An Interview With Adam Garcia

Long Preface:

The idea of addiction being a medical problem or a disease is a controversy. The same is true of things like bulimia and learning disorders. The same is true of spending and gambling. All of these become clouded in the media as disease, addiction, compulsion, etc. I have been researching this long enough to assert that addiction is purely subjective. If you have no regret or fear, you are not an addict. People-especially those who make money treating "addicts"-will tell you that addiction is objective, even inherited. This does not hold. There remains no evidence that there is a biological marker for any behavior which leads to such behavior problems. The twins' studies of Goodwin we're spun nicely to predict alcoholism in the offspring of alcoholic parents. The spin was seen through. The axioms of AA - allergy and powerlessness - have been shattered by countless studies. The fact remains that environment and perspective lead to heavy drug use and to gratifying behavior. These are not diseases, they are coping skills, albeit poor skills. Usually these so-called addictions and diseases are matured out. Indeed, matured out is a street expression for quitting narcotic use.

Maturation can be accelerated, and that is the offering of time-tested resources such as religion, education and experience. People who use substances to excess or who behave contrary to the norm are merely responding to their environment - their interpretation of the universe. If your spending has caused you anguish, your heroin use has caused legal problems, your drinking has ruined your mental or physical health, you are experiencing life with all its trappings. You are not diseased.

I could here cite the Vietnam-and-heroin studies which have perplexed disease/heroin/addiction experts. These studies show that the setting of the user is by far the determinant of their level of use. Instead I will cite the evidence of Roger Mills. Mills has found that self-efficacy (though he does not use that term) is the single most important factor in mental health.

Self-efficacy is the state of feeling in control. The treatment industry would have you believe that you are not in control, that you need others' persuasion to understand disease, to surrender control. The present author asserts that self-efficacy (realizing that one is in control) is what separates the recreational drug user or culinary indulger from the "diseased". Are you eating too much because you are biologically inclined to? NO! You are eating to satisfy some need which is (as is divinity) to date unexplainable. Do you drink too much because your father did? NO! You drink because you are familiar with a satisfaction which comes from doing so. Is that satisfaction unwarranted? NO! Is it dangerous? Yes! But you know that. You don't need a $20,000 treatment experience to tell you so. Will you outgrow it? Yes...read on...

This is the preface and most of an interview for video with Adam Garcia who then directed Pine Shores Treatment Center in Pine City, Minnesota.

Pine Shores

PO Box 139

Pine City MN 55063

ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH

Psychology has historically tried to solve individual addiction by illuminating, challenging or validating beliefs or neuroses. Whatever desire was being fulfilled by the intoxication, obsession or compulsion was sought and addressed.

PSYCHOLOGY OF MIND; THE HEALTH REALIZATION MODEL

Psychology of Mind "focuses on teaching healthy psychological functioning rather than on treating illness or solving problems." Psychology of Mind is an understanding of the source of mental health. "Through that understanding, each person finds his/her own route to increasing satisfaction and ease."

The Psychology of Mind paradigm was developed after clinical observations that the human mind has an "innate propensity to right itself," which is allowed "by releasing something we have [insecurity resultant from conditioned thought], rather than adding something we lack." The Health Realization Model holds that individuals need neither develop, nurture nor challenge beliefs, but understand thoughts and beliefs, their role and effect, to find mental health - the "default setting."

sources: Judith A Sedgeman, M.A. and Roger C. Mills Ph.D., Psychology of Mind Resource Handbook and Realizing Mental Health.

The Interview:

Feb 18 1999

Paradigm Shift?

Q: Could you give us a bio as to how you came upon Health Realization?

A: I started in the field, Dave, about nine and a half years ago. When I first became involved in treatment we did a more traditional approach to recovery. At that time we were taught how to present. Everything was pretty straightforward, pretty direct. A lot of it had to do with traditional treatment which is also twelve-step programming.

About 4 to five years involved in helping people with addictions and chemical dependency (CD), I ran across a person who was teaching health realization - at that time it was called Psychology of Mind. He is the author of a book called The Serenity Principle. His name is Joseph Bailey. I remember that the first time that I was introduced to health realization, I saw Joe and I started to understand a little bit, although I was reluctant to be open to move from a more traditional treatment to inviting health; emphasis on health. I had always looked upon CD as more of a disease, more of a behavior problem, more of a moral problem sometimes. But Joe had brought a different approach to helping people with addiction.

What was really interesting for me was his calmness and his openness to look at something different; to look at CD in more of a health model. This of course went against my beliefs. I was reluctant. I thought this was something to do with Pollyannaish type therapy. I thought, "Well if it's that good, what are the success rates and..." But something had touched me. its hard to explain, but there was a feeling that I got when I started to talk to Joe and started to be curious enough to look at a non-traditional approach to Tx.

When I did, some of that skepticism just dissipated as time went on. I was more relaxed certainly, working with the clients at that time. We had changed the labels. We were seeing people coming into Tx and we labeled them as clients or patients One day, one of the Tx directors that Health Realization was brought into decided to call the clients 'students', which made all the sense in the world to me because the students were there to learn.

One of the things, when you're looking at health, is that everybody has the ability to obtain it at any given time. When time went on on I was able to realize that my clients at that time - now students - had Health, then my paradigm, in looking at students, was different.

So there was an excitement that went along with this and the excitement wasn't just the [newness], it was a sense of ease. In the field of CD there had been a stigma or a stereotype that scared me. We always heard that the burnout rate for chemical health servers was anywhere from two to three years. I can remember, in the education component that I was in, rumblings of that with my colleagues - the other students that I was involved with. They said that you had to take care of yourself, your own mental health. I was always wondering where it went! We had mental health. Why would we worry about, in two years or three years, this so called burnout?

When we came into the profession, our direction was to help people, to give people an understanding of compassion and empathy and love. I couldn't understand why we would lose that after a period of time. I was interested in wanting to learn more. As time went on and as I started to practice what I thought was Health Realization, at that time, I started to understand that once I started this, it wasn't going to stop. Once I started to see the people I was working with - students - as cooperative and willing to learn, my whole perspective of treating CD changed - almost overnight.

One day I was in a group of other heath care providers and one of them asked me what the clientele was like; what it's like to work with [CD] people. Out of innocence (at that time I was struggling to get everything "right" with the traditional treatment) my words were: "Well, it's kind of like the 409 M*A*S*H unit of Tx." It was like that, because I was scared that we wouldn't see a lot of recovery. We always saw people coming in, but we were never able to see people in a different life. When I started to see health realization, what I started to see was growth. The growth process. It wasn't about about "outcome" it was about showing people that they have the innate health that's inside every person that's on the face of the earth. That that innate health never leaves us; that innate health has always been there and always will be there.

In one of the books that Joe wrote, he talked about our birthright. Our birthright being compassion, love, empathy. He used an example of innocence in one of the books he wrote and it made all the sense in the world to me. Especially when it related to CD. As any addiction, I believe it starts with a thought. That thought for most people who use mood altering chemicals, I truly believe, is curiosity.

we're curious. We want to know what it does. Peer pressure is curiosity. The emphasis [has been] always on the outcome after the curiosity. Like it has been somebody's fault. I truly believe that is not the [right] perspective on that. Once we start to see that people are doing the very best that they know how, once we're able to see that this innate health is obtainable, our outlook on disease, our outlook on bad behavior, our outlook on life , changes right in front of us.

Q: How do your clients believe that they are diseased, that they suffer some pathology?

A: I believe that, out of innocence, they have that notion. they're always looking for answers to find out what is wrong with them. I believe that environments, socialization, is always focused on that. "You need to find out what's wrong with you, you need to see a therapist, you need to get some help anywhere possible." I think that that automatically gives people the feeling that there has to be something wrong with them. What I see occurring, when people start to see the health that they have going on with them, is that they get scared. As [therapists], as [persons] helping in the field of mental illness or any trouble spot in our life, when we're starting to look at trying to help people, we go with what we know, as opposed to going in the opposite direction. What I mean by that is: trusting some of what we call the unknown. Moving away from some of the labels and trusting that the students that we work with have the ability to see their health.

When they start to see their health, that idea of pathology is questioned. But very few people people get stuck on pathology. They start to see that ... a lot of their problems have been related to thought and what they know; that they have the ability to move away from that thinking of being stuck - of being labeled. I think that that gives them hope. My belief is that when people start to believe that there is hope, they have a feeling that goes along with it. Sometimes it's a feeling of relief. Sometimes it's a feeling of love. Sometimes it's a feeling of happiness. But it's a positive feeling. When people start to identify with that positive feeling - as they do with use of chemicals - they believe that there's a possibility that they don't have to use chemicals to get a positive feeling again. I think that that certainly occurs with the teachings of health realization. that's not something that I would say is a structured therapy. its more of a life-experience, common-sense approach. I believe that we've all tried to do that in one way or another - through compassion, through understanding, through love and through humor.

Q: Is there a risk, or are critics saying that there is a risk in not acknowledging a disorder or a disease.

A: My previous belief is that we talk about denial. I was taught in my education that we have to break through the denial, and I've been confused about that for a long time. My sense is that if people are in denial they're not going to identify that they have a problem with chemicals whatsoever. From what I see, when people make the decision to go into treatment they're not denying that they have a problem. When they meet with a person to refer them to a treatment program or when they meet with somebody that has an influence to help them get into treatment that that denial is pretty much opened. I imagine that there would be people that believe that denial is more than that; that you need to identify that you have a disease or that you have something going wrong with you. My sense is that again, people know that something is not right and that's why they enter Tx programs or they seek some type of counseling. I truly believe that what we address with Health Realization is not just chemical addiction, but life altogether.

A big area right now with transportation is Road Rage and how people get stuck in thinking. Is there something wrong with the person that has road rage? Does he have a disease? Is he a rageaholic? I would question that. I would be skeptical of that. I truly believe that people sometimes get caught in their thinking, that they get stuck in a thought is what we'd call it, and it becomes real to them. Can they shift from that? Yes. I believe they can. I believe that we do as life goes on. I think we believe in our thinking automatically.

I'm remembering when I was at the age of thirteen, wanting to be sixteen so I could drive a car. And then sixteen, to twenty-one so I could be an adult. All the way up to thirty my thinking had been that way. When I reached the age of forty, I wanted to change time. I wanted to go the other direction. That to me is a change of thought. We're not continuously moving forward. We start to realize that we place value on something that we really didn't value; we didn't want to get old faster. I think that that has a lot to do with it too.

I think that it's not just about addiction. its about helping people - moving away from just labels. Whether it's "mental health", whether it's "depression", all kinds of labels like "bi-polar". I think, as health care providers, our ability was that we wanted to help people. We certainly have not wanted to do any damage.

I don't know that we get perfect at this, Dave. I truly don't. I keep myself humble periodically. I have a little sign in front of my mirror. Every morning when I go to brush my teeth and take few minutes to look at the exterior, I go through the interior and a sign says - which was given to me by a physician - "If I can't do any good today, please don't let me do any harm."

I understand what that is. I too, could get into road rage. I too, could make a mistake and get into some stuck thinking. [Health Realization] has helped me identify my thinking. its helped me move on to a different level. I think that that's the level that all people are looking for.

i'm not bashing AA or NA, because I believe that it works for some people. We cannot take away something that works for some people. But I also believe that we have to have an avenue for other people to start to see things differently. We cannot continue to feed people the same thing that they already know.

A great example: i'm working with a client right now who's had about seven treatments, has been struggling with in-and-out of jails and institutions. Today, when I spent some time with him, talking, he said "What I can't understand Adam, is why I continue to go back to incarceration; why I continue to go back to using." I talked to him about his thinking and what goes on with his thinking.

He said that "My life seems to be pretty boring."

I said, "Why do you believe that that is going on for you?"

He said, "To tell you the truth, every time that i'm supposed to be happy and in recovery, i'm always worried about when it's going to go away."

he'd been through several Tx programs and they warned him about being happy. [laughs] He was scared about being happy and being serene in his life. he's always been waiting for the next tragedy. In that waiting along with that thinking, he tends to create it again.

He has been able to see some of that. Will he make a change there? I think so. I think that he truly did have one of the first insights for himself.

One thing about Health Realization; it always talks about people already having the answer. People have the answer. The answer lies within themselves. If we give them a direction, we can show them that the answer lies within themselves.

Certainly the provocative, high-confrontation type therapies do not allow for that. Behavior approaches do not allow for it because what [they're] trying to do is change behavior. What I see from that is mostly compliance. People will comply. They will tell you what you want to hear and they will act it out. But my sense is that when they start to understand about health realization, that compliance really turns into change. its a sincere change. its a change from the heart. I think it stays with people. Do people go back to using chemicals? Yes, that may be a possibility. Do people stay using chemicals? I don't know.

We work in a community in northern Minnesota, in Cook County. We work on a reservation in Grand Portage. In my travels and in my education in that community, although the drinking hasn't completely stopped with some of the people we've treated with health realization, lives continue to get better. We just move away from thinking: "What is success?" Success might be that we teach health realization and people relapse once or twice, but they see their thinking. Is that success? Yes. I truly do believe it.

A judge in Cook County said to me a while ago: "One thing that's interesting is that people turn themselves in faster." Maybe that's a success, because in Northern Minnesota, in the Native American community, you have all kinds of places to hide out! So maybe success is that they come back and they're asking for help quicker! I don't know. My thoughts are that once you see that you have innate health it's like letting the genie out of the bottle. The problem is that the genie wont go back into the bottle; you have a clear understanding. You have a sense of hope and that never dissipates. It just gets bigger. Better.

Q: Before I ask for a crash course, I wonder does this fly in the face of the Minnesota Model. Will one sabotage the other?

I don't know, to be honest, Dave. My sense is that there will always be conflict. There will always be skepticism.

I'll tell you a story that made all the sense in the world to me.

I had a colleague that I worked with, his name was Crosby. Everyday on his way to work, he would stop by a farm that was just about a mile away from our treatment facility. In this farm, in a field, they had a horse and a donkey. Every day before he came to work he would stop along the roadside and he would give the horse sugarcubes and he would give the donkey an apple. The donkey was ever so grateful.

One day the donkey came outside of the fence. The owners were scared. They wanted to know why the donkey got out of the fence. They wanted to know where he got out of the fence, and how they could prevent it. They were worried and bothered. Crosby was was explaining the story and his words were: "Why does it make any difference where the donkey got out? Just teach the donkey to get back into the yard!" If we could see that in treating CD and stop looking for the one single cure, the one single fix...maybe that's what we need to go back to as humans.

Q: i'm ready for a crash course in the principles....

A: OK

One thing about health realization is that you teach it from your own understanding. You teach it from your own authority.

My authority has been through my learning experiences.

The three principles of POM:

The first one is Mind.

We could spend all kinds of time trying to dissect what mind is. I think we'd probably come up with an answer that we wouldn't really know anyhow. So, what I tell people when I present mind [is] energy. I talk about life. The religious worlds would probably talk about Buddha, God, Christ. Native Americans would talk about the Great Spirit. Something happens. With energy, there is something there. Something that can't be explained.

Thought

When I think of thought, it is something that was given to us; a god-given thing. We have this ability to think and each thought that we have adds to the thinking. Thought is like a movie - like a movie [frame] or picture slide. its something that's created.

there's this whole thing called consciousness.

Consciousness is like memory. It brings things to light. It brings life to it.

Thought has the ability, with consciousness, to make something real. It works like a video camera in some ways: The light being [mind], the film being thought and the screen being consciousness.

This is the principles.

What I mean by principles is that we realize that that is what all human beings are made of. We're thinking human beings. We think twenty-four, seven. We think all the time. We think in our sleep. We Can't stop that. The difference is - what we teach in health realization - It's not the thought that is the problem, It's the thinker behind the thought. What I mean by that is that is that consciousness, or what we want to call memory.

One of the things that an author wrote who is one of the first people to understand Health Realization - his name is Syd Banks - talked about how people create, through thinking, problems. Einstein said that we cant solve a problem at the same level It's been created. For most of us, we run around in our lives in a crisis or a problem. We try to solve it where It's created. Little do we know, we Can't. Its almost impossible.

What we experience - all the feelings with that thinking such as anger and frustration and all these other things, They're being brought to you by a thought - by thought.

The other thing that goes along with thought in this paradigm is that thought has no power, but thought has the power to change the universe. Everything that's on the Earth is thought driven. It took somebody some time to come up with the thought that this is a chair, this is a camera. Everything that's around us is a thought. We don't escape that. Now how we perceive that thought through memory...we may be able to change.

A great example, and one of the first things I do with persons with CD is that the first thing that I ask them is "What do you think is wrong with you?" they'll spend a significant amount of time going through a memory, which is consciousness, developing everything that they think is wrong with them. But if you let people go long enough, they all come to the same answer: Nothing.

...Before behavior can take place, thinking is always engaged. We used to address...behavior; we spent very little time talking about thought which creates the behavior. [Then] we tried to talk about thought-changing in other modals of therapy. Rational Emotive Therapy talks about working to get a more positive thought, and working hard. The downfall to that seems to be this: At any given time if people have a really busy mind, ...to try to make it busier by trying to add something positive, they seem not able to access their own mental health. they're not able to do that.

What we [instead] talk about in Health Realization is slowing down your thinking....It gives you resilience. It gets you back to a sense of well-being...that's what we also label as innate health. Well-being is the same stuff that we came into the world with.

There is much more in the interview. It is all available through EASE. Health Realization is a refreshing and positive direction for mental health and chemical health. Adam can be reached at 612/444-4500. EASE has copies of the video.