this chance, thanks to my partner who you can read about on my about page.

Perfect Timing strikes again!

(Thanks to Pixabay for the photo.)

Mind over Matter: Things I Didn’t Learn in College

My psychology degree taught me a little about the mind: cognitive psychology, the study of consciousness…. mostly, it taught me about the brain and behavior. I guess it gave me a introductory framework, but most of the valuable stuff I’ve learned seems to have come after college, once I got beyond the craziness of adolescence and became more curious about the mind. Not that I wasn’t curious before, but, well, you know. The brain/mind is not fully developed, research tells us, until somewhere around the age of 24. And they say it takes longer for the male brain to develop. That’s a whole other subject, I didn’t mean to go there. I really didn’t.

Where I meant to go was how fascinating the mind/body connection is. Oh, yeah, and that stuff I’ve learned since college: about meditation and thoughts. How positive thoughts can help us feel better physically and improve our health compared to negative thoughts. The mind is powerful. There’s the placebo effect, for example, that makes some people better just by believing they are taking medicine. Well, I did learn about that in college, but I’ve seen it more in action since then. Music is like medicine for me. Meditative music, like Taize, can be and healing.

For many years, I’ve worked in a  program that uses Methadone therapy to treat heroin and opiate addiction. Addiction to pain pills is a bigger problems than heroin these days. That’s another story. Controversial, I know. It’s helped a lot of people, Methadone, I mean, and some, not as much. Some people, not all, on Methadone tend to attribute aches and pains due to aging or illness to not having enough Methadone. Their minds are used to going down that road. They risk covering up other problems that need specific treatment. What I find fascinating are the occasional accounts of clients who were arrested and couldn’t get their Methadone when in jail and said it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they thought it would be. (For most people sudden withdrawal is horrible.). A couple of times, I’ve been told by people that he or she didn’t have hardly any withdrawal in jail, even thought they expected it to be bad. Why is that? These are people we need to study. I must add that the people who are successful in recovery, regardless of the type of treatment, get that recovery is a lot of work. I wrote about that here.

Where am I going with this? Oh, yeah. The mind is powerful. It can make us feel miserable or it can make us feel strong.  If we know something is not available, whether it’s a drug, or ice cream, we can accept it and it’s not so bad as when the thing we want is close, but just out of reach.

Twenty-nine years ago, I was going to have my first baby without any medication at all. Ha! After the first shot of Stadol started wearing off, I was asking for another. They said it was too late; it was almost time to push. I sighed and accepted it. It was not available, so I didn’t ask again, didn’t even think about medication again. About thirty minutes later, I pushed my son out and immediately felt better and ready to take care of him, fight off tigers or whatever. A total change in consciousness.

Who’s really in charge? Sometimes my mind is all over the place and all the meditation techniques I know don’t help me sleep, usually because I’ve been up on the computer to late and I got my mind busy.  But thankfully, I am usually able to get enough sleep when I have the discipline to turn the computer off at a reasonable time. Discipline. That’s a mind thing. Mind over matter.

And yet, sometimes we need help. Addiction, whether it’s to heroin, or to the internet, (not that I’m saying I’m addicted to the internet, I’m not saying that at all….but it is the next wave of addiction for our culture, I believe….)  Addiction is often too much for one mind to handle alone. When the mind is overcome by a mental illness or an addiction, we need help. I know a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. When I ask that power (for me, God) to help me turn off the lights by midnight, and I allow that power to help me click on the x and turn out the lights, it works a lot better.

I didn’t learn that in college.

Today’s prompt for Saturday’s Stream of Consciousness Post was: “mind.”

If you’d like to join the fun of Saturday’s Stream of Consciousness visit:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2215/

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!