As the Clinical Director of Training and Consultation for the Gorski-CENAPS® Corporation I am very excited to report that we are in day three of the Relapse Prevention Counseling Certification School at the Top of the World Treatment Centres in Cranbrook Canada. 
Top of the World Ranch is a holistically based addictions treatment centre located at the base of the Rock Mountains in beautiful British Columbia Canada. This private facility utilizes its connection with nature along with evidenced based individual and group therapies to provide an exceptional treatment experience for adults suffering from addiction.

Top of the World Ranch knows that addictions are fully treatable and that addictions treatment is most effective when delivered through a bio-psycho-social-spiritual holistic process, through an addictions treatment program that is formulated from beginning to end with solid scientific, evidence based addictions treatment methods, coupled with holistic enhancements and compassionate staff support.  To learn more please go to the Top of The World’s Website.

This clinical skills training was for professional clinicians who want to learn how to help their clients identify and manage the high risks situations that lead to relapse despite a commitment to sobriety. Participants are learning how to develop an early relapse intervention plan and abstinence contract to set the foundation for the remainder of the training process.

Then the participants are being led through a strategic step by step high risk situation identification and management process. The training process ends today with participants learning to help clients develop a relapse prevention plan designed to help them identify and manage future high risk situations. This training includes a combination of lectures, group discussions, demonstrations, and experiential dyad and group exercises designed to enhance the training process.

To learn about effective relapse prevention for chronic pain management please check out my article Relapse Prevention and Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To see an online overview of Cognit delivering Addiction-Free Pain Management® please go to this Link for a free demo.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

On Friday April 23rd I was fortunate to present at the Thirteenth Annual Traverse City Area Dual Disorders Task Force Conference in Michigan. The focus of the Traverse Task Force is to present education to assist healthcare professionals to aid clients with co-occurring disorders—one or more existing mental illness problems in addition to a substance use disorder.

This year there were well over 200 healthcare professionals from addiction, mental health, and medical including pain management. The conference focus was on identification of the most common red flags of prescription drug abuse, and the denial patterns patients use to avoid recognizing and/or dealing with their prescription drug abuse and/or addiction, as well as participants becoming familiar with common pain management drugs of abuse.  The training I presented was Walking the Tightrope of Chronic Pain Management and Addiction.

Since chronic pain includes both physiological and psychological pain symptoms, participants also learned how to differentiate between the two types of symptoms; how effective implementation of a multidisciplinary and integrated pain management approach can increase positive treatment outcomes; and what components are necessary to treat the synergistic symptoms of pain and addiction.

They learned that it requires a specialized treatment plan that includes medication management, emotional and/or psychological symptom management, and non-pharmacological pain management interventions. They also discovered that positive treatment outcomes will be accomplished by managing pain and coexisting disorders utilizing the Addiction-Free Pain Management® synergistic multidisciplinary treatment system.

To learn more about effective chronic pain management using a team approach please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

You can learn about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To see an online overview of Cognit delivering Addiction-Free Pain Management® please go to this Link for a free demo.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.
 

This week I had the opportunity to present testimony to the Senate Business, Profession and Economic Development Committee regarding Senate Bill 1111 (Negrete McLeod). Please find below a transcript of my testimony.  I would urge any California Voters to contact their state Senators and oppose this bill as currently written.

I currently specialize in training and consulting for addiction, pain management and coexisting personality and mental health problems and am the Director of Training for the Gorski-CENAPS ® Corporation.  I have earned a Bachelor Degree in Behavioral Science, a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology and a Doctorate in Addictive Disorders. 

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, (LMFT) a California Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC-II), and an Advanced Relapse Prevention Specialist (ACRPS).  I have also been on the faculty of UC Santa Cruz Extension Alcohol and Drug Studies Program, as well as teaching at Santa Clara University, UC Berkeley Extension and Stanford University Medical School.

I have worked in the addiction and mental health field for over twenty-five years serving people with addiction and coexisting disorders.  Many of my clients have been doctors and nurses in supervised diversion programs and can I unequivocally attest to the benefit of treatment and close monitoring of these professionals.  Given the reality of an under-manned and overwhelmed health care system, it’s imperative that we support these health care providers returning to their field so they can once again contribute their communities. 

I am concerned about several components of SB 111—also known as the Consumer Protection Health Protection Act—which I believe contains deceptive language that has the potential to criminalize over 500,000 California Licensed Health Care Professionals for the benefit of one special interest group—The Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL).  Under the proposed law, any Licensee who is the subject of a consumer complaint, legitimate or manufactured, would be routinely ruined by the provisions of this law as written.

This bill stacks the deck against Health Care Licensees to the extreme.  The justifying concept of patient protection has been morphed into a backward and punitive approach that will prevent the possibility of any meaningful reform or progress.  The cornerstone, and the major problem of this bill, is the removal of due process and equal protection for all licensees. 

I understand the importance developing genuinely needed patient safety reform, but reform should not lead to unfettered denial of equal protection and due process for affected licensees.  One example of how SB 1111 would legislate is giving extraordinary judicial powers to the Executive Officer (EO) of the Department of Consumer (DCA) Affairs.  Under this law the EO would be empowered to immediately suspend the license of anyone under investigation—not convicted mind you, but just under investigation.  It is of great concern to me that the EO of the DCA, with no background in healthcare or related expertise, would have this kind of power which could easily succumb to the CPIL lynch mob pressure through their questionable political and lobbying efforts.

To learn about the my views on quality chronic pain management please go to my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To see an online overview of Cognit delivering Addiction-Free Pain Management® please go to this Link for a free demo.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.