Friday, March 1, 2013 - EDGEWOOD Addiction Treatment

EDGEWOOD News
The family &
addiction
Zeroing in on helping the whole
system of relationships – family,
friends, even workplace relationships
— who need to recover from
unhealthy interactions and
relationships.
BY dale macintyre
Supervisor, Edgewood
Family Programs
If you do a Google search
of treatment centre
websites, you’ll notice that virtually
every program insists that addiction is
a family disease. But if you look closer
at these websites you’ll see that they
offer very little treatment for this family
disease. Most treatment centres don’t
pay much attention to the relationships
that have been affected, even devastated,
by the interactions and behaviours that
are at the root of addiction as a family
disease. Most treatment centres focus all
their energies on the identified patient –
the addict – while the family anxiously
waits at home for their loved-one’s
return, all their sick, addicted, relational
patterns intact.
Not so at Edgewood.
I’m proud to have been part of a
team that treats the relational issues of
addiction seriously. At Edgewood our
clinical practice zeroes in on helping the
whole system of relationships – family,
friends, even workplace relationships -
recover from their unhealthy interactions
and relationships.
We believe strongly that if the
members of an emotional system (the
family) don’t work on their own recovery
while their loved-one is in treatment,
the newly-sober addict will return
home to an alcoholic family, virtually
every member of which will still feel
compelled to control, enable and blame.
Helping family members understand
this will always be a work in progress,
but our clinical and admissions teams
are tenacious – helping family members
see and understand this is at the
forefront of our clinical approach.
Edgewood accomplishes the difficult
task of treating families in all kinds
of ways: intensive treatment processes
like InSite, educational and support
programs like Bounce Back and
information presentations like Family
Education. I take special pride in hearing
InSite alumni talk about their six-days
in the program as “life-changing” – and
when I get letters from kids who’ve been
through Bounce Back write: “Hi Dale,
I was wondering if I could volunteer to
help the next group.” I also like the less
structured exit conferences that take
place with the family when a patient
completes Extended Care.
I’m grateful beyond words for
the opportunities I’ve been given
at Edgewood – for the wonderful
colleagues I’ve had the honour to work
with and learn from – and most of all
for the people who’ve trusted us enough
to put their lives and relationships in our
hands. It takes a lot of courage to face
this disease and do something about it.
Thanks.
I’m retiring from my work at
Edgewood, and I’m taking what
I’ve learned here into new, and still
undecided adventures. I hope we’ll
bump into one another somewhere
along the way.
14 EDGEWOOD News