Beyond Addiction Services

ADETS (Alcohol & Drugs Education Traffic School)

The ADETS curriculum teaches program awareness, facts about mood altering drugs, how to assess the person's experience, development of a personal life plan and life after ADETS. The Student - An ADETS student is a first time offender charged with a DWI in the State of North Carolina. The three criteria by which a person may be recommended for ADETS are: The results of the substance abuse assessment shows that the person does not have a substance abuse handicap, the person has never in their life had another DWI conviction anywhere or driving while less than 21 years old after consuming alcohol or drugs, and the person's BAC was 0.14% or less. ADETS students have suffered a serious legal consequence due to their usage making them prime secondary prevention intervention targets. At this early stage of their usage, they need an education that not only gives them the "truth" about alcohol and other drugs, but also allows them a process to help assimilate this information into their own personal lives. The process gives the student an opportunity to develop a personal substance usage plan that will facilitate living a successful life.

DWI Services

Level I - DWI Education (Alcohol & Drug Education Traffic School): First DUI/DWI conviction (total lifetime) Arrest BAC of .14 or less, did NOT refuse breath test, and has no substance abuse diagnosis. Must be a minimum of sixteen contact hours completed in no less than 4 sessions.

Level II - DWI Short-Term Treatment: More than 1 DUI/DWI (total lifetime), refused breath test, BAC of .15 or greater, DSM-IV diagnosis of substance abuse meets Level 1 ASAM (American Society of Addictions Medicine) program placement criteria. A minimum of 20 but less than 40 contact hours lasting a minimum of 30 days.

Level III - DWI Intermediate Level Treatment: Meets criteria for DSM-IV substance dependence diagnosis and meets Level 1 ASAM program placement criteria. Minimum of 40 but less than 90 contact hours, minimum of 60 days duration.

Level IV - Intensive Outpatient Treatment: DSM-IV diagnosis of substance dependence (moderate to severe), meets Level II ASAM program placement criteria. A minimum of 90 contact hours with a minimum duration of 90 days.

According to ASAM, to be considered an intensive outpatient one requires at least 3 sessions and 9 hours per week in treatment. This program may be preceded by a brief in-patient stay for detoxification or stabilization of a medical or psychiatric condition.

Anger Management Program

The Anger Management Program addresses anger in the context of your life and relationships (additional psychotherapy work might be required depending on the nature of what is driving your anger). In this program you will learn all about your anger and how to address it so it no longer wrecks havoc in your life! You will learn how to resolve your "anger" by learning where it comes from, how it gets triggered, its function and by addressing its underlying cause. This process will assist you address your masked, vulnerable feelings, change how you relate to others, and get your needs met. You will finally be able to be yourself and invite acknowledgement, acceptance, nurturing and intimacy into your life and relationships. We assist you in stopping hostile and aggressive behavior and recurring arguments or fights. You will learn how to take control of yourself and your life, and experience warm, loving relationships again.

The Six Core Processes of ACT

The Psychological Flexibility Model

The general goal of ACT is to increase psychological flexibility e.g. the ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being, and to change or persist in behaviour when doing so serves valued ends. Psychological flexibility is established through six core ACT processes. Each of these areas are conceptualized as a positive psychological skill, not merely a method of avoiding psychopathology.

Acceptance

Acceptance is taught as an alternative to experiential avoidance. Acceptance involves the active and aware embrace of those private events occasioned by one's history without unnecessary attempts to change their frequency or form, especially when doing so would cause psychological harm. For example, anxiety patients are taught to feel anxiety, as a feeling, fully and without defence; pain patients are given methods that encourage them to let go of a struggle with pain, and so on. Acceptance (and de-fusion) in ACT is not an end in itself. Rather acceptance is fostered as a method of increasing values-based action.

Cognitive Fusion

Cognitive de-fusion techniques attempt to alter the undesirable functions of thoughts and other private events, rather than trying to alter their form, frequency or situational sensitivity. Said another way, ACT attempts to change the way one interacts with or relates to thoughts by creating contexts in which their unhelpful functions are diminished. There are scores of such techniques that have been developed for a wide variety of clinical presentations. For example, a negative thought could be watched dispassionately, repeated out loud until only its sound remains, or treated as an externally observed event by giving it a shape, size, color, speed, or form. A person could thank their mind for such an interesting thought, label the process of thinking (I am having the thought that I am no good), or examine the historical thoughts, feelings, and memories that occur while they experience that thought. Such procedures attempt to reduce the literal quality of the thought, weakening the tendency to treat the thought as what it refers to (I am no good) rather than what it is directly experienced to be (e.g. the thought I am no good). The result of de-fusion is usually a decrease in believability of, or attachment to, private events rather than an immediate change in their frequency.

Being Present

ACT promotes ongoing non-judgemental contact with psychological and environmental events as they occur. The goal is to have clients experience the world more directly so that their behavior is more flexible and thus their actions more consistent with the values that they hold. This is accomplished by allowing workability to exert more control over behavior; and by using language more as a tool to note and describe events, not simply to predict and judge them.

Self as Context

As a result of relational frames such as "I versus You", "Now versus Then", and "Here versus There", human language leads to a sense of self as a locus or perspective, and provides a transcendent, spiritual side to normal verbal humans. This idea was one of the seeds from which both ACT and RFT grew and there is now growing evidence of its importance to language functions such as empathy, theory of mind, sense of self, and the like. In brief the idea is that â€œIâ€ emerges over large sets of exemplars of perspective-taking relations, but since this sense of self is a context for verbal knowing, not the content of that knowing, it's limits cannot be consciously known. Self as context is important in part because from this standpoint, one can be aware of one's own flow of experiences without attachment to them or an investment in which particular experiences occur: thus de-fusion and acceptance is fostered. Self as context is fostered in ACT by mindfulness exercises, metaphors, and experiential processes.

Values

Values are chosen qualities of purposive action that can never be obtained as an object but can be instantiated moment by moment. ACT uses a variety of exercises to help a client choose life directions in various domains (e.g. family, career, spirituality) while undermining verbal processes that might lead to choices based on avoidance, social compliance, or fusion. In ACT, acceptance, de-fusion, being present, and so on are not ends in themselves; rather they clear the path for a more vital, consistent life.

Committed Action

Finally, ACT encourages the development of larger and larger patterns of effective action linked to chosen values. In this regard, ACT looks very much like traditional behavior therapy, and almost any behaviorally coherent change method can be fitted into an ACT protocol, including exposure, skills acquisition, shaping methods, goal setting, and the like. Unlike values, which are constantly instantiated but never achieved as an object, concrete goals that are values consistent can be achieved and ACT protocols almost always involve therapy work and homework linked to short, medium, and long-term behavior change goals. Behavior change efforts in turn lead to contact with psychological barriers that are addressed through other ACT processes (acceptance, de-fusion, and so on).

Taken as a whole, each of these processes supports the other and all target psychological flexibility: the process of contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being and persisting or changing behavior in the service of chosen values. The six processes can be chunked into two groupings. Mindfulness and acceptance processes involve acceptance, de-fusion, contact with the present moment, and self as context. Indeed, these four processes provide a workable behavioral definition of mindfulness (see the Fletcher & Hayes, in press in the publications section). Commitment and behavior change processes involve contact with the present moment, self as context, values, and committed action. Contact with the present moment and self as context occur in both groupings because all psychological activity of conscious human beings involves the now as known.

From Victim to Visionary

We have the opportunity to learn to consciously direct, consciously undertake, and consciously organize our experiences. Adopting this focus will assist us in understanding and controlling the direction of our communication, behavior, and feelings. Your success in this is guaranteed should you want to create something new immediately. These facts are the leading-edge technologies for change in our reality, or the way we experience our life's given moments. We can begin to experience what we want in every area of our lives. It is as simple as going from a dark room into a lit room. In the dark room it is impossible to see what is there, so we stumble and fall; in the room full of light, we can relax and be self-assured that what we see is really there.

Smoking Cessation

Thinking about letting go of smoking or cigarettes takes serious contemplation. One cannot achieve anything without considering all the options, the pros and cons so to speak. So ask yourself and listen to your own answers.

What are the positive reasons to continue to smoke?

What do I expect to happen in the long run?

What are the consequences of smoking?

Do I want the end result that smoking brings?

Do I want to see what I have denied myself by smoking?

After answering those questions ask yourself this:

What if you could forget about smoking completely?

What if "I wanna smoke" is just an idea and not a command? Would you consider letting the idea go in favor of another idea or suggestion such as "I'd like a glass of water"?. The suggestive talking mind does just what it's supposed to do, it suggests ideas and you have to choose which one you want to experience.