Sydney Addiction Therapy in Neutral Bay, New South Wales, Australia | Addiction resources centre

Sydney Addiction Therapy

Locality: Neutral Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Phone: +61 1300 761 255

Address: Suite 105, 153 Wycombe Rd 2089 Neutral Bay, NSW, Australia

Website: http://www.sydneyaddictiontherapy.com

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• Medical and health
• Drug addiction treatment centre
• Alcohol addiction treatment centre
• Addiction resources centre

23.01.2022 Was Plan A ever REALLY a plan? You've probably seen the anti drink driving ads promoting Plan B but, for most people, Plan A was never really a plan. To begin with, the choices to drink, drug or behave* (*insert sex, gambling, shopping etc) was something to do and there just didn't seem any good reason not to do it.... It's not till later that these choices start to become part of an actual plan. At this point we can do a lot of head miles agonising over these plans; justifying, rationalising, deliberating and refining. In fact the very nature of planning engages the emotional parts of our brain to build excitement and anticipation (and eventually cravings), which helps our plans come to fruition. Of course nobody plans for addiction, but we have to admit there was a lot of planning going on leading up to our misuse of addictive substances or behaviours. A big problem is the absence of an alternative plan ... there is no Plan B! It can be very empowering to acknowledge the way out of addiction is about finding a new plan, but you know you've tried on your own to come up with a new plan and it just turned out to be a different version of the old plan. What you need is someone or something with a different perspective to help you find a new attitude. Ultimately you need a new attitude to create this new plan. You don't have to see a professional (but it helps), because there are lots of great self-help groups, books, podcasts and videos out there! https://www.recovery.org//improve-your-attitude-and-impro/

22.01.2022 I had a client this week who recognised that deep down her addictive behaviours are about trying to recapture a sense of play and adventure in her predictable adult life. Everyone recognises if a child has too much adult responsibility there is a tragic loss of childhood. We know all children need to play and that play is not trivial, it's actually serious 'business.' But play is important to adults too. When we play recreational sport, we do it because we enjoy the feeling o...f play, otherwise we would stop but, if we become a professional sports person, play becomes work. This is effectively what happens to us all when we grow up. Play becomes silly childhood stuff we feel embarrassed about even missing. We jump on the hamster wheel of adult work and disengage or suppress the Play Drive. However, this deeply primal drive for play emerges again in the 'play' and 'adventure' of gambling, gaming, sex, spending money shopping/investing and partying with drugs and alcohol. How much drunken or drug filled partying do we need to do to make up for the loss of play in our lives? How many adventure movies do we need to watch to make up for the loss of adventure? Many people rediscover the joy of play when they have children. But what happens until then or if we don't have kids? Let's return to my client. I asked my client if she liked climbing trees when she was a kid; "YES! I loved it. It was my secret world and a great place to hide when I didn't want to be found". The last time she remembered climbing a tree (and it was a clear memory) was when she was 11 years old. The home-work I gave my client was to find a safe tree to climb. I asked her to sit in the comfy fork (I suggested a Morton Bay Fig with a low generous fork) and to let the sense of play emerge as she let her mind wander with the strong branch behind her back and the canopy of leaves above her. She left the session with a spring of excitement in anticipation of this playful experience. What might you do to recapture the sense of play and adventure in your life? https://edition.cnn.com//why-adults-should-play/index.html

20.01.2022 Self-isolation + alcohol/drugs = ??? The current coronavirus crisis requirements of self-isolation might seem like a great excuse to indulge in a few too many bevies, but anyone who has struggled with heavy alcohol or substance use will not be jumping for joy about this. They know from experience just how disastrous the combination of isolation with drugs and alcohol can be. It’s often the last straw that breaks the back of substance abuse and addiction. Most of my clients r...eport their substance use escalated after long periods of isolated use. Predrinking or preloading is one of the most common ways people end up drinking and drugging at home (until coronavirus isolation). It starts with wanting to get a social buzz before going out, but it ends with just staying home and making your excuses. Putting aside the risk of developing alcoholism or drug addiction (something you definitely don't want), drinking and drugging alone can put you in grave risk of overdosing, accidental injury, and even death. I was interviewed in the article below by Flip Prior. It has some good tips for dealing with COVID-19 stress and boredom. If you are concerned about your use of alcohol or drugs while in isolation CALL me on 1300 76 12 55 for a free online or phone assessment session. https://www.abc.net.au//tips-tools-for-avoiding-d/12096040

18.01.2022 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! https://www.onecommune.com/recovery-russell-brand-sign-up

15.01.2022 Could psychedelic-assisted therapy be a solution to addiction problems? The simple answer is 'yes' but it's not a simple question. Scientific research has shown addiction is between 5075% genetics, the rest can be put down to emotional, environmental and relational influences. However these factors are a drop in the ocean of each person's individual story of dependence. Traditional cultures have used plant medicines to heal mental health issues, including addiction, for hund...reds, likely thousands, of years. Today we have accumulated a lot of scientific data supporting psychedelics for treating addiction, but the substances have a checkered history! You might not know that Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, is reported to have found his spiritual awakening via a psychedelic treatment called the 'belladonna cure,' prescribed to him in 1934 at a Manhattan clinic. Belladonna, a plant in the nightshade family, has been known since the Middle Ages to produce vivid hallucinations and delirium. Wilson later said "a great peace stole over me, and I thought, no matter how wrong things seem to be, they are still all right." In Australia, psychedelic assisted therapy is not a legal option but medicinal MDMA and medicinal psilocybin is currently under application with the TGA to be changed from schedule 9 substances to schedule 8. This means, in the future, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and addiction specialists will be more easily able to access these medicines to treat people suffering from key mental illnesses such as depression, PTSD as well as for the depression and anxiety often associated with a terminal illness diagnosis, and hopefully for substance abuse, OCD, anorexia and early stage dementia. It appears psychedelic therapy decriminalisation and legalisation is following a similar path to medical cannabis! https://theconversation.com/psychedelics-to-treat-mental-il

15.01.2022 Why anxious thoughts come up AFTER you stop drinking? I was recently asked this by someone doing Dry July and it's a really interesting question that I'm sure many people relate to. Dry July and similar campaigns like FebFast, Ocsober, Dry January and On The Dry do a great job of raising awareness about alcohol and aim to positively influence our drinking culture, while at the same time raising money for charity.... Giving up drinking for lent is another common method of taking a break from drinking or drug taking, but if most people were honest they also think it's a good way of NOT becoming addicted. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that, and a big reason is to do with the question about anxious thinking. I'm going to use an old AA metaphor called the Three-headed Dragon to explain this. Essentially the story goes; We all have a two-headed dragon to battle. The two heads are ’thoughts’ & ‘feelings’ and these two heads can really give us a hard time (anxiety/depression/anger etc). We want to avoid this painful distressing stuff so we look for relief in drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping whatever makes us feel better. Over time we build up a tolerance to whatever we use for relief, so we need to use more and use it more often. Soon a third head appears (dependance). At first the third head is smaller so it's easy to manage but it keeps growing and demands to be fed more! Life becomes a juggling act between the 'three heads.' Soon the third head is bigger than the others and we are forced to deal with it. This is when people start seeking help. They go to their GP; they go to AA meetings; see a therapist like me; or they go to rehab. Everyone feels better when they are alcohol or drug free and the third head has gone to sleep (it doesn’t disappear because the third head is really entrenched neural pathways). It’s great to be clean and sober, but "oh no" the original two heads 'thoughts' & 'feelings' are still there waiting to be sorted out. And that's why anxious thinking (re)appears when we stop. This is a ’story’ I often tell people in recovery to help them understand that recovery is more than abstinence. When we stop drinking or drugging we need to learn new skills to manage unhelpful thinking that leads to difficult emotions like anxiety. When we learn to live clean and/or sober we learn new ways to self-soothe that help us to work on the source of the problem rather than just covering up the symptoms. In essence, substance use (or other addictive behaviours) limits our coping strategies till we only have a few ’tools’ in our skills ’tool box.' https://www.sbs.com.au//yes-alcohol-awareness-campaigns-dr

09.01.2022 Perfectionism is the fear of being criticised says Caroline Myss. In my work as an addiction specialist I’ve found common personality traits shared by people struggling with dependence issues. Perfectionism is high on the list. It could even be said that perfectionism IS an addiction!... I can speak from personal experience here because I am a recovering perfectionist. I understand how the desire for perfection comes from a deep need to feel safe. I also understand how stressful striving for perfection is, and how this stress leads to relief seeking. Food, sex, shopping, drugs and alcohol all offer soothing relief from the terrible task-master of perfectionism. In my experience, dependence issues emerge from fundamentally threatening and uncomfortable emotional states (like feeling insecure) that become rigid and often unconscious personality traits (like perfectionism). But not all perfectionism is the same. Essentially there are two forms; Evaluative Concern Perfectionism & Personal Standard Perfectionism. The former develops from worrying about what others think of us, especially focusing on negative criticism, and the latter generally stems from our personal internal values and standards. A recent study scanned the brains of participants from both these groups. They found the brain activity of people with personal-standard based perfectionism allowed them to learn and correct their mistakes in a process of personal growth while the brains of people with external judgment-based perfectionism showed very little error-processing activity. These people are often trapped in a fear driven and unattainable need to be perfect. Strangely enough frequently leading to procrastination. It turns out that perfectionism per se isn’t the problem. The problem is what’s driving it. External judgment-based perfectionism is a childhood survival strategy. It emerges from a time when we are literally helpless and rely on meeting the expectations of our caregivers. Our caregivers might push us toward perfectionism for our own good, or we might push our self to feel more secure. Either way we need to acknowledge we are no longer helpless. We need to soothe our self not with addictive behaviours but with the knowledge that we are adults and we have a choice. As Mary Poppins says; My character is spit spot spic and span, I'm practically perfect in every way but Mary is a fictional character, and that is just where this kind of perfectionism should stay! https://www.salon.com//my_paralyzing_perfectionism_partner/

07.01.2022 Call 1300 76 12 55 I am offering COVID-19 safe appointments via phone, FaceTime, Zoom or SkypeCall 1300 76 12 55 I am offering COVID-19 safe appointments via phone, FaceTime, Zoom or Skype

05.01.2022 Understanding and managing negative emotions after giving up alcohol! Recently I was interviewed for this article! Here is my part but you can read the whole article in the link below ~Su Naseby, a psychotherapist specialising in substance use, says giving up alcohol long term is about more than just abstinence to stay stopped, you need to learn new skills to manage the unhelpful thinking that leads to difficult emotions.... She says while the process of stopping drinking is fairly generic, afterwards it becomes a much more personal journey and that everyone has to find their own way to manage. "A lot of the time we use substances or pleasure-seeking behaviours to avoid the difficulties of being human," she says. Unfortunately, unpleasant thoughts and emotions are a natural part of life, but you can learn to manage them in healthier ways through things like cognitive behaviour and insight therapies. Finding ways to manage pesky negative thoughts and emotions This part is not at all easy; at least one client has told Su that staying stopped was the hardest thing they'd ever had to do. "She's using writing poems as the way to deal with thoughts and feelings, because she was an emotional and sensitive person and bottling it all up she has written a lot about her recovery process," she says. "Emotions are not a problem they are a symptom and people look at their emotions as something to get rid of. But if we are having an emotion, there is a reason why we are having it. "We have to look at the cause of those emotions, what the beliefs are, what the experiences are. "Mindfulness and journalling when you do that sort of thing, it starts to make it more apparent where each individual needs to start looking." On a practical level, if the unhelpful thought "gee, a glass of wine would be nice" arises, she recommends (brain training) using a rubber band on the wrist to interrupt the thought process before it moves from the cognitive parts of the brain into the limbic system, where emotions get involved and cravings take hold. "It ends up down in the reptile brain that is very compulsive and impulsive and emotional." She says after snapping the rubber band, move away from the thought by distracting yourself with something that brings you into the here and now: "Go have a drink of water, smell a rose."~ https://www.abc.net.au//managing-negative-emotion/11344896

04.01.2022 I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the board If you're a 'certain age' you will get this reference ... Iggy Pop circa 1998! I remember when this was a hit, and I reckon if memes were a thing back then this would have been one. This post is about boredom because I believe the # 1 threat to relapse is often boredom. So it's really important to get our heads around this one if we are going to change our relationship with addictive behaviours and substance use.... Sam Harris recommends meditation as the 'cure' for boredom and says boredom is "simply our failure to pay attention." This is pretty good. But not always helpful. I had a young 14 year old client once who was caught inhaling aerosol deodorants. He said the reason he tried it was because his phone had been confiscated and he was bored. We expect kids to get bored. We got bored when we were a kid. The main reason is basically that kids lack freedom. They have to do what adults allow them to do. Boredom is something we should grow out of, but we don't. We really need to challenge our belief that we aren't free to do what we want. Sure, we might need to compromise a bit but we have a lot more freedom than we give ourselves credit for. Next time you feel bored and your mind turns to that old addictive behaviour try making a list of alternative things you could do that would actually be more interesting, more meaningful and probably more fun. Meditation can also be a great way to free our mind, to help us realise we need to take response-ability for the choices we are (and aren't) making. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-175C95uGE

03.01.2022 I'm offering reduced rates for remote phone/Skype/FaceTime session for anyone experiencing financial uncertainty but would still like to have counselling therapy

03.01.2022 New tech pushes addiction into the 21 century Yesterday while I was waiting for my Pad Thai lunch to arrive I felt the urge to check my phone. Why? My phone was perfectly safe in my bag ... it's not like it's a sleeping baby or simmering soup I need to check on. Yet still that urge was strong. I resisted. I tolerated the mildly uncomfortable feeling of waiting, and in doing so I strengthened my coping skills around discomfort. I actually do this a lot. In fact I take pride in... being the only one in a crowd not checking my phone ... but that doesn't mean I still don't feel that urge scratching at my insides to "pick up!" This is what I call 'off cushion mindful awareness' or OCMA for short When I introduce mindfulness to new clients I always tell them that it's wonderful to do formal mindfulness practice using an app or doing meditation in a class, but it all comes alive when we take it off-cushion. I suggest cleaning teeth OCMA ... driving OCMA ... stacking the dishwasher OCMA ... any activity we tend to do in an automatic mindless way. If you have substance or behavioural dependence issues then making OCMA an every day practice is actually a really practical and effective way to strengthen your coping skills. It's effectively brain-training and it can make managing more serious addictions easier. https://www.lionsroar.com/seeing-beyond-the-screen/

03.01.2022 Healthy ME time = Recovery! One of the most important ingredients in my treatment program is helping my clients find 'permission' to take time to do things that nobody else directly benefits from. OMG! This sounds so selfish to most people, especially if they have been binging on drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviours. Most people wanting to stop using prepare them self to be 'good' (because for sure they've been bad!). It's a bit of a shock when I suggest they need to ...schedule regular downtime for themselves. Most people don't even know what they would do because their addictions have been their only downtime ... for years. This is where I introduce my Smörgåsbord metaphor (I love metaphors) ... this one goes; "You know when you take your plate to a smörgåsbord and you put a little of everything on, then go back later for the ones you like best? Well, go try a bunch of different things like doing a course at a community centre, or a meetup group, or go for a hike, or get a massage, or go to a movie by yourself, or go to the library and borrow books you're interested in but wouldn't buy. It almost doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it clean and sober. Then go back for seconds to the ones you most enjoyed." I can't tell you how important this is to recovery. It's perhaps THE most important part! One of my personal favourite downtime activities is to go to the bathhouse. I have a multi-pass which encourages me to go more often before it runs out. I was there the other day and was amazed to see this guy sitting in the hot tub wearing his bluetooth headset and iWatch all while constantly checking his phone!! LOL whatever you do DON'T do this, this is NOT downtime TIP: For most people going to the gym actually isn't downtime either because there is still a feeling of working at being 'good' attached these kinds of activities. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/