Addiction Recovery is on the Brink of Change: Don’t Give Up on Your Loved One
After years in the planning, there’s a new model coming into the Mental Health and Addiction Recovery space: 17 Clarity. It provides a roadmap for a family to engage their loved one in a recovery journey - all the way to 5 years beyond remission, and to accomplish this goal in just 6 years!
A couple years ago, when I first heard about this I had two challenging thoughts:
Having been in the Addiction & Recovery space for 18 years, I wasn’t sure 5 years beyond remission in just 6 years was realistic for a majority of client’s I’d worked with.
I knew that relapse rates are atrocious - to the point where relapse is normalized. Traditional addiction treatment doesn’t have great rates of success.
Because I’m an optimist and always curious about improving old models, I held the tension between Mark’s 17 Clarity and these two thoughts about traditional recovery. I held this tension for a couple years. Despite this challenge, l continued to learn more and more from my colleague, Mark Styles in the UK.
I met Mark Styles in the Academy for Addiction & Mental Health Nutrition. The Academy was founded by Christina Vaselek who has trained over two hundred people (therapists, nutritionists, doctors, and healers of all sorts) in biochemical repair of mental health and addiction issues.
Christina’s trainings focuses on identifying nutritional depletion and underlying factors that have been sustaining a person’s addiction and/or mental health issues.
Biochemical repair is not the same for every body.
For some, biochemical repair is an adjunct to their healing, and for others it is a stand alone solution. As we know, the slow gradual process of addiction (and mental health issues) happens on a spectrum (mild, moderate, severe).
Biochemical differences also appear in age (teens are most vulnerable), adverse experiences, resiliency to those experiences, and impact from environmental conditions. The combination of all of these presents different levels of vulnerability to addiction (and mental health issues).
So, by now you may wonder, just what is 17 Clarity and how can it support families to engage their loved one into a recovery journey, and get an individual into 5 years beyond remission in just 6 years?
Being steeped in the academic world of getting a Master’s degree in Couples & Family counseling, becoming a licensed professional counselor, acquiring several certifications in addiction counseling, taking several intervention trainings, and over time practicing all of these, I was curious if what I knew of Mark’s vision would be of interest to colleagues and treatment centers.
Often, a colleague I was talking with would smile politely, change the subject, and the conversation would end abruptly. Occasionally, I would be reminded of the “realities” of traditional recovery. Despite these reactions from employers and colleagues, I continued communicating with Mark.
To say I eventually became a convert is an understatement.
Over time, I transitioned my practice from providing hourly therapy to providing coaching journeys to families and individuals to engage in the the biochemical repair I’d learned from Christina.
Mark has a level of curiosity, forward thinking, and brilliance I don’t often see. His initial work in treatment centers and seeing clients come back time and again, left him with the question, “how do people get better?
He’s held this question through his career, which I believe has contributed to the depth of what he’s developed.
One common theme I align with is to engage the family first.
The goal was to keep them engaged to support their loved one’s sobriety 5 years beyond remission. This was very different than my experience of the Addiction & Recovery industry in the US, which felt more like families being siloed away from their loved one in early recovery.
Also, the 30, 60 or 90 days of treatment suggested by our system of care seemed to create unrealistic recovery expectations for both individuals and their families. There’s got to be complementary solutions.
Families can engage their loved one to accept help being offered.
At the beginning of 2023, Mark and I created a six-week online group for families: Addiction Recovery Engagement Training (ARET). The core of the curriculum was Phil Harris’ evidenced-based training, “The Concerned Other: How to Change Problematic Drug and Alcohol Users Through Their Family Members”. To increase the effectiveness of the ARET training, Mark contributed a number of his tools; I contributed some of my own.
Together, we delivered two training sessions and four groups each week. Six meetings a week was an intense deep dive. In that six weeks, two ARET participants got their loved one into treatment. All ARET participants experienced change in how they thought about addiction, intervening solutions, and how and when to communicate with their loved one.
After the ARET founder’s training, I expected Mark and I would build this into an online training. I was passionate about coaching families to get their loved one into a recovery journey and/or treatment, as well as educating families about the one missing piece from traditional addiction treatment - biochemical repair principles we’d learned from Christina’s Academy trainings.
Can addiction professional collaborate anew?
Mark’s vision was larger, but until recently I never really understood how large. He plans to introduce 17 Clarity to one country at a time.
I thought about all the different skill sets I acquired to take individuals and families on an extended recovery journey. How would that be possible to teach to so many people in many different countries?
Well, again Mark surprised me. He broke down the process into four roles, and explained that eventually there will be trainings for each of the four roles.
Facilitating Addiction Recovery Engagement Training (ARET) groups for families in process of engaging their loved one in a recovery journey.
Assessing an individual through his 130+ checkup/blueprint process to identify underlying factors that have been sustaining one’s addiction. The blueprint is timeline and map that customizes a biochemical healing process to incorporate into an individual’s recovery journey.
Addiction Remission coaching to work with the individual and their family, from early recovery to 5 years beyond remission.
A Journey Manager to manage both the unique-to-the-individual journey and the family journey, both to beyond 5 years remission.
But there’s more than just 4 new roles that support 17 Clarity.
He’s designed the 17 Clarity Recovery System to incorporate the benefits of community. His intention is that each person in each of the above 4 roles would be facilitating in-person groups.
But there’s obstacles.
I thought this would launch months ago, but obviously its a huge project with many moving parts. Mark’s ‘steering the ship.’ From conversations with him, he planned to launch this some time in December of 2023. As I write this, we’re nearing the end of the year, so I assume we’ll all learn more about it in 2024.
Until then I’ll continue to go in and out of the 4 roles and take families & individuals on recovery journeys as I have been.
But I so look forward to the community and collaboration possibilities with Mark’s vision. But for now, I consult and work with peers in the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition as needed.
Don’t give up on your loved one!
Addiction recovery is on the brink of change!
You can learn more about Christina Vaselek and the Academy for Addiction & Mental Health Nutrition at www.aminoacidtherapy.com. To learn more about Mark Styles, you can check out his LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-styles-74476041/?originalSubdomain=uk