Bill Maher, Interventionist

Family Intervention Center of Virginia

Substance abuse

Growth After Trauma

Positive Growth After Living With Addiction

Recovery is Post Traumatic Growth! Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains transformation following trauma. Substance Use Disorders (SUD) either exacerbate existing trauma, or cause significant new trauma. Psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, theorized that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. I have witnessed miraculous growth by families recovering from a substance use disorder as they take this on with the use of specific tools. And, there are many rewards.

Out of post-traumatic growth I have seen family members develop a new understanding of themselves, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life. They accomplish a deep level of intimacy within the family relationships. The video is a great example of what type of success families can experience.
[Read more…] about Growth After Trauma

Dispelling Common Myths About Grief

If you’ve lost a loved one to this horrific medical disease of Substance Use Disorders.

Given the amount of overdoses we’re grappling with these days, and a personal loss I recently experienced, I thought I’d share this article on Grief and Mourning.  It was helpful to me, and hopefully, for you also.
If you’re reading this and you’ve lost a loved one—my heart hurts for you.

At around 6 months into the grieving process sometimes people feel pressure, from themselves or others, to, “get over it,” and, “move on,” with their lives. To the rest of the world, half a year may seem like plenty of time to heal. But, when you’ve lost someone you love it may seem like no time at all. Take all the time you need to grieve.

Every person’s process is a unique and personal experience. There is “no right way” to grieve and you’re entitled to your own feelings, even when they’re different from the feelings of others. I hope you’ll find this article helpful.

—Hearts ease, Bill Maher

grief and mourningDispelling Common Myths About Grief

Based on the work of Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Our society continues to perpetuate a number of myths about grief and mourning.  These myths may seem harmless, but they can quickly become hurdles to healing.  Well-meaning helpers often state these myths because they seem to be, “common sense.” This article describes five of the most common myths about grief in order to help you overcome these myths and better understand how to help yourself, or, others to heal.

Myth #1. Grief and mourning are the same experience

Most people tend to use the words grief and mourning interchangeably. However, there is an important distinction between them. [Read more…] about Dispelling Common Myths About Grief

Parents— Don’t Try This at Home

teenage alcoholismIt’s mind-boggling to me that families often try to treat the medical disease of addiction at home. If your teenager broke his arm, would you set the bone at the kitchen table? If he had an asthma attack, would you lecture him about getting his act together?

Of course not.

Still, families grapple with addiction at home for two reasons: First, addiction can look an awful lot like bad behavior, especially at the outset.  And second, parents feel embarrassed that addiction has found it’s way into their family, so they try solving the problem behind closed doors. There is a lot of shame related to this disease— parents feel as if they have failed.

In my 30 years as an interventionist, I’ve come to understand that addiction is one of the most complicated medical diseases to date. Few addicts recover on their own. And when they do, the hidden components of the disease have often gone untreated. An incomplete treatment leaves the entire family vulnerable to relapse. It can fracture families, which is counterproductive to your loved one finding and remaining in recovery.

[Read more…] about Parents— Don’t Try This at Home

Finding Help for Addiction

Someone you love is showing signs of addiction. You’ve devoured books with titles like “Walking on Eggshells”. You’ve nudged, you’ve argued, and you’ve threatened. You’ve seen counselors and sought the advice of trusted friends. Still, the crazy-making behavior is accelerating like a runaway train and, by now, you’re feeling desperate.
Where do you turn?

Your next step is to seek the guidance of a certified addiction professional, ideally someone with experience in substance abuse intervention. But how do you find a reputable one? Who can you trust? As an addiction interventionist for 30 years, here’s my best advice:

Step One: Call a respected treatment center and ask them to refer you to an independent addiction professional in your area. Ask who they’d recommend for interventions. Who are their best referring case managers, addiction specialists, or interventionists in your city? Three programs I’d suggest calling include Milestones at Onsite in Tennessee, Cirque Lodge in Utah, or Saint Christopher’s in Louisiana. Jot down the names they offer, then call a second treatment center and ask the same questions. After a few phone calls, you’ll start hearing the same names. (In the Richmond, Virginia area, in addition to my intervention services, I recommend Gail Santarelli, LPC at Richmond IOP or Maryann Cox, LCSW. In Charlottesville, VA. I’d suggest Dr. Kevin Doyle).

[Read more…] about Finding Help for Addiction

COBE Town Hall Video

How addiction forms by looking at social media, fast food and other facets of daily life. A video of a talk by Judson Brewer MD, PhD given at the “From Research to Recovery Town Hall” at COBE (College Behavioral and Emotional Health Institute at
Virginia Commonwealth University). COBE collaborated with Field Studio Films to capture all of the talks on video to use as a community resource for education and dissemination of the important conversations between researchers, professionals and members of the community. We thought this talk from Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, Ph.D. was really important, and wanted to share it.

Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, Ph.D. — “The Craving Mind”

Dr. Brewer is the Director of Research at the Center for Mindfulness and associate professor in medicine and psychiatry at UMass Medical School. He also is adjunct faculty at Yale University, and a research affiliate at MIT.

You can see more of the videos from the COBE Town Hall here: http://cobe.vcu.edu/cobe-town-hall-2017/

Bill’s TED Talk

Watch Bill Maher’s Ted Talk given at the TEDXRVA in Richmond, Virginia.
The talk is titled: Saving Lives Through Connection

TEDX RVA Open Mic Presentation

Bill Maher gave this presentation during open mic night at the TEDxRVA in February of 2016. It won the competition out of 25 presentations to be invited back to talk during the TEDxRVA event in April, 2016. Watch Bill’s talk about the problem of Opiate addiction in our country.

Family intervention: Escaping the chaos of drug addiction and alcoholism

family interventionBy Mary Gray Johnson

The morning after my last exam of sophomore year of college, I woke up to a phone call from my mom saying that my brother was in a drug-induced coma and the doctors didn’t know if he would wake up. She didn’t assure me that everything “would be okay.” My normally unshaken mother couldn’t fix this.

My brother is one year younger than me, and at the time we were both attending colleges in Virginia about an hour from each other. He drank a lot. He smoked a lot of pot. And he also took a lot of anxiety medication, as far as I was aware. In retrospect, his incessant substance use clearly showed signs of addiction and/or alcoholism. Since early adolescence he had caused my family huge amount of pain and embarrassment. I knew that his habits weren’t healthy, but I justified it because he was in college. I thought that one day he’d outgrow it. Little did I know, he didn’t know how to stop using.

The one-hour drive to the hospital, knowing that my baby brother might be dead was the worst hour of my life. I was physically sickened because I knew that I could have done something to avoid it.

[Read more…] about Family intervention: Escaping the chaos of drug addiction and alcoholism