The Celtic Tree of Life

In the addiction business we see over and over how our patients are affected by the generations before them. John Bradshaw once said, “95 % of the things that will seriously impact you are there the day you
are born.”

This has proven to be prophetic and accurate within the limits of hyperbole. We have witnessed the repeating patterns in family systems in our practice for the past 25 years. Alcoholism for instance often repeats from one generation to the next. Family violence, drug use, marriage break-ups, and a host of other conditions which can affect the person in any family tree.

Addictions in the end are symptoms of deeper issues which once identified and degriefed (debriefed and grieved) remove the core reason we need to medicate to get through a day. Tobacco is no different.

In fact, tobacco use is a marker for transfer issues emerging in childhood and the teen years when we pick up our first cigarette. From then on our coping strategies are anchored by tobacco.

“Tobacco has our back,” the Elder said, “and that is why we have a hard time letting it go.”

An excellent approach to recovery is to do a Family of Origin Chart identifying repeating patterns and tendencies which lead to similar challenges in our lives. We are motivated to heal these issues primarily to free our children and grandchildren form having to deal with the same unconscious drivers which will remain hidden if we don’t make an effort to reveal and heal them.

This theme will be developed over the coming days as the Tobacco Healing Centre Blog evolves in response to our smokers real needs.

You will notice on the header board a new category of community interaction with a Question and Answer feature. I encourage you to connect with the healing team and submit your queries. If you wish to be and or remain anonymous just let us know please. We will respect your direction in this matter.

Thanks again to Pat for these new features. Thanks to Clarke for his great work on the business and marketing end of things. Thanks to Bethan for her fabulous work on many fronts especially the Facebook dimension and the Wakefield Initiative. Soon our programs will be offered in French.

Hey! Hey! from Professor Kelly. psi@igs.net

Land of the Midnight Sun

Along the mighty MacKenzie River the ice is frozen, the trees are still and the air has ice crystals dancing in and out of rainbows. They appear and fade in quick time frames. It brings joy to the soul to be in the North with the Dene People.

In this part of the world folks smoke like everywhere on planet earth. It is just as hard to quit here as anywhere. Why is it so hard to get into recovery from the one drug that hurts so many humans?

My friend and colleague Tom Carroll who is the Director of MacKay Manor, a Men’s Recovery Center in Renfrew Ontario, says to his clients everyday,

“Alcohol, cocaine and heroin will get you into loads of deep trouble

but it’s the tobacco that will kill you.”

When clients check into an addiction treatment center directed by Dr. Susan Blank they accept that they have to let go of all the drugs that are breaking their lives down, except tobacco.

“On that one they push back and that’s how I know

which drug is the most important to them.”

She goes on to say, “Tobacco is the anchor drug for most of our patients here at Greenestone Muskoka.”

The irony is that most recent evidenced based research clearly demonstrates that if you do quit tobacco use while recovering form alcohol it improves your chances of continuous sobriety by up to five times. This is too much potential to let go of.

Dr. Doug Davies, Medical Director of The Refuge, an addiction treatment center in Florida has a saying,

“If you want to get sober then get smober”

It is hard to recover from tobacco addiction because it is the center piece of our survival strategy. It is how we cope with stress. It is how we self regulate anxiety build up. It is how we manage our anger, depression, disappointments, low self worth, poor body image and that deep feeling of fear that something bad will happen any minute. I must be on guard. I must smoke.

These things are often childhood and youth related which is the subject of my next blog.

Thanks everybody for e-mailing me with all your supportive comments  and questions. I will take them one at a time here on site and at our Tobacco Healing Centres. Thanks to Pat and Libby for all their hard work.

Cheers from the North Country to all my smoking friends. It is you we are here for. Don’t dsepair. Freedom will happen someday if you just ‘keep on keeping on’ as the old hippies say.

In your corner and on your team,

Prof. Kelly - psi@igs.net

Reflections on The Walk of Life

Reflections on The Walk of Life

1. The Gift of Understanding
I release my clan to their own journey
I release all those who have hurt me.
I ask forgiveness from all those who I have harmed in any way whatsoever
I pray for all humankind
I pray for the release of all my ancestors
From any obligation, transgression or sorrow
I pray for all my descendants to be free men and women living in love
And I ask for them to be forgiven as well
I pray for my family in time space
I pray for the human race and all life on earth
I love my newfound freedom
I love my boys, I love my wife
I thank You Creator for all our lives
I am completely humbled by my new freedom, my deep healing
The Walk of Life Gift and its ability to help us heal our lives
I thank my mother and my father for the saints they have become
And for continuing to help me in every moment of everyday
Especially with the Walk of Life and
All it’s manifestations of understanding and deep, deep love
The river that runs through us all eternally
Something with no beginning and no end is beyond our comprehension
But not beyond our surrender
Thy Will Be Done

-”the distance between what is and what I want is my pain today”, Stephen Levine

-what is and what I accept is my need for medication today

-the unconscious drivers are operational in us all

-every family system or network forms a chain of being through the generations, which tend to accumulate unidentified and ungrieved losses, which build internal pain in the incarnate.

-being wounds are embedded within the unconscious and are often shame based (example, sexual childhood interference, violence in the home, scapegoating)

-these are transferred below the level of awareness and erupt in the child when dependency needs are not met

-unaware of this dynamic the teen, adult and elder of this family network begins to experience increasing levels of pain which reaches a point where it must be medicated

-addictions are born here, live here and die here

-we never learn how to identify what is hurting us and how we might heal it

-we never learn how to identify losses and grieve them

-our only alternative is to medicate, usually we begin with tobacco

-an overview large enough to encompass the wounded nature of the unknown is required to build a recovery plan that has any hope of working

-the trans-generational dynamics are key here.

Healing In Time With Love and Commitment

“What patterns are repeating in the family system?”

“Once we travel down this road we are finally on the path to freedom.”

More on this as the blog evolves.

Any questions please e-mail Professor Murray Kelly at psi@igs.net or murray.kelly20@yahoo.ca

The trees are still and silent

As is the woods surround

No wind on the calm water

No geese honking their day away

Just the Presence in everything

The spark of life on earth

The miracle of the everyday

What a sweet moment this is

A great day begins

There Is Light Ahead

Those of us who get addicted to alcohol almost always smoke tobacco as well. 

Tobacco comes first often and it is in fact our anchor or core addiction. This is where we learn how to manage our emotional lives with a medication. We do not develop natural skills. We simply smoke to modify our reactions to life. We are children.

So it is very easy to slip into the same mode of operation as we develop into young adults with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in another. Some medical scientists are proposing that these two addictions become over time one condition, one integrated brain disease.

This calls for an integrated response.

At the Tobacco Healing Centre, both on site and on our web-site we are offering an integrated recovery model for folks who suffer from both addictions, tobacco and alcohol. We have designed a process over the years that helps us get sober (alcohol free) and smober (smoke free) at the same time. It works so well I wonder why we did not do this long ago. Such is the grip tobacco has upon our culture. “First Things First” the oldtimer said.

It aslo works very well for people addicted to heroin, prescription drugs, cocaine and designer drugs who also smoke as part of their getting high ceremony.

No Acute Withdrawal In The Detox Phase!

With tobacco there is no need for acute withdrawal pain. This can be managed with Nicotine Replacement Supplements and anti-depressants where called for by the Doctor. We detox first from the emotional dependence. The nicotine becomes unimportant to us over a few weeks. We cannot even remember if we have the patch on or not most days.

As long as we maintain our smobriety we are in less danger of relapsing to alcohol. And if life overwhelms us we can relapse to tobacco and then return to treatment immediately. Returning to smoking is a sure sign of impending relapse to alcohol. An early warning system if you will.

This is the new way to treat all addictions. At Once!

I hope this makes sense to you brothers and sisters of the recovery order.

“No matter what happened or how bad it seems to be, we can and will recover.”

Prof. Kelly

We walked in the dark night suddenly full of light from the northern moon. Honk went the truck. A dog appeared beside me, large and black. He reared up on his hind legs and put up both paws for inspection. Then dropped one paw, so I high -fived him.

Dog dropped to the ground, came back up on his two back legs, held up both paws and then dropped the alternate paw, so I high-fived him again. It occurred to me that this dog knew he was high-fiving.

The kids of Fort Simpson had taught the dogs, their best friends, how to do the High-Five Ceremony.

I love being here with the people, the animals, the land, the ravens, the quiet wind, here with The Fort Simpsons,

“That’s right dad.” Bart concluded,

“We love our dogs, here in the north.”

Our Best Friends

The Tobaccination Process

We are in our home on a Sunday afternoon when Dad comes home drunk and frightens everyone when he and mom get in a fight. We run from the room. Slowly we lose confidence that we are safe and that we matter as much as the drinking or the fighting.

Or, we get a hard spanking because dad has a bad attitude to girls and blames us whenever he feels upset. We become the family scapegoat. Mother stays out of it. We feel vulnerable and so alone.

In the schoolyard or at the community centre dance our friend offers us a cigarette and as we inhale and cough the nicotine wakes our brain up and makes us feel good. Now we belong and have a tool to help us get through. We never feel so alone again. We are 12.

We have become tobaccinated. Now we:

-manage our feelings with tobacco

-cope with life smoking tobacco

-regulate our emotional responses to the world with tobacco

-spend our precious alone time with tobacco

-release dopamine into our brains by smoking tobacco

-ameliorate our depression with tobacco

-calm ourselves down with tobacco smoke

-celebrate or grieve with tobacco ceremony

We do not develop normal life skills because the tobacco universe we live in takes care of all that for us. We have become tobaccinated by our culture in our families and peer group.

Gradually we migrate to a pack a day as life goes on and we become adults. Perhaps we drink too much and don’t exercise or eat properly. Yet our real health fears are around the smoking of tobacco. We just did not realize what was actually happening. We were so young.

Be happy tobacco child, because you can recover from this addiction.

More on that as the days go by. Prof. Kelly

Imagine What One Free Woman Can Do!

Mission

To create a recovery fund dedicated to helping low income smoking women who wish to break free from tobacco addiction for themselves, their children, and their community. The project will give women the tools they need to survive and face life free of a serious and costly addiction.

The Situation

Every 35 minutes in Canada a women dies from smoking.

It is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Canada, (One in Five Deaths)

Current smoking rates and smoking during pregnancy are three times higher for women in the lowest income households versus those women in higher income households.

Residential Treatment Works

The issue is that this costs money. This type of successful support can be easily achieved by those who have disposable income, but lower income women and those on income assistance are often unable to achieve a life free of tobacco addiction.

The Effect

The effect of tobacco addiction goes well beyond the women and impacts the health of their children, the health care system and local economies. A pack a day smoker on average will spend $4,000.00 per year. That money leaves the community and does nothing to help her family’s standard of living.

The Solution

Providing residential treatment for just one women will save her family approximately $20,000.00 over a five year period. In addition, substantial savings in health care demand and amazing multiplier growth in the local economy.

100 Free Women Project

The 100 Free Women Project will work in conjunction with your community to treat 100 low-income tobacco addicted women in manageable groups of ten. The skill set to provide the treatment and continuing care can be transferred to the community. The goal is to train and certify a minimum of two local highly qualified personnel to provide continuing care in the community.

The methods of treatment used in the project have been researched and developed over a twenty-five year period by the extremely dedicated and qualified team of Patient Support International Inc. and the Tobacco Healing Centre. This team is led by Professor Murray Kelly of the University of Florida College of Medicine and First Nations University of Canada. Other members of this team include Dr. John McMahon (Clinical Director) and Dr. Doug Davies with Supporting Research from the Canadian and American Societies of Addiction Medicine.

If you or your community are interested in this amazing project call Clarke Kelly at 613-832-1296 in Ottawa, Canada.

A. Know that you are fighting for your life and that you are suffering from a profound and deadly addiction. More powerful to the brain than mainlined heroin.

B. Prepare yourself well. Develop a comprehensive recovery plan.

C. Remember, it is your mind that is addicted so it’s not much use to you. Don’t decide anything. Commit to this process and dedicate your efforts to your own recovery. Commitment is the word.

D. Build a secure support network, to stay in place for 180 days. Not family.

E. Develop a Daily Practice. A Daily Action Plan. Map the day. Everyday. Yogi Amrit Desai says a daily practice with meditation will heal everything in 90 days.

F. Join a 12 Step Group dedicated to tobacco recovery such as Nicotine Anonymous if that works for you. If one does not exist in your area then start one.

G. Pick a transition day and stick to it.

H. Begin even if you become afraid. You will become afraid. Don’t let that stop you.

I. Use a Nicotine Withdrawal Strategy. 90 days with no withdrawal.

Love is the by far the best way to move forward with tobacco addiction. Be Free.

Prof. K.