Welcome to MK Recovery Coaching

Blog

  • The Anonymous People –a new documentary breaks the invisibility of addiction.


    Trailer for The Anonymous People.

    A new documentary, The Anonymous People, aims to sensationalize recovery—not addiction. As one of the film’s subjects says, “Recovery is sensational!” The film, which explores the common link among the estimated 23.5 million Americans living in long-term recovery from alcohol and other drug addictions, “is not your tired old addiction story often seen on reality television or in the news,” the film’s producer, Greg Williams, tells The Fix. “There are no needles hanging out of people’s arms, pictures of the brain, or fried eggs in a pan. We set out to find the answer to one very fundamental question: Why don’t we treat addiction in this country like any other health issue?”

    According to the filmmakers, “Deeply entrenched social stigma and mass participation in widely successful anonymous 12-step groups have kept recovery voices silent and faces hidden for decades.” But now, many recovery advocates are beginning to “come out of the shadows to tell their true stories.” The powerful message of The Anonymous People is conveyed through the faces and voices
 of the leaders, volunteers, corporate executives and celebrities who are “coming out” in order 
to publicize the epidemic of addiction—and to help other addicts break their silence. This new public recovery movement aims to transform public opinion, change public dialogue around addiction and recovery, and unite the recovery community as a political force. The film’s executive producer is the Morgan le Fay Dreams Foundation (of which Paul McCauley, is the chairman of The Fix’s parent company, and is Recovery Media’s president) and features actress and Guts author Kristen Johnston, Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner, former congressman Patrick Kennedy, news anchor Laurie Dhue, former NBA star Chris Herren and many other public figures who have chosen to “come out” about living in recovery. As follows are the locations for the Preview Viewings in a city near you:

    • Athens Georgia, Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 6:30pm The Morton Theater, 195 West Washington Street, Athens. get tickets at: mortontheatre.tix.com
    • Greenville, South Carolina, Friday, May 3, 2013 at 7:00pm The Peace Center at Gunter Hall , 300 So Main St, Greenville. Get tickets at: favorscreening.eventbrite.com
    • Columbia and Midlands, South Carolina, Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 6:00pm,Tapp’s Arts Center, 1644 Main Street, Columbia Get tickets at : www.favorsc.org
    • Minneapolis, Minnesota, Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 7:30pm, CDT, Walker Art Center , 1750 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Get tickets at: www.minnesotarecovery.org
    • Saint Louis, Missouri, Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 7:00pm, CDT The Tivoli Theatre 6350 Delmar Boulevard, Saint Louis,Get tickets at: www.ncada-stl.org
    • Salt Lake City, Utah, Friday, May 10, 2013 at 6:00pm, MDT, Salt Lake City Public Library 210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, Get tickets at: www.myusara.com
    • Richmond, Virginia, Monday, May 13, 2013 at 6:00pm, Henrico Theatre, 305 E Nine Mile Rd, Richmond, Get tickets at: http://mcshinfoundation.org/The_Anonymous_People_event
    • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 6:00pm, Holy Family University, ETC Auditorium, 9801 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, Get tickets at: www.councilsepa.org
    • Northern California, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Atherton, California Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 6:30pm,PDT, Menlo – Atherton High School, 555 Middlefield Road, Atherton, California. Get tickets at: theanonymouspeopleca.eventbrite.com
    • Danbury, Connecticut, Saturday, June 15, 2013 at 6:45pm, The Palace Danbury, 165 Main Street, Danbury. Get tickets at: tickets.thepalacedanbury.com

    This guest blog was written by Sarah Beller, Editorial Intern at TheFix.com. You can contact her at:
    sarah.lev.beller@gmail.com

    Share

  • Meet the $1K a Day ‘Sober Coach’

    by Kate Rogers

    Doug Caine is very specific about the type of clients he works with: They have to be an addict, been in a 90-day treatment facility at least three times, and relapsed at least three times post treatment. The type of client that would send many entrepreneurs running in the other direction. But for Caine, a sober coach, these are exactly the people he wants.

    Caine founded Sober Champion in 2003 and, when hired, he moves in with clients and can spend 24 hours a day by their side to help them reach sobriety. Treatments range from 28-day cycles to a maximum of 60 days, with intense follow ups afterward.

    But the personalized service doesn’t come cheap, costing between $900 and $1,800 a day.

    “This is about decoding. Sometimes people are so accustomed to the distorted reality of their own pain, that to them, ‘getting lunch,’ means, ‘I am going to shoot some dope in the bathroom.’ It may be a $150,000 toilet with a gold sink, but you’re still getting high in the bathroom,” he says.

    Caine would know, too, having spent years in and out of rehab facilities, each time returning to drinking and shooting dope. The in-patient program didn’t work for him, but he did manage to clean up in the 1990s with personal, one-on-one help. His personal experiences made him realize that treatment for addiction isn’t a one-size-fits-all method.

    Caine employs 15 coaches across the U.S. and in the U.K., and he has even traveled as far as Saudi Arabia and Dubai for patients. Since 2006, he has had only 201 clients. And he wants to keep it that way.

    “I am a boutique guy, I don’t have a lot of clients and I don’t want them.”

    The people who come to Caine are beyond Alcoholics Anonymous and even in-patient rehab, he says. But don’t call him an expensive babysitter.

    “There are people who suffer from addiction and mental disorders that just will not stay clean after residential treatment,” he says. “They don’t need to go sit in a room [for in-patient rehab] with 30 other people who are really sick. But we don’t just sit around and hang out—I am not a minder. If you want someone to slap your hand and tell you not to drink, I say to hire someone else, because it will be a lot cheaper.”

    A spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous says the group has no comment on outside issues and treatments, and that its services are available at no charge.

    Although in-patient rehab can be effective, it’s not the only option, says Dr. Chad Coren, a licensed psychologist and addiction treatment consultant.

    “Intensive outpatient treatment several times a week can be equally effective as [in-patient] substance abuse treatment,” Coren says.

    Having a personalized, intense coaching therapy like Sober Champion may be more effective for certain types of addicts, he says.

    “You have a factory mentality sometimes, where a person comes in and gets treated and comes out fixed. The intensity here can be helpful because it’s created specifically for them. It’s a unique approach, and I can see the value in it. It’s created specifically for them.”

    The Finance World’s Addiction

    According to Caine, the majority of his clients work in the finance industry, particularly Wall Street. He claims two of the top four banks in the U.S. have paid him to treat their workers, but says most of the time it is the employees reaching out for help. These are oftentimes C-level executives who have not yet lost their jobs, but are nearing their breaking points.

    Caine says he has seen an influx of calls in recent months from upper-class women in their mid-30s and early 40s working in the finance world seeking his services.

    “It’s frequently [problems with] alcohol with Oxy or Roxy that can be dissolved to inject or snort,” he says. “I am talking about guys on the Street who have never driven because they don’t have to. They’re ingesting 12, 15 and 16 pills a day.”

    For people in high-profile positions, doing this type of coaching can also be more effective, says Coren.

    “When we think of addiction, we don’t necessarily think of people in power positions,” he says. “Sometimes they can’t get help in normal channels or get treatment as usual.”

    The Process

    In order to truly overcome their addiction, Caine says patients must fully surrender, and their families have to be a part of their sobering process.

    “As the client begins to heal, the family then feels out of balance,” he says. “We have to break through every single wall because there are people in every client’s life who are deeply invested in keeping them sick. This is about education and kicking the door down within their inner circle.”

    Even with this intense treatment, the success level for Caine and his patients is still around 50%.

    Treatment often begins with a detox, either in a facility or in the patients’ home, if he or she doesn’t want to be seen at an in-patient facility. Then he does a combination of psychotherapy and draws on his own experiences with addiction to find the patients’ triggers. Caine says he was educated at USC and UCLA, but is not a licensed therapist.

    Some of his coaches are licensed, but once they cross state borders to treat patients, their licenses become null.

    “This is about personality match, not education,” he says. “A degree is fascinating and good for you, but it doesn’t mean you can do this work.”

    The work is heartbreaking, and Caine says he dreams to one day train people in marginalized communities how to coach others as he does.

    “I want to put this treatment to work in places there isn’t one-tenth of the amount of money you need to do this. There are very few people who are emotionally, spiritually, and educationally-qualified to do this work,” he says. “Finding them is a struggle, and training them is a struggle.”

    Follow Kate Rogers on Twitter at @KateRogersNews

    Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/04/02/meet-1k-day-sober-coach/

    What is a recovery coach?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_coaching

    Google

    Share

  • FOUNDATIONAL THINKERS IN THE RECOVERY COACHING COMMUNITY-Beverly J Haberle

    Beverly Haberle is the Executive Director of The Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania, a non profit recovery advocacy organization. The Council serves the counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties and operates five recovery community centers. The Council provides a wide range of services to families, individuals and the community to reduce the impact of addiction, trauma and other related health issues. Haberle is on the board of directors of Faces and Voices of Recovery in Washington DC. For the past twelve years she has been the Project Director for PRO-ACT (Pennsylvania Recovery Organization-Achieving Community Together) a grass roots organization mobilizing the recovery community, family members and other advocates in developing Recovery Community Centers in the southeastern areas of Pennsylvania.

    Every PRO ACT Recovery Community Center has a recovery coaching program within the center. In order to keep a constant resource of recovery coaches to the five centers, Haberle and Fred Martin, another PRO ACT Project Manager have developed a recovery coaching training program. This program, held twice a year for a week, has trained over 700 recovery coaches since its inception in 2006. Under Haberle’s direction, PRO ACT will send trainers to other voluntary organizations devoted to developing similar recovery community centers and recovery coaching programs.

    As part of this Recovery Coaching training, Haberle saw the need for ethical guidelines for the recovery coach to follow. As a result Haberle lead a PRO-ACT Ethics Work Group, and with William White, co-authored the Ethical Guidelines for the Delivery of Peer-based Recovery Support Services, which has been mentioned in this book. The text is available for download at: (http://www.bhrm.org/recoverysupport/EthicsPaperFinal6-8-07.pdf ).

    Another one of the early projects developed by Haberle and PRO-ACT is the Mentor Plus Program (Haberle, 2000). The Mentor Plus project matched volunteer Mentors with inmates in early recovery (“Mentees”) residing at the Bucks County Correctional Facility (BCCF). The Mentors visited their assigned Mentees once a week during the Mentees’ incarceration. The focus of these visits was the development of a recovery plan that would be implemented upon the Mentee’s release. As the program evolved, it became clear that female Mentees had a great deal more difficulty transitioning out of the institution and implementing a recovery plan than did their male counterparts. The special needs of female Mentees included safe housing, early financial assistance, recovery-conducive employment, assistance with family problems, support for continuing education, and links for co-occurring disorders or other psychiatric support (Haberle, 2007).

    Out of that synergy, Haberle guided PRO-ACT to pursue the idea of developing a Center that would combine the goals of providing recovery housing for women who needed it and providing within the same facility a recovery-oriented, gender-specific sanctuary for other women in the community. By this point, the Council had already had 15 years’ experience providing gender specific programming, outreach, and support to women in a recovery community setting. In December of 2004, the Council purchased a building that had once served as a women’s college dormitory in New Britain, Pennsylvania for use as a Women’s Community Recovery Center. Forty-eight volunteers were recruited and trained as recovery coaches, and a 12-session Life Skills program/curriculum was developed to address the barriers and needs that women seeking long-term recovery were most often experiencing. In January of 2006, with great excitement, the first 5 women entered the house as residents (Haberle, 2007).

    Of the 28 residents served since January, 2006, 28 women, aged 19-47, have lived at the Women’s Community Recovery Center (WCRC). The Center currently has more than 20 volunteers. A case manager is made available to the residents, to help them address the many problems that residents experience in navigating the traditional treatment system, and to help identify and connect the residents with other community resources. Case managers and peer volunteer recovery coaches work with the residents to develop and implement recovery plans (Haberle, 2007).

    In its two years of operation, the WCRC was able to establish a residential recovery support center, recruit and train a core cadre of volunteers, develop a set of core services, establish a sound referral base, and engender strong local community support. Perhaps even more important, 22 out of 28 women residents have obtained employment, 12 of the 19 mothers in residence began visitation with their children, all residents were linked to the local recovery community, 8 have remained involved with WCRC services after leaving residence, and 3 are active volunteers working with other women seeking recovery (Haberle, 2007).

    The details of Beverly Haberle’s experience and future vision for the WCRC is detailed in a paper, co-authored with William White called: Gender-specific Recovery Support Services:Evolution of the Women’s Community Recovery Center to the Women’s Recovery Community Center, which is available for download at: http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/Gender-specific%20Recovery%20Support%20Services%202007.pdf

    As follows are just a few stories of how the WCRC has impacted women’s lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania:

    Marie is a 36-year-old Caucasian woman, single, with one child with special needs. She
    has one older sibling, her parents are divorced, and her mother has remarried. Marie was referred for residence at WCRC through a local counseling center. She presented as homeless and is on prescribed Methadone, as well as anti-depressant and sleeping medications. Marie is engaged in ongoing addiction and psychiatric treatment. During residence, she attended the 12-week Life Skills program, attended Twelve-Step meetings, and engaged with a Recovery Coach and a Twelve-Step Sponsor. Marie was able to regain joint custody of her son and successfully complete all of her probation and parole requirements. She also became gainfully employed and took herself off of Medical Assistance. She displayed patterns of taking on roles of responsibility, becoming overwhelmed, then sabotaging herself. She opted to take a career position and relocate to her parents’ home, despite staff feedback about this choice. She subsequently relapsed but was able to return to treatment quickly and re-stabilize. She is currently working part time and is actively involved in WCRC Services, Life Skills, and volunteer activity at the WCRC. She and her son live with her parents.

    Faye is a 28-year-old Caucasian woman, single, with no children. She is the youngest of 5 children, and her parents remain married. She was referred for residence through a local counseling center. She presented as homeless, with a past history of treatment for ADHD, but was not taking prescribed medications. Faye was actively engaged in addiction treatment and mental health services at the time of her entry into the WCRC. During her residence, she attended programming activities, the 12-week Life Skills program, and Twelve-Step Meetings, and she also engaged with a Recovery Coach and a Twelve-Step Sponsor. She entered the WCRC with private insurance and was unemployed. Although Faye has a college degree, she took a job in retail and maintained the job throughout her stay of 18 weeks. She completed the program successfully and moved on to rent a room from a woman in the recovery community. Faye continues to be involved in ongoing activities at the WCRC. She currently works in sales and was able to pass her licensing test with support from staff. She manages her ADHD through biofeedback rather than medication. She has maintained abstinence since her discharge.

    Hope is a 26-year-old Caucasian woman, single, with 2 children. She is the youngest of three children, her parents are divorced, and her father has remarried. She was referred for WCRC residence through the prison (Bucks County Correctional Facility). Hope presented as homeless, with a history of Bipolar Disorder treated with a prescribed mood stabilizer. She became actively involved in addiction treatment and mental health services through a local counseling center. During her residence, she attended all of the WCRC’s service programs and became actively involved in a Twelve-Step Program. Hope also achieved employment during her residence. Through staff at the WCRC, Hope became involved with the Bucks County Opportunity Council’s self sufficiency program, seeking financial assistance. She rented an apartment in the area and continues to be employed. Hope recently received scholarships to beauty school through the Bucks County Office of Corrections and the Bucks County Chamber of Commerce (Haberle, 2007).

    This is part of an ongoing series of publishing chapters from my book: Recovery Coaching: A Guide to Coaching People in Recovery From Addiction. Which will be available on Amazon this spring.

    References:
    Haberle, Beverly and White, William, (2007) Gender-specific Recovery Support Services: Evolution of the Women’s Community Recovery Center to the Women’s Recovery Community. Part of a series called: Perspectives on Peer-based Recovery Support Services developed for the Philadelphia PA Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services, with collaborative effort by the Pennsylvania Recovery Organization- Achieving Community Together (PROACT) and technology transfer assistance provided by the Great Lakes Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) at: http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/Gender-specific%20Recovery%20Support%20Services%202007.pdf

    And

    White, William, Haberle, Beverly, with PRO-ACT Ethics Work Group, Ethical Guidelines for the Delivery of Peer-based Recovery Support Services, The text is available for download at: (http://www.bhrm.org/recoverysupport/EthicsPaperFinal6-8-07.pdf ).

    Share