June 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – It’s a substance addiction recovery program like no other: cutting edge neurocognitive and neurochemical therapy, behavior modification therapy geared towards permanent recovery, and life skills training with an emphasis on virtue formation.
But what really makes St. Gregory’s Retreat Center in Iowa unique, according to Joe Meints, the Center’s Director of Marketing and Admissions, comes down to one simple principle: the program is premised on a recognition that all human life is sacred.
“The fundamental difference in what we do at St. Gregory’s really relies not so much on the psychological or medical implications of our program,” Meints told LifeSiteNews. “It really starts with this notion that each person that comes in to us needs to be recognized as a person who was fearfully and wonderfully created by a Creator.”
The program, he adds, is not so much interested in “sobriety for sobriety’s sake” but in helping patients to “identify their value and really start taking a broader perspective.”
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Addiction treatment at St. Gregory’s “works backwards” from this broader perspective, putting sobriety in the larger context of living a virtuous and purposeful life. A person’s life “is not a disposable thing,” Meints notes. “It’s something that was created and purposed to be.”
On a therapeutic level, the implications of this starting point draw a sharp contrast between St. Gregory’s and many other addiction recovery programs.
A key difference is the emphasis that the program places on the role of personal choice in overcoming addiction. This approach differs widely from the “disease model” which critics say can have the effect of making addiction seem more central to a person’s identity than it really is.
By focusing on their ability to regain control of their life and future, addicts are able to “start getting back on that path to that person that you were purposed to be,” says Meints.
However, as Medical Director Dr. Charles Wadle is quick to point out, the treatment plan is also designed to address the chemical imbalances that addiction causes. After going through an initial detox period, patients are kept in a controlled drug and alcohol free setting and provided with IV neurotransmitters to repair the damage done by substance abuse.
“We do understand that recurrent use can change neurotransmitters and make it more difficult to quit,” Wadle says. But, he adds, the choice to begin using in the first place is just that – a choice.
This insight is, in fact, good news for the patient because it avoids what Wadle calls the “sense of helplessness” that the disease model can induce. Treatment at St. Gregory’s presupposes that a complete and permanent turn-around is, in fact, possible, and that former addicts can look forward to a life full of purpose and meaning.
From a secular standpoint, Wadle explains, therapy focuses on exercising the brain’s full capacity in order to “maximize your function.” When this therapy is imbued with the philosophical tenet that life is a sacred gift from a Creator, however, it takes on a greater depth of meaning.
“You want to maximize your function because you have value in your life,” says Wadle.
As part of their therapy, residents take part in discussions on virtue formation and are given the opportunity to practice virtue through local community service. This aspect of the program, Wadle notes, is backed up by scientific studies demonstrating that building relationships and helping others “increases positive neurotransmission.”
The Center has a deeply religious identity – it is named after a Catholic Saint, and an order of religious sisters resides on the campus and assists there – but participants do not have to come from the same theological or philosophical perspective as the staff in order to benefit from the program.
The staff does not “push” or “promote” their religious identity, says Wadle, but neither do they apologize for it.
What the staff and patients at St. Gregory’s have found, though, is that it is precisely by approaching addiction from a broader perspective that the center has been able to pioneer a program that is so effective at achieving its narrower goal of sobriety.
“I have never, ever worked with people more dedicated to understanding that God’s creation is set aside as special,” says Meints.