Transformational Treatment Model

Austin Recovery's Mission is to provide effective, affordable and compassionate treatment for chemical dependency. Our Transformational Treatment Model represents our commitment to assure the effectiveness of our programs.

Albert Einstein once said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." That insight certainly rings true when it comes to finding a lasting solution to the problems of alcohol and drug addiction. Over the years, seminal thinkers have addressed what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous calls, "the seeming hopeless state of mind and body" we call addiction. But a common thread appearing among the writings of those who have pointed us to a viable solution is the pivotal role that spirituality nearly always plays.

William James, known to many as "the father of American psychology," spoke of individuals who had recovered when they, "recognized the unseen spiritual order that surrounds them and adjusted themselves harmoniously to it." He wrote of women and men who had "spiritual awakenings" (some sudden and revolutionary in their nature, while others were more gradual and educational in their nature.) In his book Varieties of Religious Experiences, he listed accounts of some alcoholics who had undergone such transformations and who, as a result, found lasting sobriety.

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, told one of his alcoholic patients that he was beyond the clinical help he could provide and needed to experience, "a psychic conversion" if he was to have any hope of finding the solution to his alcoholic dilemma. He said, this change, when it occurred, "...appeared in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements." He went on to describe the change noting that the ideas, emotions and attitudes that were the guiding forces of the (lives) of these people are suddenly cast to one side and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."

Dr. William Silkworth, the physician who treated AA co-founder Bill Wilson, also wrote of the spiritual solution he witnessed in the lives of hundreds of early AA members who had undergone the 12-Step program of transformation.

Austin Recovery takes very seriously the key role that spirituality plays in an individual's recovery process - whether that recovery is from alcohol or from drug addiction. A growing number of clinical research studies demonstrate that increased spiritual practices are often associated with long-term addiction recovery (Carter, 1998) and with the maintenance of treatment gains (Koski-Jannes & Turner, 1999). Still another study (Kaskutas et al, 2003) indicates that when clients report a "spiritual awakening" as a result of their 12-Step involvement, those clients were nearly four times more likely to be abstinent three years post-treatment than those who reported no spiritual awakening. We recognize also the new and important role that science and research are contributing to the addiction treatment field. We have seen significant advances to our knowledge since the pioneering days of James and Jung and other such visionaries. Our Transformation Treatment Model takes these new resources into account.

Our treatment goal at Austin Recovery is to help our patients experience within themselves a new state of conscious connection to their Higher Power -- an experience and a connection that makes their lives more meaningful and purposeful as they remain abstinent from alcohol and other mood-altering drugs.

Through our Transformational Treatment Model:

• We introduce our patients to the 12 Steps and utilize the Steps as the principal pathway to bringing about a spiritual transformation.
• We identify the key concepts & principles within each Step that patients need to understand and put into daily practice in order to achieve the desired spiritual transformation.
• We organize our lectures, group and individual therapy sessions around this model and utilize other treatment modalities that can help bring about our stated goal. These include: experiential exercises, relaxation practices, musical journeys, active meditation, writing exercises, and yoga. We also offer voluntary sweat lodges, gardening and inner-child work for some of our patients.
• We provide gender-specific residential treatment programs and work to address the differing spiritual needs women and men bring to this process.
• The University of Texas School of Social Work faculty and students are engaged in ongoing evaluation and monitoring of varying programs at Austin Recovery. We are constantly testing the effectiveness of our various treatment components and have various journal articles in process detailing our outcome data.
• We are utilizing the many advances researchers have made in developing instruments that measure the levels of spiritual transformation within an individual and we will use these to demonstrate the effectiveness of our treatment procedures.

Our Transformational Treatment Model is, and will likely always be, a work in progress. As we learn what works, we will build on it; as we uncover components that do not contribute to an individual's recovery, we will discard them. In developing our Model, we commit ourselves to be non-proprietary, making our data fully available to the addiction treatment field. We welcome your interest and ask for your support in helping Austin Recovery achieve its Mission of making compassionate treatment services effective and affordable to the great numbers of addicts and alcoholics who are in need.