A Legacy of Service

By Bob Day, MA, LPC

When I came to MARR as an intern in 2014, I thought that this was just a place to begin my journey as a counselor. I was certain that I did not want to stay in the addiction treatment field.

However, like so many of us who walk through the doors of MARR, I was struck by the sense of warmth and connection that characterized the way staff related to clients and one another. The openness, humility, and vulnerability that characterizes this place won me over.

If you are a member of our community that hasn’t been around MARR for a while, please come back to the building and say “hello.” You’re always welcome here.

I had the privilege to learn about MARR’s signature approach to treatment from some of the “greats” (though they are too humble to think of themselves that way). Doug Brush, Paul Thim, Dave Devitt, and Rick McKain were just some of my mentors and teachers who passed along what they learned from MARR’s four decades of providing long-term treatment to clients.

The legacy these counselors left is well known to our alumni, their family members, and the larger treatment community. How they treated clients, how they conducted business, and how they held one another accountable to the same principles that we ask of our clients–all of these make up the legacy that I am focused on carrying on. It is my goal that their years of service shape the way that we continue to provide treatment at the Men’s Center. 

In addition to the attitude and tone that this earlier generation set, we will also hold fast to the basics of MARR’s core treatment elements. These core components have sustained this program and helped to transform countless people’s lives from 1975 until the present day. 

We continue to emphasize:

• Therapeutic community – MARR has always relied on the community as the agent of change where our clients put into practice the principles of recovery that they have learned in day treatment. The fellowship and accountability that a group of peers provides is what allows the clients’ new approach to life to take root. At MARR, we treat and hold the community, and then the community treats the individual. 
• 12 Step Centered Treatment – While we incorporate an array of therapeutic approaches, MARR’s program of treatment also requires clients’ participation in 12 Step fellowships and working through the 12 Steps with a sponsor, who is not a MARR staff member. Much of their group and individual work here also incorporates the step work that they are doing with a sponsor.
• Long-term care – The compulsive and destructive pattern of addiction often drives our clients’ behavior for decades before they reach us. We know that any sort of substantive change requires sustained exposure to a different way of living. If addiction is a disease of isolation, the solution must incorporate a long-term participation in something bigger than oneself. 

There is much more to say, but in closing, I would like to share that I feel a strong sense of duty to continue carrying on the legacy that MARR is so well known for. Even though some of the faces around the Men’s Center have changed in recent years, the commitment to community as a way of life remains the same.

If you are a member of our community that hasn’t been around MARR for a while, please feel free to come back to the building, say “hello” and see about volunteering or sitting in on a group. 

You’re always welcome here. 

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For many, enjoying the holidays with an addicted loved one can be anything but joyful. For a substance addict, the holidays often come with triggers and an increased risk of relapse. If there’s an addict in your family, simple steps are available so you all enjoy the time safely.

Communicate

First, we suggest talking as a family about holiday plans, like family members attending, specific events, and locations. This way, your loved one knows what to expect and can decide if it is something that may trigger them. It also is a chance to offer possible alternative activities. Make sure they know that the goal is for everyone to enjoy themselves.

Listen and Act

After talking, show your loved ones that you’re open to change for them. If they’re worried about the annual family Christmas party, let them know that they don’t have to go. Let them know you’re willing to do something else with them. If certain family members cause anxiety or distress, consider spending this time apart from them for your loved one or address why they are causing negative feelings. Whatever you do, make them feel heard and understood.

Remember, community is essential in recovery. So, another alternative to not attending events is encouraging your loved one to attend an AA/NA meeting, speak more frequently with their sponsor, or attend specific events for those in the recovery community. Addiction is a disease of isolation, and the holidays can serve as a painful reminder of this.

Remember Your Reasons

Finally, remember that the goal is to help your loved one continue to live in healthy recovery. If the holidays aren’t what they have been in previous years, that’s okay. Also, stay true to the boundaries that you’ve previously set with your loved one during this time. As always, you are not alone. Happy Holidays.

If interested in learning more about MARR, the first step is a phone call or message to our Clinical Assessment Team. Our licensed and certified clinicians are available for a confidential and complimentary conversation about the next steps you can take to get help. Call us at (678) 736-8694, or you can reach out via the chatbox.

Asking for help takes courage. If you have a loved one that is currently in treatment – either at MARR or another addiction treatment facility –we hope that you, too, are receiving the support you deserve. At MARR, we recognize that addiction is not just an individual struggle but a family disease. Its impact extends far beyond the person using substances, affecting the lives of family and friends who are overwhelmed by the aftermath.

You are not alone. A majority of family members and friends with a loved one in treatment have experienced similar feelings, including shame, guilt and anger. Oftentimes, loved ones require assistance in discerning the difference between enabling and offering support, as well as learning how to set healthy boundaries. There is hope.

MARR has been a lifesaver for my son-in-law and my daughter. He’s been working the program for over two years. It has not been an instant fix for all the problems he has had to face. His whole life is changing because of MARR.

– Anonymous

Maybe you’re thinking that what you’ve experienced with your loved one is too embarrassing or shameful to admit. Many families feel this way. Scenarios such as consistently loaning their loved one money, bailing them out of bad situations like jail, and hiding the severity of their loved one’s condition are common. Stopping these behaviors is beneficial for you and your addicted love one.

“My mom paid for my alcohol when I was underage. This taught me that I did not have to follow the law and that underage drinking was acceptable. It also taught me that I could manipulate her to get what I wanted.”
– MARR Alumni

WHAT WE OFFER 

Our objective is to facilitate your loved one’s healing journey and empower them to embrace an abundant life in recovery. This involves adopting a holistic viewpoint, recognizing the profound impact their primary support network has on their recovery journey.

To help you and your loved one navigate this often complicated process, MARR’s Family Recovery Center offers comprehensive family services, including family counseling, weekly support groups, and a three-day-long intensive workshop designed to provide family members with education and additional support. Click here to learn more.

For you, this could mean working with a counselor to set boundaries for yourself while your loved one is in treatment. The counselor may even encourage you to take time for yourself – whether that means joining a support group, taking a much-needed vacation, or engaging in a new hobby. This does NOT mean you don’t love and care about your loved one; it simply means you love and care about your wellbeing, too.

We also recommend participating in our one-day workshop, Loving Someone with Addiction. Now is the time to safely explore all that you’ve endured, while also acquiring the skills needed to confidently embark on your own healing journey.

Rest assured that MARR will walk alongside you, offering support throughout treatment and beyond.

If you are interested in learning more about MARR, take the first step by contacting the Admissions team. Our licensed and certified clinicians are available for a confidential and complimentary consultation about appropriate next steps.

Call (678) 736-8694 or contact us online.

How to Address Trauma by our own Licenced Therapist, Erica Welsh, LPC

Erica Welsh is an Associate Professional Counselor and Associate Marriage and Family Therapist. She specializes in family counseling, meaning she approaches clients with context, looking into how their family, childhood, and other factors have shaped them. She currently works as a part-time family counselor at MARR’s Men’s Center and runs her own private practice.

One of the things we’re proud to offer our clients at MARR is treatment from a holistic perspective. That means addressing more than the substance addiction that brought them here and looking at their underlying trauma. Many, if not all, treatment centers claim to treat trauma to some degree, but MARR is different. We don’t claim to heal your trauma in thirty days. We won’t tell you that you’ll be free from all of the symptoms when you leave our program. Why? Because true trauma healing takes time.

We offer a long-term theory-based approach to treating trauma while clients are in our care. We don’t ignore the impact it has on our clients, but we know that rushing the process is in many cases more detrimental and doesn’t lead to long-lasting, sustainable results. So, what does that mean for you or your loved one coming into treatment? We focus heavily on the first phase of trauma treatment, as outlined by Judith Herman in her book Trauma and Recovery, which is safety and stabilization. Successful completion of our program is a client having the skills to assess and create safety with themselves and with others, and having stability with their behaviors when activated by a trigger.  

Trauma is what I like to call anything that happens too much, too fast. It disrupts a person’s sense of safety with themselves and the world around them resulting in physical, emotional, and relational consequences. These “consequences” can be observed as a myriad of symptoms that we assess throughout their time at MARR. These symptoms are created from a lack of trust and safety, which we know comes from their lived experiences and environments throughout their life. This is why a big part of our goal throughout our 3-phase treatment program is to therapeutically support them to move out of survival mode and into a more grounded and connected experience with themselves, our staff, and the therapeutic community around them.

This process of healing can be started by walking many paths, but due to the relational component that is built into MARR’S structure, it is impossible for our clients to not be invited into authentic and emotionally reparative relationships.

We pride ourselves on how client-focused our staff is at MARR. We WANT a real relationship with our clients. We genuinely care about them, laugh with them, and walk through every aspect of life with them. Though we might not get to a point where we are talking about the details of the most traumatic parts of our client’s lives, we are establishing new options for them in how they can experience what it is like to trust others with vulnerable emotions and how it feels to expect to be cared for by the people you are close to.

And though we offer a safe place to land for clients, we also know that all relationships have difficult moments and can be sources of pain big and small. No relationship is free from misunderstandings, disappointments, and other challenges. Because our clients will feel and be activated by these moments with each other and staff, it allows for our clinical staff to connect our goal of developing competency for establishing safety and stabilization to the client’s day-to-day triggers. Clients are taught regulation skills in groups as well as in their individual counseling sessions, specifically introducing the language and concept of “window of tolerance” (Dan Seigal). A critical part of being a substance abuse program is working towards the goal of maintaining sobriety and safety throughout triggers that often have varying degrees of intensity. I personally use my training in EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to inform how I introduce these concepts to clients and how I guide them through practicing these critical skills.

Another foundational aspect of our program is that we sit down with our clients and facilitate a one-on-one genogram session. We do this with them because looking at their family history and seeing the overarching narrative of who they come from, what has happened to their families, what traumatic instances occurred to other people in their family, etc. often gives clients context of how they got to this point in their life and helps to redirect the questions of “what’s wrong with me?” to “what happened to me?” This often allows for an authentic connection and appreciation of why they feel the way they do and an opportunity to see that perhaps the traumatic moments they lived through were not their fault. This is essential before moving to phase two of trauma treatment (Judith Herman) – feelings of grief and mourning.

I once had a supervisor tell me, “with all traumatic events, there is an element of grief and loss.” Traumatic events disrupt and take from things we need to feel safe and cared for in the world. Because we lose people, a sense of safety, resources, hope, and more, there is a natural transition into that grieving after we have resolved the current unhelpful behaviors and coping skills that we first used and needed in order to adapt to overwhelming events in our life. For many clients at MARR, it is common and responsible to stay in phase one of practicing their stabilization skills – and that’s OKAY. It’s setting them up to move into phase two of grieving in a healthy way that will more than likely end up with them experiencing lasting healing. Our goal is to have our clients live in life-long recovery, and through this approach to trauma, we believe that is truly possible.

If interested in learning more about MARR, the first step is a phone call or message to our Clinical Assessment Team. Our licensed and certified clinicians are available for a confidential and complimentary conversation about the next steps you can take to get help. Call us at (678) 736-8694, or you can reach out via the chatbox.

Addiction is a selfish disease. The disease doesn’t stop with your physical health or your relationships. Instead, it affects all of you, mentally, physically, and spiritually. That’s why we approach treatment the same way – from every angle. At MARR, we treat each client with a holistic treatment approach. This means we recognize clients’ mental health, their physical wellbeing, and their spirituality. This sets our clients up for the best chance of a life free of addiction and a healthy, rounded road of recovery.

Mental Health

Mental struggles, such as depression and anxiety, often accompany substance addiction. These can be debilitating for clients and affect their recovery tremendously. We address these through therapy, community, and sensitivity. We also recognize it changes client-by-client throughout their time at treatment and create a specific treatment plan accordingly. Our Medical Director, Dr. Kambiz Aflatoon, is board certified in general psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He works with our team of staff to create the best holistic treatment plan for our client’s mental health.

Physical Healing

When first arriving at treatment, a priority for our team is the clients’ physical wellbeing. Coming off of drugs or alcohol is very hard on the body. Our medical team sets up the best plan of action for each client. We also encourage clients to make realistic and measurable goals for healthy living and exercise while at MARR. Our hope is they carry on these healthy habits at home. Healthy living is a huge part of the recovery process and teaches clients to take care of their bodies. Plus, the benefits of healthy living are extensive. Decreased anxiety, natural mood lift, the opportunity to save money, and decreased risk of future health problems are only a few.

Spirituality

When clients enter our program they learn the difference between religion and spirituality. Step 2 of Alcoholics Anonymous is about putting your faith in a power greater than yourself. At MARR, we intentionally work on spiritual recovery, where clients truly find one’s higher power in relation to their beliefs. This surrender to a higher power greatly increases their journey in recovery.

If interested in learning more about MARR, the first step is a phone call or message to our Clinical Assessment Team. Our licensed and certified clinicians are available for a confidential and complimentary conversation about the next steps you can take to get help. Call us at (678) 736-8694, or you can reach out via the chatbox.

Community in recovery is the heartbeat of long-term sobriety. When a new client comes to MARR, it’s our priority to make sure they are welcomed by staff and other clients as not an outsider, but fellow human beings. We do this for several reasons – one being that relational treatment is at MARR’s core and another is now living in a community that sets clients up for a successful life of recovery beyond MARR. This includes organized community systems, a buddy system, weekly groups, and a real-life environment to help deal with triggers daily.  

Common Triggers

Since recovery is a lifelong journey, it’s important for clients to know their personal triggers. A trigger can be many things but is usually an emotional, environmental or social situation that brings up drug abuse in the past and leads to a desire to use again. While everyone is different, common triggers across substance addictions include stress, negative emotions, social isolation, access to their drug of choice, and others. At MARR, our clients experience these triggers often and learn how to cope.

A New Way of Living

Each client at MARR is placed into a home-like setting upon arrival. This includes a home separate from the treatment center, living with roommates, and an assigned buddy to help them navigate their new structure. This group becomes their home system throughout their time at MARR and they’re expected to complete chores, buy groceries together, have dinner at the dining room table every night, and navigate day-to-day activities. This sense of community has proven to be a huge factor in the recovery process. It lets clients know they’re not alone while challenging their old habits at the same time.

Real-Life Experiences

Another benefit of living in a community model is that clients experience triggers to use in real-life scenarios every day. This comes from their community members, interactions with staff members, and their part-time job which is required in phase two. Many times this means expressing anger, annoyance, disappointment, and other unpleasant emotions to their community members, which leads to stronger communication skills as well.

After leaving MARR, clients are inevitably going to experience conflict and triggers, so we want them to gain skills on how to handle them while they’re in a safe environment. Our goal is for clients to return to “normal” life knowing their triggers, and how to react without using mind-altering substances.

If interested in learning more about MARR, the first step is a phone call or message to our Clinical Assessment Team. Our licensed and certified clinicians are available for a confidential and complimentary conversation about the next steps you can take to get help. Call us at (678) 736-8694, or you can reach out via the chatbox.