The Recovery Industry

Posted by Cyn

I’ve writ­ten else­where about the fact that I am a sur­vivor of child­hood sex­ual abuse and have been treated for depres­sion in the past. As a result, I had an extended expe­ri­ence with the recov­ery indus­try in the United States. I have real prob­lems with that indus­try, and have cho­sen not to con­tinue being one of the peo­ple feed­ing it.

I would hate to see any­one read my con­cerns about the recov­ery indus­try use those con­cerns as another excuse to delay get­ting help for men­tal health prob­lems. Please don’t. I do hope that any­one read­ing this essay will be a more informed con­sumer and sim­ply be more aware and proac­tive in seek­ing men­tal health care.

When I first sought help in 1988, I sim­ply went to a prac­tice rec­om­mended by other peo­ple in the orga­ni­za­tion for which I worked. The par­tic­u­lar psy­chol­o­gist I hap­pened to see in the prac­tice was deter­mined by the fact that he was the one who had a weekly slot avail­able on his sched­ule. I didn’t think about shop­ping around or try­ing dif­fer­ent ther­a­pists to see which were best for me. I thought of going in for ther­apy about the same as going in to a med­ical doc­tor to get antibi­otics for strep throat. Unfor­tu­nately, I had no real rap­port with the ther­a­pist. Going to see him weekly turned in to just another thing I had to do each week. It was a has­sle, not a help.

The psy­chol­o­gist referred me to a psy­chi­a­trist in the prac­tice who saw me once, didn’t take a med­ical his­tory of any sort, and pre­scribed an anti­de­pres­sant, a tran­quil­izer, and a sleep­ing pill. I later learned from a phar­ma­cist that the three par­tic­u­lar drugs he pre­scribed are counter-​​indicated if taken together, but obvi­ously I didn’t have a very atten­tive phar­ma­cist at the time (or a com­pe­tent psy­chi­a­trist). That same psy­chi­a­trist later switched me to another anti­de­pres­sant that is also used to treat peo­ple with high blood pres­sure, which led to a hos­pi­tal visit for dan­ger­ously low blood pres­sure. (My nor­mal blood pres­sure was 90/​54, some­thing he didn’t bother to notice.) He didn’t even respond to the calls from my fam­ily doc­tor, who admit­ted me to the hos­pi­tal, so I never went to see the psy­chi­a­trist again.

Through trial and error, I did learn that I relate best to female ther­a­pists, and that I needed one who would be blunt with me if she thought I was avoid­ing some issue. I learned that group ther­apy is utterly use­less for me, because I’m very good at redi­rect­ing atten­tion from myself to some­one else in the group. I learned that I am most com­fort­able with a ther­a­pist who shares, or is at least very sym­pa­thetic to, my spir­i­tual beliefs, so that I can be open with­out being defensive.

I ran into trou­ble as soon as I made it clear that I do not do twelve-​​step groups. I tried a few meet­ings, found that I have a nearly irre­sistible urge to make fun of the rhetoric and just about every­thing else asso­ci­ated with them when I’m there, and decided that they are not for me. I quickly learned that twelve-​​step groups are taken for granted so much by some peo­ple in the recov­ery indus­try that any­one who isn’t a twelve-​​stepper is regarded as being unwill­ing to work on get­ting bet­ter. It doesn’t really mat­ter if that per­son is an addict of some sort, has been abused, or suf­fers from depres­sion or PTSD or what­ever. If you’re in ther­apy, some peo­ple expect you to twelve-​​step. It’s like always hav­ing fries with your fast-​​food burger. Twelve-​​step pro­grams, no mat­ter how use­ful they are to some peo­ple in some sit­u­a­tions, is not applic­a­ble to every­one in every sit­u­a­tion. For those of us who don’t fol­low a tra­di­tional spir­i­tual path, the lan­guage of twelve-​​step pro­grams is trou­ble­some. I per­son­ally believe that par­tic­u­larly for abuse sur­vivors, the whole busi­ness of doing a per­sonal inven­tory of those we have harmed is ridicu­lous and feeds into the neg­a­tive sus­pi­cion that some­how we deserved to be abused.

Finally, some ther­a­pists and oth­ers in the recov­ery indus­try don’t ever fore­see a time to end treat­ment. Even if a patient is func­tion­ing nor­mally and no longer expe­ri­enc­ing the prob­lems that caused her to enter treat­ment in the first place, some psy­chol­o­gists and oth­ers regard any attempt to end treat­ment as signs of ill­ness. Yes, there are peo­ple who end ther­apy too early. Once you’re func­tion­ing and don’t have new issues to work out, I think it’s time to end the ther­apy rela­tion­ship. Yes, you might need more treat­ment later if new issues come up. There is a time to be fin­ished, though, even if the ther­a­pist does still have a high car pay­ment or has just signed a new mortgage.

Permalink | June 21st, 2012

2 Responses to “The Recovery Industry”

  1. Ike Fasy Says:
    August 22nd, 2012 at 7:46 am

    There are many causes of low blood pres­sure. Tak­ing pain killers can also cause low blood pres­sure so be care­ful when tak­ing it.’;”..

    Ciao http://​healthmed​i​cinelab​.com/​s​i​n​u​s​-​i​n​f​e​c​t​i​o​n​-​r​e​m​e​d​i​es/

  2. Cyn Says:
    August 22nd, 2012 at 11:56 pm

    I’m aware of that. I wasn’t tak­ing any pain meds at the time, though.

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