Exploring Complementary and Alternative Therapies in Drug and Alcohol Treatment

Introduction

Wellness may be defined as a balanced channelling of energy, energy received from the environment, transformed within you, and returned to affect the world around you.  Working with drugs and not against them offers new potentiality for the therapeutic considerations of the drug using community.  A complimentary medicinal approach, such as the Elemental system, integrates body-mind and acknowledges that our spiritual nature needs to be nurtured.  It is an efficacious and cost effective method of providing therapeutic assistance for ex drug users by providing a meaningful and positive way forward. 

Todays video offering is from Jost Sauer, it is entitled, "Transforming an over medicated society"

Enjoy

a:)

Feature Article:

“An Elemental Perspective of Drug Use, Repair and Recovery”

Anthony Eaton

The Allopathic model of response uses drugs for effect and change, with combinations of tranquillisers, sleepers, SSRI’s to manage the difficulties created by the mental health distress of drug withdrawal in combination with substitution pharmacotherapies, the collective name for a group of drugs that are used as substitutes for other drugs.  These strategies have been effective in stabilising clients, protecting the community through reduced crime related activity and removing some aspects of drug culture off the streets.  Decreased levels of mortality, decreased morbidity, effective disease control, lower legal costs and increased access to health care services by the illicit drug using community are considered to be the prime benefits. 

However, using drugs to deal with drugs is at best, fuzzy logic and at worst, ineffectual.  The services described above require significant amounts of time and resource, involving long term commitments from both service providers and their clients.  As a consequence the burden to our community is one of considerable financial expense. 

Complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM) refers to a large number of therapies, systems and techniques that exist largely outside the institutions where conventional medicine is delivered (Mamtani & Cimino, p369).  Chinese Elemental medicine is amongst them and is suggestive of another approach; if you give the body-mind what it needs, it will repair itself.  Repair on all levels is always possible, no exceptions.  All illness is psychosomatic because we are mind-bodies, not just bodies.  That fact must influence therapeutic strategies in managing disease (Weill p57). 

Efficacious CAM strategies involve identifying and working with the physiological distress of a person in conjunction with their mindset and attitudes, or thoughts about themselves and others.  Actively engaging the spiritual dimension, by identifying a sense of purpose, value and connection to something greater than thou art.  Teaching how to connect and to appreciate the nature of the healing process as a whole (Wood, p26). 

From an Elemental perspective, this entails establishing rhythm and routine in life to generate a stable framework for development (Sauer. J, p167).  Engaging the services of bodywork professionals to shift accumulated blockages through the meridian system, relieving the musculoskeletal stress and facilitate the “letting go” of stored and repressed emotions.  Engaging a medicinal diet as prescribed by a nutrition expert, where food is perceived as medicine and poisons are avoided.

Transform negative emotionality by processing traumatic events and developing skills to face ones self with authenticity.  Engaging in exercise (weight and endurance training), pursuing the study of yoga, Qi gung or martial arts to develop and harness internal energy.  Developing creative skills such painting, poetry, dancing sculpture, craft and music to harness the passion of the heart.  There are no secrets to the arts, only repetition (Shaolin proverb).

In Western medicine receptor sites within the brain dictate our moods and construct our reality.  Chinese medicine offers a contrasting view, organs, not the brain, dictate our moods and are responsible for the construct of our view of reality.  Organs create bio/psycho/social life.  As such addiction is not seen as the problem, attaining balance is the real issue and as it is our biological destiny to feel good, and we get that by creating balance.  Symbolically, addictions represent an imbalance searching for balance.

References

Mamtani, Ravinder, & Cimino, Andrea, A Primer of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine and its Relevance in the Treatment of Mental Health Problems, Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol 73, No 4, Winter 2002

Sauer, Jost, Higher and Higher, from drugs and destruction to health and happiness, Kijo Publications, Australia, 2005

Weill, A., Health and Healing, Chapter 6, Nine principles of Health and Illness, Boston Houghton Company, 1983

Wood E., There’s always help, there’s always hope, Australia, Hay House, 2004