Happy September! This month, Landmark Recovery will be turning 5-years-old. It’s amazing to see how far we have come and how many individuals we have helped to live beyond in the last 5 years! September also just happens to be recognized as “National Recovery Month,” with the theme “Recovery is for Everyone: Every Person, Every Family, Every Community.” All month, we will be shining a light on recovery and bringing awareness to the harmful effects of substance abuse and addiction. One of this awareness campaign’s initiatives is to promote and support new evidence-based treatments and recovery practice. Today we speak with our Chief Clinical Officer, Michelle Dubey about National Recovery month and offering hope to those struggling with substance abuse.
Welcome to Recovery Radio by Landmark Recovery with your host, Zach Crouch. In this program, we’ll discuss the root causes and treatments of alcohol and substance addiction, speak with experts in related fields, and help navigate the road to recovery. Now, here’s the host of Recovery Radio, Zach Crouch.
Zach: Hey, everyone. Zach Crouch is here again. You’re listening to the Landmark Recovery Radio, your source for addiction and recovery news and knowledge. I hope everyone enjoyed Labor Day weekend. It’s hard to believe it’s already September. We’ve had a lot happening here at Landmark. This month happens to be us turning five years old, so our flagship location first opened in 2016. We are gathering at our little facility with staff and partners to celebrate the over 6,000 graduates that have gone through our programs since that time. The same facility also is just named the number one best addiction treatment center in the state of Kentucky by Newsweek.
We have a lot to celebrate there, but we still have a lot of work to do. Part of the work is discussing important topics that can educate, increase awareness, and be a beacon of hope for anyone affected by drug and alcohol addiction. The month of September happens to be National Recovery Month, so that will guide a lot of our discussion this month. And as always, I will be talking with guests who are working within the addiction and recovery space. With that being said, our guest today is Michelle Dubey. Michelle is not a stranger here on Recovery Radio, but for those who don’t know her, Michelle has been with Landmark Recovery since the beginning of 2016.
She has been in her role as Chief Clinical Officer since 2019. Quality patient care is the reason we are an addiction treatment, and Michelle brings more than 13 years of experience working with individuals and families, healing from substance use and other co-occurring disorders. As Chief Clinical Officer, Michelle, is responsible for the development and oversight of Landmarks clinical programming, ensuring we follow evidence-based practices and remain innovative in our approach to substance use to sort of treatment. Michelle is also responsible for overseeing quality assurance and compliance to ensure that all operations meet or exceed the standards established by state regulatory bodies and the Joint Commission.
Michelle received her Master’s degree in social work in the Kent School of Social Work at University Global and is a licensed clinical social worker with active licenses in Kentucky, Arizona, and Ohio. Before adjourning Landmark, she worked as a clinical therapist, utilization review clinician, and an adjunct professor teaching psychology and sociology. Additionally, Michelle is a certified clinical trauma specialist. Michelle, welcome back.
Michelle: Hey, Zach, good to be back.
Zach: Good to have you. As I mentioned, September is National Recovery Month and with the theme, Recovery is for everyone, every person, every family, every community. One of these awareness campaigns is to promote and support new evidence-based treatment and recovery practices. If you could talk to us a little bit about what you’re seeing in the addiction and recovery space now. Is there anything new or that sort of simply deserves more support or attention when it comes to providing these life-changing addiction treatments?
Michelle: I can’t say right now that I’ve seen anything new recently, but I’ve also not been exploring outside of my own space very much just due to being very, very busy at Landmark of our growth. I think what I’ve seen most recently is almost a return to making sure that we’re talking about this problem and this kind of bringing addiction back into the forefront of the public conversation. So, I think that’s what I’ve seen the most of recently because 2020 COVID-19, and kind of continued today, really stole that spotlight.
Rather than seeing new information come out, it’s kind of everyone going, “Hey, don’t forget about this. Remember, this is still a problem.” And so, I’ve been speaking a lot. I’ve had a couple of guest appearances just talking about, “Hey, we saw a 30% increase in overdoses in 2020. Let’s make sure this is back in everyone’s kind of forefront.” So, I would say I haven’t seen a lot of innovation. I also haven’t been looking for it because I’ve been busy kind of waving my hands and making sure everyone gets back to the important conversation of we have another pandemic in this country and it’s an addiction.
Zach: We talked a lot about that on the show that people maybe have forgotten about this other pandemic, this other worldwide killer people, especially opiates in our country. One of the things that I would ask you since you have been in front of people now talking about this is, are people starting to pay more attention now with your sort of push to get people more engaged? Or are they just so focused on this pandemic that breaking them away from that is just really hard?
Michelle: I think it depends. I think when we talk, it depends on what type of recovery we’re talking about. I see everyone wants to kind of get back. We just came out of overdose awareness. I think the 31st was Overdose Awareness Day and that gets a lot of attention for the opioid use disorder and individuals that are using opiates. I think the year of the pandemic was more than anything. It’s just normalizing alcohol use and starting to recognize alcohol use a little bit more is problematic. I still see horrible things in my Instagram feed. That’s the only social media I continue to engage in regularly. Now, I’m seeing posts like, “It’s 03:00 on a Tuesday. It is a happy hour.” Or something like that.
Now, it’s kind of people going, “Remember when on a Tuesday at 01:00, we thought it was a happy hour because the pandemic wasn’t that weird.” I think we’re starting to kind of come out and go. What happens and how do we go forward? I think one of the biggest things that we saw was people who maybe were prone or had kind of addiction and kind of potential that fast-forwarded, which is both good and bad because it brought a problem to the fore faster. It allows people to recognize problematic behavior sooner and hopefully get help. I think we’re still talking about it. I think opiate awareness gets more attention than anything else just because alcohol use is societally accepted.
Zach: I’m curious to know just with people drinking a lot more as an example at home now because you’re right, there will be a 260% increase of online orders of alcohol in 2020 if you compare the two between 2019 and 2020. It’s a pretty substantial increase. Mental health at home is important. What have you seen work for people to increase just their mental health in the pandemic that we are in still? What are practical things that people can do?
Michelle: I think one of the biggest that one does is to explore potential hobbies and get into things that you didn’t get into before because life was so busy going out. You’re going to the store. You’re doing all your tasks on your list. You’re socializing with your friends. Since that people are in their home to isolate, sort of place of drinking and not great mental health and then some dove into activities and learning new things. There were a lot of people who kind of learned how to cook or bake and do some of that stuff at home, which is a healthy thing to get through, assuming that you then don’t develop an eating-related disorder as a result of your banking.
I had friends who took up woodworking during the pandemic and became highly involved in woodworking. That’s a very healthy way to kind of and to put that energy and that anxiety exercise. I lived in Arizona at the time. I almost to a point where I was annoyed by seeing, there was this wonderful canal near my house. I could run up and down and I was a runner pre-pandemic and just seeing just 2 to 3 times as many people out on the trails and getting exercise and getting out of their house. Those are certainly some things I saw people kind of pour them into that were much healthier than alcohol use or other types of substance use.
Zach: Absolutely. I do like the slogan for Recovery Month recovery is for everyone, every person, every family, every community can. We just kind of break that down, though. People in every corner of the country are impacted by addiction. This is an isolated thing. What do you wish more people knew not just about addiction, but also about the recovery journey?
Michelle: Addiction, the first thing that always comes to mind is people’s misconceptions about what an addict looks like or appears. I spent a good portion of my time in community meetings of the communities that we’re hoping to kind of come into and help serve with our treatment’s abilities. I get that in my neighborhood. That problem is only there with those people. What are those people? It’s a pretty non-discriminatory disease. It’s much like domestic violence. I speak a lot about domestic balance as well. It impacts every walk of life. It doesn’t care how old you are. It doesn’t care what your sister’s economic background is, or what your educational background is.
It does impact every walk of life and every type of person, which we hear the slogan of Recovery is for every coverage for everyone because prediction impacts everyone. I think you can even take that slogan a little bit further and say that we do a lot of family systems work in our facilities and because addiction is not isolated to the individual who is addicted. They are part of a larger system. When you are part of a larger system, that system adjusts to the attic’s behavior. You develop roles and then the family kind of readjust to maintain new homeostasis because all systems want to get to a place of kind of comfortable function, even if that functioning is dysfunctional. When we talk about recoveries for everyone, it’s because you can send your loved one.
A lot of times when we see individuals come into our care and go through our programs and then come out the other side and not be successful is because they went through it alone. Not alone and that they didn’t have support from their family or loved ones, but they were the only person receiving treatment. That’s where I think a lot of families and a lot of support people make mistakes as they assume that they are well. It’s the addict. That’s unwell. And he or she or they need help. Not me. I’m just the bystander here, but you also need treatment. You need to get some help and support so that you can kind of grow healthy enough to support your person through the early recovery. I think we talked about that slogan of recovery for everyone because recovery goes beyond the person giving substances. I do like that slogan.
Zach: I think that’s such a great point, the peace around family systems and the work that’s done with the family. Because when we sort of expand the system a little bit with families and look around, it can be someone like a boss. It could be anybody that’s kind of connected to this person. Now, they might not be in treatment, getting the same kind of care. We don’t have many bosses coming into our family program.
But the piece around what you said about how the system sort of adapts to the addict or alcoholic behavior. And in the fact that the family needs more treatment to work through these sorts of these different roles that they’ve adapted to these boundaries that weren’t there, that’s all well and good. But how do you work with family members when they’re convinced that they don’t need any help? It’s almost to them like a smack in the face. We fix them. How do you work with that sort of resistance, Michelle?
Michelle: I don’t think it’s any different than working with the individual who’s using substances is like, “I got a hold on this. It’s fine. I don’t need help.” We have strategies, motivational, interviewing ways to kind of work with. That’s why having a trained professional that’s able to have these conversations and say, “I get it.” You don’t see yourself kind of having the same problem. Having a problem doesn’t mean you have the same problem and provide education. That’s why we do family programming. We want to make sure we educate. We teach about the science of addiction and how the brain becomes adaptive to substances. It is like, “This is kind of what’s happening to you.”
The same as our families. We teach them because they might not understand. If they say, “I need help. I’m broken.” You’re not broken. You’re Mal adapted to a unique situation. It’s about getting you back to a healthy, functional place. I think using the same strategies that we would use as a kind of identifying, helping the family, identify where they do have problems. It’s not saying, “This is what you need to have help with.” But like, “How can we help you? What are you willing to work on right now or see? And then kind of get your foot in the door and go from there. I had a thought. It just completely went out of my head.
Zach: I think that you brought up something else that I wanted to talk about, too. This idea that you just said about, you have maladapted to a very unique situation, which is a very sort of present-focused solution focus or a strategy that we work with families on, that we work with patients on. You selected the Seeking Safety curriculum as the core of the groups that we do. A big piece of it, at least.
And so, much of that is based around the idea that “Yes, you develop these core strategies, these coping skills, these present-focused coping skills without diving down into any sort of trauma narrative. If it’s not there, it’s great. But if it is, trauma can be such a big piece of this whole thing. If you can’t talk to us a little bit about why you chose the Seeking Safety curriculum and then also what’s the advantage of sort of strategy around present-focused or solution, focus strategies to deal with trauma.
Michelle: One of my favorite things to talk about. I was very strategic when I chose Seeking Safety. It’s best to get about 90 days to work with an individual in our program, through the inpatient side and the outpatient side. That’s not a lot of time. That’s not enough time to dive into someone’s trauma narrative. And in fact, I would say, it’s probably pretty risky to start diving into that treatment during such a vulnerable time. It’s almost like someone coming in.
We’ve recently moved our offices across the country, and it would be like dropping someone who grew up in Arizona in the middle of a Tennessee winter and going, “Okay, adapt.” And they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know how to wear this jacket. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to go outside.” To me, if you’ve taken this person. You strip them. Most people who come into treatment begin using substances because they initially had a failure to cope, or they struggled with something in their life that was emotionally challenging.
And they took a substance and I was like, “For that, they felt a lot better.” I should keep doing that because it made it much easier to deal with sadness or made it easier to deal with my anger or whatever emotion that we’re kind of using that substance for. I had this snappy term for and I’ve completely forgotten it. But people always ask me about marijuana as a gateway drug. Any drug becomes problematic. It’s really about the failure to cope as the gateway to problematic substance use.
Zach: The thing that came up for me as you were saying was this idea of people’s inability to sort of emotionally regulate their effect because they have learned from an early age to start manipulating ways to deal with the internal anxiety or stress that’s causing whatever that looks like for that. And then naturally, it seems like it progresses for a lot of people into substances. Would you agree?
Michelle: Yes. There are super great coping skills. If you forget about that there are four criteria for a good, healthy coping skill. You take a substance. If you want to feel better, you take it. You feel better instantly. It does what it’s supposed to do. It just has a lot of consequences with long-term use. Going back to taking safety and being in the present moment, when I chose that particular curriculum and a lot of our curriculum and what we work on at Landmark was because you’re here. You have this person and we’re stripping them of their one coping mechanism.
You were taking that blanket away from them saying, “No, you can’t have that anymore.” Our job is to kind of arm them with more coping with saying, “We took that but we’re going to replace that with like five or and other things. We’re going to help you get good at those. They’re going on. In the meantime, we’re also helping them go, “Hey, over there.” That’s probably a trauma box. That’s probably something you’ve put in your closet and stuffed away that we eventually need to talk about. But like don’t get it out yet because you’re not ready for it.
You’re not in a safe coping place to be able to start opening that up because 20 days ago, the only way you could cope with heroin or with vodka and we can’t have you going back there. So, give us some time. So, Seeking Safe is great at helping someone become safe. That’s like teaching Arizona about how to wear a parka and a hat and be adaptable to cold weather. We have to give them those tools and make sure they know how to use them before we dive into that trauma. Or we’re just going to revert to the old behaviors because they’re easy. That’s definitely why essentially wrapping someone a bubble wrap and helping them be ready for the world that they’re going to face.
Zach: The skills that you’re learning in that, I would imagine they sort of translate into your everyday life. You don’t have to just get rid of the skills that you have that you learn from that particular curriculum. They have a lot of applicability.
Michelle: Yes. Most are pretty simple to do, we do a lot of work with meditation and mindfulness practices. You can do mindful practice with just your brain. You don’t need to have a set of tangible items to do that. Like, I always think it’s great. It’s like you have a great coping skill in playing guitar. What happens when you don’t have it or you don’t have access to that thing? How are you going to cope?
Zach: I think people listening to this probably have misconceptions about mindfulness. What does it do? What can it do? How does it help people? Talk to us a little bit about mindfulness? Is it an evidence-based practice? Let’s start there.
Michelle: I would say yes. I feel like I have to be an educator because I think people use the term evidence-based practice and kind of loosely understand what that concept means. “I go to evidence-based practice.” I’m like, “Explain to me the three tenants of Evidence-Based Practice.” And they go, “That is founded in science.” I’m like, “Cool. That’s one. There are two others.” When we talk about evidence-based practices, we talk about approaches, whether it be a full program. Seeking Safety is an evidence-based program. Meaning, it is in its entirety as it’s structured.
It’s several interventions, several different treatment modalities thrown into a curriculum-based guide. That is an evidence-based program. Evidence-based practices are anything that kind of has scientific backing. Meaning, that there have been all empirical studies that have been done to show that this particular intervention. Mindful practice is effective at helping people with substance use disorders or was mental health disorders recover from and get better from those. That’s the science founded in science.
There’s evidence to support that this intervention, once applied to this particular symptom or diagnosis, improves someone’s functioning. That’s the science kind of component of evidence-based practice. When applied to this particular population, it’s the right population. There might be a treatment approach that is scientifically back, but it’s adolescence. So, we don’t generally take that and then go, “This was a treatment that works for adolescents, or it works with children in this study. Now, let’s apply it to a geriatric population.” No. That was not the population that this was intended for shown to be effective with.
That wouldn’t be evidence-based because it’s not being applied to the right population. It’s taking the right scientifically found or sound approach applying to the right population and then assuming or having that the practitioner, the person providing that care can become competent in delivering it. It is mostly evidence-based practices, with some training. It’s relatively easy for someone with that level of education to become adept and competent and deliver it. Those are those three components of evidence-based practice. If you take those three criteria and look at mindfulness practice, it has scientific backing.
There’s empirical research that shows that it is effective at helping people kind of develop adaptive coping that helps them recover from substance use disorders and other behavioral health disorders that apply to most populations. I probably wouldn’t try mindful practice with my six months old, but my five-year-old gets it. He has a mindfulness book that we read and it helps them calm down. It helps him. If he’s angry, we repeat some of the languages. And most people can learn how to teach someone mindful practices. I would say if you use those three creatures, it’s an evidence-based practice.
Zach: Switching gears just a little bit. On a similar note, though, when it comes to addiction, people obviously can use substances like alcohol or drugs for any number of reasons. But from your perspective, what are the top two or three misconceptions that you hear or have heard about why someone misuses alcohol or drugs? Tell us more about why mental health plays such a role in substance use and addiction?
Michelle: I think one of the biggest ones that we all hear is that this person is making a choice. They’re choosing these decisions that they’ve consciously made to go ahead and then kind of go down this path.
Zach: And they’re making bad choices so they’re getting what they deserve, right?
Michelle: Right. And the one that kind of rings in my head as well as this concept of addiction to the moral failing that there’s some sort of flaw that a person has that they’ve done something to deserve this outcome in their life. I think that’s very difficult. I think that’s why a lot of people struggle with recovery and with addiction and even acknowledging that they have a problem with substance use because they hear things like, “I made this choice. And there’s something wrong with me or I deserve this because there’s something flawed. I’m a broken person.” I have a moral failing.” No. Your mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways are hijacked by substances. That’s pretty normal for someone. At Landmark, we teach about the physical and science behind how we become addicted to helping kind of distant people from that idea of addiction to moral failure.
Zach: We will break there on that piece. It’s really fast. It relates to the moral failing part. With the people that you speak with, especially the ones that are not a part of our sort of field, mental health, substance use, we’ll call it friends of yours or close acquaintances even family, do you see the tide turning with some people believing that this isn’t a moral failing, that this is something true with the brain, with the body?
Michelle: I think so. But I still think there’s a lot of shame associated with it. I think we’re moving more towards the disease concept versus a moral failing. I’m sure, I probably still have an aunt out there somewhere in the world that would be like, “It’s a moral failing.” And I’m like, “Cool. Okay.” But at the same time, diabetes is a disease. And if someone with diabetes goes, “Chocolate cake. I shouldn’t need it because I have diabetes but I want that chocolate cake.” And they eat the chocolate cake.” They are not ashamed up and down about the fact that they ate that piece of chocolate cake, which then led to them eating an entire sheet of cake. But on the other hand, someone who has a disease of addiction and says maybe they had one drink and then the shame of what you fail, your failures like, “No, I had a relapse of my symptoms.”
Zach: If we look at it through diabetes or any sort of chronic disease, for that matter, because I think that what people might say is diabetes never stole my ATM or my ATM card to go get money at it to buy drugs or something like that. Or to go buy cake or whatever it is. How do you compete with that sort of argument from someone who doesn’t understand the brain disorder’s peace around addiction? Does that question make sense?
Michelle: I don’t know that I have a great answer for it because again, that takes us back to the beginning of our conversation. That’s why family members need help too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a diabetic hold, someone, up for a piece of cake. But we are impacted by the choices of others. When I say choice, not in a judgmental way, but more of we make choices. A diabetic, knowing they have diabetes, choose a piece of cake. An addict, knowing they have an addiction, chooses to engage in their addictive behavior. Those come with consequences that affect our entire system.
If our system has been harmed by our behaviors, then that system also needs to kind of learn how to cope with it and understand it. So, I go yes. It’s helping people go, “I understand your hurt. And I understand that you’re bothered by this behavior but holding onto it isn’t going to help anyone heal. And you’re going to be stuck in the mud. They’re going to be stuck in the mud.” We can either be stuck in the mud and no one gets better. Or we can kind of go, “How do we move this and get better so that we can be a healthy system again?”
Zach: You brought up choice in moral failing, these two misconceptions. Are there any more than you wanted to talk about why someone uses alcohol or drugs?
Michelle: I think the one that came up isn’t exactly about the why. But like, we see a lot of differentiation between alcohol use and drug use. Again, alcohol is always viewed as more socially acceptable than it is to be like a needle junkie, so to speak. So, I think that’s a big misconception that there’s some difference between the two.
Zach: What’s crazy to me about that, Michelle, I would say it doesn’t have the immediate lethality that a lot of the opiates out there now have but when you take a look at the total sort of destruction that goes on with someone who’s a chronic alcohol abuser throughout their life is most alcoholic. They live for a while. They’re going to make it into their 50, 60, the 70s. And I would argue that a lot of the alcohol that gets sort of downplayed in our society should not be because so many of those Folks get taken down with that person. We talk about family over years, decades. And the chronic sort of health complications that go along with treating someone who has liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, whatever, that’s a real thing.
Michelle: I think drugs are a drug as a drug. Some are much faster and more dangerous. But it wasn’t that long that young people were dying from that four-logo stuff. It certainly can be immediately lethal as well. But we see a lot in the risk behavior. The risk of being an IV heroin user and using things like fentanyl is an immediate threat to life, whereas alcohol can be like a slow bird. Same house. The house is going to burn down. It’s just about the length of time to burn it to the ground.
Zach: Absolutely. You’ve worked in the field long enough to hear a lot of stories about hopelessness and fear that a friend or a loved one can’t break free or escape their addiction. I’m just curious to hear more about what would you say to them about the hope that today’s addiction treatment offers and what sort of steps might someone take to help their loved one or friend through this?
Michelle: I always like to give that message. Recovery is possible and we see it happen every day. I think it’s also important to recognize that we’ve learned so much. We’re still learning so much about addiction and addiction treatment, but we were so much further ahead than we were 50, 60 years ago. When we work with families, it’s also kind of challenging what their expectations are of recovery because I think we get misconceptions about what an addict is. We also get our heads misconceptions and expectations around what one’s recovery is going to look like.
That’s one of the number one questions I get asked. What’s your success rate? And I go, “Okay, we define success. Help me understand what you mean by success.” And they’re like, “Abstinence.” I don’t define abstinence as success. That’s one path to recovery is abstinence. I’ve met plenty of abstinent Folks, I would not say have a healthy recovery. They are abstinent but they have not recovered. I know plenty of people who are on MAT or on an opioid replacement treatment who I absolutely would say are a success. You have improved things. I think for families, one of the things to look at is, is it hopelessness and fear? Because their definition of recovery doesn’t match up to reality.
Zach: It’s just like rejecting expectations, right?
Michelle: Absolutely. I think one of the phrases in the field is what we say, “The expectations are resentments on layaway. We’re just waiting to be resentful of that thing that we expected.” We didn’t say to anyone like, “I expect that my partner’s recovery is total abstinence and wild happiness.” And perhaps, that’s not what recovery looks like for that. That human being recovery could be a harm reduction approach. Recovery could be getting the petrol injection. We don’t know.
I think for families, as we talk about a kind of hopelessness in which someone can’t break free or escape their addiction, it’s redefining what do we hope that person’s life looks like? And how do we get them there? Even if it’s not exactly how you imagined it. This idealized concept of abstinence is the best recovery. I think recovery is people who have improved their functioning, people who have improved their quality of life across the board. And that isn’t necessarily always what people expect. I think that’s a lot of times our hopelessness can come from.
Zach: It’s kind of a fun question. If you and I have both been in the field for a while, what keeps you going in this field? Because it’s hard work. Each day you wake up and you hear about the success stories but a lot of the time you and I, know this, we don’t hear about the success stories. We hope that people are going to do better and we see evidence that they certainly are when they’re in our care. I guess I’ll keep the question really simple. What keeps you going in this field?
Michelle: I always feel like I’ve just been pulling up some cheesy mantras, but there’s that classic story of the kid walking along the ocean and there’s the starfish and he’s throwing them in one by one. And the guy’s like, “Hey, you’re not doing that. There are a million of these starfish. You’re not making an impact.” Maybe not for everyone, but this starfish, I did make a difference. And that starfish touches so many others. We can’t help everyone at once. If that magical day comes, I always say I’m in the business of working myself out of a job.
If we can figure out the magical cure to addiction, I don’t have a career anymore in addiction medicine or addiction treatment because we cured it. Sweet. See me at the beach. I’ll be there with my sunscreen on, a big sun hat. But I think that’s it. Yes, we can’t help them all at once. But one at a time, we change the world. I think for the hard days when we get the news that someone’s lost their battle, it’s kind of trying, looking to that help moment of like, “Who did change? And how do we change?”
When we expect help and it’s this miraculous like everything got better. It got a little better than it was yesterday. And it’s like, that’s amazing. That’s a win again. Just like redefining what recovery is for our family is hoping that their loved one gets recovered, helping them understand what recovery looks like, understanding what success looks like. Success doesn’t have to be defined in any terms. Like, if I was better today than I was yesterday, that’s a success. Those are the things that keep me going, with little improvement.
Zach: And you got to notice those things, too, because it’s easy from that.
Michelle: It’s so easy to wake up and have a bad day and just lean into the bad day. And only notice all the terrible things that happen and completely ignore that good thing that happened in that day so much.
Zach: I think it relates to the recovery process about your mindset. Early on in recovery is tough but it can be done when you begin to make a shift in the way that you see things. I think that’s one of the things certainly at Landmark that we do well is pointing people towards a new way of living.
Michelle: That’s the goal.
Zach: Thank you for all the work that you’re doing at Landmark, Michelle. It’s hard to believe, you and I, we’ve been on this buzz now for almost six years. It was me, you, and Mr. Boyle for the first year.
Michelle: That’s right. I got the vans to prove it, right?
Zach: No doubt. I just want to thank you again, and to our listeners who can just don’t hop off just yet. We’d like to try something new on the podcast. We specifically want to hear from you. What topics would you like to learn more about? Do you have feedback about a previous episode? Was there something that gave you that light bulb moment? Maybe, it was something today and changed your view on mental health, addiction, or recovery?
Maybe you have heard or wanted to share a story yourself about your journey to recovery or things that help you through your loved one’s addiction. Let us know. We like to make this a discussion. We can also share with you, our listeners. So, please send us an email at Media@LandmarkRecovery. Again, that’s Media, M-E-D-I-A, @LandmarkRecovery.com. Or you can shoot us a message on Facebook or Instagram at Landmark Recovery. And again, thank you so much, guys. Until again next Tuesday. Take care, everyone. Talk to you soon.
Thank you for tuning in to Recovery Radio. New content for this program is available every Tuesday at 12 noon Eastern Time and 09:00 a.m. Pacific Time, with all episodes available on-demand on the Voice America Health and Wellness Channel and through our content partners iTunes, Stitcher, Tune In, and Google Play Podcast. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review so we can continue to create quality content to help save 1 million lives in the next 100 years. You don’t need to struggle through addiction alone. Live the life you dream of on the road to recovery.
Choose Recovery Over Addiction
We're here 24/7 to help you get the care you need to live life on your terms, without drugs or alcohol. Talk to our recovery specialists today and learn about our integrated treatment programs.
About the Author
How Soon Can I Get Care?
We're here 24/7 to help you get the care you need to live the life you want. Talk to our recovery specialists today and start treatment immediately.