Project Addiction: The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering From Drugs and Behaviors [Interview][Transcript]
Guest: Scott Spackey
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest Bio: Scott A Spackey, CATC, RAS, CHt, CLC—Relationship coach, Family Counselor, Addiction Specialist, Life-Coach, sleep disorder specialist and Clinical Hypnotherapist. 12 years private practice with clients worldwide and three time author including: Project Addiction—The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering From Drugs and Behaviors.
661.904.5353 Scott@Life-Mind.com www.ProjectAddiction.com
Segment overview: Scott Spackey, Certified Addiction Treatment, Private Practice Counselor (CATC) and author of the book: Project Addiction—The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering From Drugs and Behaviors, discusses the drawbacks associated with “one-size-fits-all” addiction recovery plans and how to help patients and providers choose customized recovery plans that offer effective, long-term outcomes.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio – Project Addiction
Neal Howard: Hello and welcome to the program, I’m your host Neal Howard. Thank you for joining us today here on Health Professional Radio. Our guest in studio today is Scott Spackey, Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor in private practice and author of the book Project Addiction: The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering from Drugs and Behaviors. He’s here with us in studio today to discuss the drawbacks associated with one size fits all facility treatment, addiction recovery plans and how to help patients and providers choose customized recovery plans that offer effective long term outcomes. Welcome to Health Professional Radio Scott.
Scott Spackey: Well thanks for inviting me Neal.
N: You are a Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor or CATC, talk a little bit about your background. How did you become a certified or why did you become a Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor?
S: That’s a great question and actually it has a I think a little bit of inspiring story. I was lost and I just started constructing when I was clean and sober and I was thriving I mean I was making great money, I was doing well until I felt completely unfulfilled so I just didn’t want to move on with it and so I wanted to do something different and I had this feeling, this calling to try to help people and so of all things I kind of randomly ran across a hypnotherapist, I thought I wanted to help and hypnotize people and help them solve their problems and I was doing that for a while and it was going okay and I realized I kind of hit the ceiling and I was already making any more money than I thought I needed and I want to live a comfortable life of course and I wanted to reach out and did more work and of all things I was randomly one day watching TV and sure that intervention show came on and I’m watching this and I got so inspired. I’m like “Oh my God, I could do that. I’m an addict, I have recovery experience, I know that better … than anybody” and so in that moment I decided to look into it and I got online and I did some research and I found some colleges etc. and what the process to do it and been changed from then on. Once I went to the education and the processing, got certified with Breining Institute, within a month after advertising that I was providing treatment… I went from a handful of clients as hypnotherapist and life coach to working 10 hours a day, 7 days a weeks, helping countless people and it’s been very fulfilling experience, very fulfilling.
N: Now in addition to all of that and more you’re an author, the Author of Project Addiction: The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering from Drugs and Behaviors. Why did you write this book and who did you write it to?
S: Well I wrote it probably to purge my soul and spirit and also to help so many people that I would never actually get to meet as a counselor. I am also as you mentioned, I think you mentioned it, a recovering addict and I was hardcore. I mean I’m one of the worst fellows ever that was out there. So when I was trying to get clean and recover and change my life around, I was very disappointed with what was available, I had no money resource but even if I had those programs even if there’s nothing wrong with them the bottom line is you have to have a program that’s gonna work with you. As a private counselor the greatest benefit of being a private counselor working with people is that I get to customize a plan that works specifically for them. They don’t have to adapt to my plan, I have to adapt the plan to them and I had tremendous success and the more I do it, the longer I get it I realized that of course with any career you’re gonna become burned out. It’s a very taxing career, even thought I was gonna walk away from this and I felt like I was gonna abandon all these people… with such a pervasive pathology throughout the globe and so the inspiration there was I can’t just walk away from this. I’ve got to be able to instill all of my knowledge and experience as an addict and as a counselor and be able to provide this to people and so basically…is exactly that, it is me in a book, everything that I know, everything that I do, all of the countless tragedies that I have which are very powerful and very innovative could all be instilled into that book so when I’m gone and etc., etc. that is there and so basically in a sense I was hoping to create a kind of a one stop shop, some of the people can pick up and use and it can solve these problems.
N: You’ve written this book and you say it’s you in the book. It’s basically your life but you’ve got some critics of the book that say your descriptions of the drugs and the use are so detailed that they could tempt someone to try to use them. When someone poses that question to you how do you respond?
S: Well first thing I point out is that I think in the first few pages is a warning and the warning says that “Be careful reading along the lines and be careful about reading the drug chapters because they are so intense, they’re so…that it can cause killing or what we all commonly know as triggering behavior and thoughts and so it advices you how to do that. And yes indeed the drug chapters, there’s a separate chapter for each and every drug in that book so it’s not wrong together at all. And so when I wrote those chapters, I was very moved emotionally because I have personal experience with those. I’m not somebody that just dabbled, I did them all and so I shot them, I ate them, I snorted them and so I’m able to give that very first hand visceral account and that’s one of the I guess you could say skills that I have. I can be very expressive and so once I get to that zone where I’m writing something I pour it out, all the emotion comes out. And so it’s not just that and I think it was very necessary to make it as authentic as it really is. Drugs and all kinds of addictive behaviors, the experience of them are very attractive, very alluring, they start off great don’t they? Everything does. That first bite of chocolate cake sounds, feels great, we love it but once you get kind of a menu and you start eating every day, there’s a problem. So the drug chapters do exactly that, it’s goanna like you really is very enticing, very alluring, very inviting and then eventually they turn very sour so by the time somebody gets done reading the drug chapters it transforms, it goes into a very dark place but it’s not in your face, it’s like the real thing, it’s very subtle.
N: Now being the real thing and such in real life often times it’s a physician, a caregiver or a family member or maybe a friend who realized that someone has an addiction and their looking to help this person. Say you’re a physician and you know a treatment plan, the facility treatment center. Why is it necessary to understand some of the drawbacks of treatment facilities and their methodology as one size fits all?
S: Yeah, it’s important to understand every dynamic of everything that were budging somebody to do whether it’s a pain medication from a doctor or a treatment facility because again what works for one may not work for another and the worst things that can happen and it happens so often is that it can definitely get worst. And so when we apply the wrong treatment and in the wrong way to the wrong person then we have bad combination. There is a treatment that’s gonna work for that person but it’s going to work for this other person. It’s gonna be something that we have to be able to research and do the work and we have to consider who they are, what they are, what their background is, what’s their capabilities are intellectually, emotionally, spiritually maybe. All of those things have to be factored in and so again that’s what that book does. It breaks down, it dissects all of the treatment options that are out there and I’ve been criticized also about kind of being on the attack on some of these things but I think the book does a very good job of pointing out both – the ups and the downs – because ultimately if we know what the downs are, if we know what the bad sides are then we know how to avoid them. We know how to minimize them and we can take the best part out. It’s kind of like if somebody gives be an orange, well I don’t like to eat oranges but inside that orange is orange juice and if I know how to cut it and squeeze it, I can extract the essence of it for a life giving, nourishing experience and that’s about treatment the same way when we know how to extract what it has and if we know how to do that then everything has something good in it. We have to know how to do it.
N: Where can our listeners get a copy of Project Addiction: The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering from Drugs and Behaviors?
S: It’s currently available everywhere worldwide. Anywhere that you buy books sometimes you can even in stores but everywhere you buy books online… it’s in eBook, it’s in print and it’s in audio book too. I went through a lot of work to make it available in every format because a lot of people don’t respond to things in a certain format. My girlfriend for example, she doesn’t like to read, she likes the knowledge but she doesn’t want to read so she was the inspiration behind the audio book version of that. And I tell you what surprised me is that there are more copies of that being sold all throughout the world than any of the other versions that are there and I’m very pleased with that. So anywhere that you buy a book, anywhere that you go online to buy a book, you’ll find it.
N: Great.
S: Type it in and you can of course go to my website projectaddiction.com and there’s links right there and all kinds of information. There’s lots of free stuff there, as a matter fact I’ve got like a dozen chapters of the book there for your approval in audio, say you can read it and also a video with me describing and reading them.
N: We’ve been in studio with Scott Spackey, Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor in private practice and also author of the book Project Addiction: The Complete Guide to Using, Abusing and Recovering from Drugs and Behaviors. And he’s been in studio discussing some of the drawbacks of one size fits all addiction recovery plans and how to help patients and providers choose customize recovery plans that offer effective, long-term outcomes. It’s been great having you in the studio with us Scott.
S: It’s been great being here. Thank you so much.
N: Thank you. Transcripts and audio of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au and also at hpr.fm and you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.