Harmony Offers Gender-Specific Alumni Retreats to Support Recovery

When clients walk out of a rehab facility after a few weeks of treatment their recovery from addiction is really just in the early stages. They must continue working on their recovery for the rest of their lives because addiction is a chronic disease. In order to be successful they need a strong support network.

Harmony Foundation can look back on more than 50 years of excellence in treating substance use disorder (SUD) in a residential setting. A lot of improvements have been implemented over those decades and we now offer treatment in gender-specific settings by trauma-informed staff. 

Harmony has also created a vibrant alumni community. The value of an active alumni program cannot possibly be overrated. One of the tools Harmony is offering its alumni is an app called The Hub (available for Android and iOS devices). We have also started to offer short retreats for alumni to reinforce their recovery efforts.

The Harmony Alumni Lodge Weekend Retreat in March was designed to promote and strengthen the bond of brotherhood and self-awareness of people in recovery who identify as male. The event at the Harmony Retreat Center included two nights of lodging, five meals, and a fire ceremony. 

“Not many rehab programs in the United States are able to offer retreat spaces like this,” explains Tabitha Miller, Harmony’s director of alumni and recovery support services. “Many of our clients cherish the time spent with their ‘brotherhood’ while in treatment at Harmony, and we wanted to recreate that to strengthen bonds and help them continue finding new avenues to grow on their recovery journey.”

The retreat included plenty of outdoor activities—including a trek into the Rockies—and for that purpose, Harmony partnered up with Adventure Recovery. AR is a mental health and recovery-focused adventure guide and coaching service specializing in wilderness activities. 

“They led a fire-starting ceremony for our alumni,” recalls Miller. “That was definitely a highlight, symbolizing that the whole weekend was centered around sparking the flame. It was also a great way to introduce our alumni to other pathways to recovery.” Adventure Recovery utilizes outdoor skills as the foundational learning tools for awareness, growth of skills, and personal transformation. 

“The group of participants was a great mix,” says Miller. “We had people with two and three years of sobriety, someone who came via an intensive outpatient program, and then we had one participant with double-digit years of recovery, so it was quite the range.”

Next up is the Swickard weekend retreat at the end of April for alumni who identify as female. All facilitators and instructors on this retreat will be female. There will be a focus on the connecting aspect of divine feminine power and peer support by the sisterhood. People in recovery with non-binary gender identification may choose which retreat they would like to join. 

Harmony Foundation has long utilized a holistic approach to healing trauma and addiction. All staff at Harmony have been trained in trauma-informed care. Realizing that addiction is a biopsychosocial and spiritual disease, Harmony’s treatment program promotes physical, emotional, and spiritual healing, empowering patients to embark upon a lifelong recovery journey.

If you or a loved one are struggling with alcohol or drug addiction, or you have questions about our programs, call us today at (970) 432-8075 to get the help needed as soon as possible. Our experienced staff is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

How to Avoid the Monday Blues with Michael Arnold’s New Podcast

Monday morning is a stressful time for many people. Anxiety about work or a depressed mood are not beneficial for anybody but they can be dangerous relapse triggers for people in recovery from addiction.

One way to deal with the Monday blues is to confront it head-on and make a virtue of it. Michael Arnold is the director of alumni and recovery support services at Harmony Foundation. She has found an engaging way to help people in recovery snap out of any dark moods they may be experiencing.

In May, Michael started a podcast called “Monday State of Mind” to give the recovery community a positive start into the workweek. Her sheer boundless enthusiasm alone will cheer up your Monday—or any other day for that matter. “I know the good that happens when I choose to be consciously aware of my state of mind,” explained the woman known as the “Hurricane of Happiness” in episode one. An alumna of Harmony herself, Michael continues to use the tools that were given to her while she was there as a client.

The fuel behind “Monday State of Mind” is her intense desire to “recover out loud” and in the process help others in the same situation. “ At Harmony, I get to help alumni implement the foundation they learned into their daily lives and help show them how to continue to take their power back by creating and living lives that are filled with continuous growth, meaningful connection, service, gratitude, and so much more.”

“Monday State of Mind” means to tackle thought-provoking questions that relate to recovery and how to apply the answers into the daily life of listeners. Michael aims to challenge listeners to ask themselves whether their state of mind is helping them catapult their week forward, or whether it is harming their week.

And when things don’t go your way, you just have to deal with it—appropriately. The week leading up to episode nine reminded Michael to keep it authentic when she realized that her request for listener questions had resulted in zero replies. In typical Michael Arnold fashion, she turned that Monday disappointment around and made it the topic of the episode that followed four episodes about humility after all.

At first, she got anxious and started blaming herself for this “failure.” Destructive, self-defeating thoughts showed up: “Why are you even doing this podcast?” and “No one is listening!” Then her ego chimed in: “Michael, you can’t admit that no one submitted questions. Just make some up!” But she felt fairly uneasy about making things up—she didn’t want to be a fraud. Instead, Michael called a friend who put her straight: “Michael, this is your opportunity to really show what you have been talking about. Your topics are happening to you. You have a great opportunity to be humble to the world and talk about it.”

Michael realized that “in order to change your state of mind you have to make tough decisions to grow. You have to be prepared to be a little uncomfortable.” She understood that she can’t expect listeners to be transparent, truthful, and vulnerable if she is not prepared to be so herself. After all, nobody is perfect and you can’t beat the Monday blues by faking it.

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Catch the podcast here: https://harmonyfoundationinc.com/monday-state-of-mind/
Michael Arnold is the co-author of
Drowning in Addiction: A Personal Guide to Recovery

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How Addiction Affects Body, Mind, and Spirit

By Michael Rass

Addiction cannot simply be reduced to substance use, chemically caused by drugs and alcohol in the human body. Addiction is a complex biopsychosocial and spiritual disorder with many interlocking conditions and mechanisms. Many addiction professionals view it as a disease of the mind, body, and spirit.

A Disease of the Body:

Most psychoactive substances are regarded as toxins by the human body and its defense system. A healthy liver will try to purge any amount of alcohol as soon as possible, for example. Different substances have different effects on the body. Alcohol destroys brain cells and depresses the central nervous system, while cocaine is a stimulant, raising blood pressure and heart rate. Both substances, like others, trigger the release of certain chemical messengers in the brain, known as neurotransmitters. The main ones are dopamine, which elicits pleasure, norepinephrine causing arousal and focus, and serotonin, which causes feelings of happiness, counteracting negative emotions.

The repeated, artificially elevated release of these neurotransmitters will eventually cause changes in the brain of the addicted individual, providing the increasingly rigid neurological structure for the psychological aspects of addiction. In addition to slowly changing the mind of the addicted person, substances like alcohol, crystal meth, cocaine, and others will have a pathological impact on the physical body, damaging major organs, the cardiovascular system, the skin, and teeth as well as causing dangerous infections, malnutrition, and chronic pain conditions. Most people suffering from a severe substance use disorder (SUD) have been neglecting their physical fitness for a long time, having completely given up on anything resembling a healthy lifestyle.

A Disease of the Mind:

For psychiatrists, addiction is primarily a disease of the mind. The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—the diagnostic manual widely used by psychiatrists in the United States—states that “all drugs that are taken in excess have in common direct activation of the brain reward system, which is involved in the reinforcement of behaviors and the production of memories.” These psychoactive substances “produce such an intense activation of the reward system that normal activities may be neglected.”

Eventually, this “intense activation” may trap the user in an addiction cycle of craving, using, and withdrawal, leading to renewed craving. In the psychiatric jargon of the DSM-5, “the essential feature of a substance use disorder is a cluster of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms indicating that the individual continues using the substance despite significant substance-related problems.” In other words, compulsive substance use, despite negative consequences. The user is now caught in a cycle of drug or alcohol use that requires ever-increasing amounts of the substance just to feel “normal.”

The question is, how did the addicted person get there? Why the “intense activation” in the first place? And then again and again? This is where other mental health issues typically play a crucial role. Most addiction professionals now believe that substance abuse is not simply caused by irresponsible pleasure-seeking but should, in most cases, been seen as an attempt to self-medicate serious mental health conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder, major depression, or anxiety. And those are often connected to highly traumatic life events the individual is unable to handle in a healthy way. The “intense activation” is supposed to numb intense emotional pain.

Due to the phenomenon of tolerance this numbing can only be maintained with ever-higher doses of drugs and alcohol while the brain tries to counteract the unnatural surges of neurotransmitters in an effort to rebalance its hormonal setting. At the same time, more and more toxins will do more and more damage to the well-being of the user. Meanwhile, the continual degradation of the physical body causes more stress and emotional pain, providing further motivation to continue with substance misuse. Body and mind are caught in a deadly down spiral: the addicted mind will make the body sicker, and the degraded body will exacerbate the cravings driving the addiction.

A Disease of the Spirit:

For many addiction professionals, addiction goes beyond this body-mind interaction, though. They also view it as a disease of the spirit. In his influential study, Canadian physician Gabor Maté compared addiction to the “realm of hungry ghosts,” one of six types of rebirth in Asian mythology. It is said to be the abode of restless spirits suffering from insatiable cravings and unhealthy attachments, condemned to inhabit dismal places.

At the heart of the addiction problem is a deeper malaise: the disconnection from the Higher Power—whatever that might be, a missing sense of purpose, a failure at authentic self-actualization, the highest level in Maslow’s pyramid of human needs.

This ethereal aspect of the disease is often a hard sell in an increasingly agnostic society. It doesn’t easily correspond to medical and scientific concepts and spirituality can mean very different things to different people. Whatever it is, Americans are increasingly identifying with it.  “About a quarter of US adults (27 percent) now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious, up 8 percentage points in five years,” according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017.

Many of them see spirituality as a personal search for the meaning of life, for connection with the entire universe—with a Power greater than ourselves. They do not necessarily seek a religious practice defined by mandatory observances, rules, and prohibitions. Instead, they want to connect with a Higher Power rooted in love and compassion—a Power that gives human beings perspective, meaning, and a life of purpose.

It is a perspective of the utmost importance to people in recovery. Many succumbed to a life of despair because they lacked a spiritual outlook. Sadly, our current culture seems to promote mostly vanity, instant gratification, zoning-out, and craving for material distractions, all things that are dangerous for a person in recovery. Addiction is a demon trying to disconnect us from our spirituality, the Higher Power, and our fellow human beings. To recover fully from addiction we must strengthen the body, heal the mind, and reconnect to our spirituality. This takes time and effort. A lot of time and effort. That is why recovery is a life-long pursuit.

The Place for Spirituality in Recovery by Mike Lewis, M.A.

Spirituality is the calling to look more deeply into our lives – into ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and our relationships with the ecological and universal realms. As the Dalai Lama has said many times, “All beings want happiness and freedom from suffering.” We all want to love, be loved, feel peace, be creative, feel connected, and feel fulfilled with our lives. Treading the labyrinth of humanity’s misguided attempts toward achieving these deeper desires leads us down disastrous roads, dead ends, and into pits of confusion and despair. For a while, tasty foods, expensive material items, and prideful accomplishments can trigger the pleasurable neurotransmitters in our brains. Working much like a drug or alcohol, the external stimuli lose their power and we develop dependence and tolerance, needing more and more to get our happiness high. Finally, we are left strung out and unhappier than we were in the beginning. On the path of recovery, we bring spirituality into our lives to help us reconnect in a more sustainable and healthy way – a way that fills our core with contented pleasure and without as much dependence on things outside of ourselves. A quiet walk, taking time to chop the vegetables with precision, prayer, meditation, snuggling with our pets, gazing into the eyes of our loves ones, singing, painting, self-help workshops, religion, planting vegetables, reading, eating slowly and tasting every bite, fellowship, listening to soothing music, and donating time and resources for another’s benefit – these are common examples of how healthy people let go of their frantic pursuits of the insatiable highs and slow down to appreciate this fragile, fleeting, yet incredibly wonderful human life. Take a moment for spiritualty today. Breathe and appreciate this body, this life. Smell the roses – they are all around us if we can learn to see them.

Stop and Smell the Roses; Psychology Todayhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understand-other-people/201710/stop-and-smell-the-roses
Identify Your True Source of Happiness; Choprahttps://chopra.com/free-programs/awaken-to-happiness/week-1-identify-your-true-source-of-happiness
11 Ways to Appreciate Your Life a Little More; Mind Body Greenhttps://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16408/11-ways-to-appreciate-your-life-a-little-more.html

Mike Lewis is a Spiritual Advisor and Detox Counselor at Harmony Foundation
Mike Lewis Bio