EP 22: Compassionate Approaches to Healing Addiction with Bryan Vasquez
EP 22: Compassionate Approaches to Healing Addiction with Bryan Vasquez
What if we viewed addiction as a response to something, rather than the common viewpoint that someone is a lost cause and can’t get their life together?
What if we embraced people with compassion and empathy, while also acknowledging that addiction is the result of a combination of genetics, who we are exposed to, trauma, abuse, family dynamics, and biochemistry?
In this week’s episode, I talk all things recovery with Bryan Vasquez, a Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor in Newport Beach, California.
Bryan’s journey to becoming an addiction counselor began with the turmoil surrounding opiate use. Bryan offers concepts from the scientifically supported processes that helped him to realize his own recovery.
These techniques do not impose change, but instead, support change in a manner congruent with each individual’s goals and values.
Bryan has worked in all facets of addiction treatment, including psychiatric hospitals, residential and outpatient programs, and private practice. He conducts both group and individual counseling as well as third-party assessments.
He serves as a Smart Recovery Group Facilitator and is versed in traditional as well as holistic modalities for treating addiction in individuals and within the family unit.
I can’t wait for you to listen in as we talk about genetics, how we become addicted, why one size fits all programs don’t work, the difference between abstinence and moderation, and why kindness and compassion are important components to healing from any addiction.
I so loved how Bryan spoke to the importance of treating addiction through the lens of we are all unique, each requiring different treatment options, and that there is no right or wrong way for healing to occur.
As Bryan shared, there is a way out of addiction and it doesn’t have to consume you for the rest of your life. There is a way that is unique to you that can lead to sustainable peace and happiness.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why the path to recovery is never one size fits all
- How addiction is a result of a combination of genetics, who we are exposed to, family dynamics, trauma, abuse, and biochemistry
- An introduction to the SMART Recovery Program as an alternative to more well-known recovery programs
- The difference between abstinence and moderation and how to find a solution that works best for you
Learn more about Bryan Vasquez:
- Realize-recovery.com
- Realize Recovery on Facebook
- Realize Recovery on Instagram
- Realize Recovery on Twitter
Resources:
- Eat For Life – EP 18: Why Behavior Change is So Hard with Dr. Perry Passaro
- Beyond Addiction – How Science and Kindness Help People Change – Jeffrey Foote, Ph.D., Carrie Wilkins, Ph.D. and Nicole Kosanke, Ph.D.
- Allies in Recovery
- SMART Recovery
Neglecting people dealing with debilitating drug addiction should never be an acceptable or preferable political option. But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts.
Typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person repeatedly consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on an unregulated often-deadly chemical that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
Tragically yet understandably, many chronically addicted people won’t at all miss this world if they never wake up. It’s not that they necessarily want to die; it’s that they want their pointless corporeal hell to cease and desist.
Without doubt, some human beings — though their souls are as precious as that of every other human being on Earth — can actually be [consciously or subconsciously] perceived and treated by an otherwise free, democratic and relatively civilized society as though they’re somehow disposable and, by extension, their suffering is in some way less worthy of general societal concern.
Their worth is measured basically by their sober ‘productivity’ or lack thereof, and they may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live their daily lives and consume their substances more haphazardly.
Neglecting people dealing with debilitating drug addiction should never be an acceptable or preferable political option. But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts.
Typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person repeatedly consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked on an unregulated often-deadly chemical that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
Tragically yet understandably, many chronically addicted people won’t at all miss this world if they never wake up. It’s not that they necessarily want to die; it’s that they want their pointless corporeal hell to cease and desist.
For me, a somewhat similar inhuman(e) devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in protractedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken nations:
The worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers. Those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
Without doubt, some human beings — though their souls are as precious as that of every other human being on Earth — can actually be [consciously or subconsciously] perceived and treated by an otherwise free, democratic and relatively civilized society as though they’re somehow disposable and, by extension, their suffering is in some way less worthy of general societal concern.
Their worth is measured basically by their sober ‘productivity’ or lack thereof, and they may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live their daily lives and consume their substances more haphazardly.