Thursday, May 24, 2007 So: Adventure-based therapy By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
I MET Jimmy at a house down Sanson Road. He has the posture of a man who needs to be believed in and be accepted. He needs his father to trust him again. But pending that, he is staying in the house for recovering addicts.
The recovery house is nondescript, the kind you could miss if you didn’t look hard enough. Inside, it’s a labyrinth of doors. I like the symbolism of the doors: The inhabitants cross too many thresholds—of hope, beginning, drippy lives, the past.
Jimmy is one of the 12 “boarders” of the recovery house, so-called because they’re on “after-care” but are welcome to stay until they feel ready to face the world again on their own. The boarders, some of them gainfully employed, are free to come and go but they have to respect the curfew. They help in the “continuing care” of the regular “clients” through expressions of empathy.
Jimmy says having someone close or ka-berks in the recovery house has made therapy less daunting. It is always good to have someone to talk to and understand what you are talking about, he says. Away from his three kids and abandoned by the wife, Jimmy has found acceptance and solace in the house down Sanson Road.
Therapy sessions and good food are abundant in the recovery house. But the mouth is not the only body part needing exercise. Too much talking can make one lethargic and can even lull the listener to sleep, especially if the talker is a monotone like a yogi.
To avoid lethargy in the recovery house, Tico has introduced the “adventure-based therapy.”
As implied, the adventure-based therapy involves a lot of physical activities that test the client’s trust in another person and his skills in communication, decision-making, and problem-solving. The activities entail strength, stamina, alertness, self-belief and peer support. So there’s rappelling, crossing a hanging bridge blindfolded and other Amazing Race-like actions, all designed as a curative power to keep the hands and mind from being idle and to trust in oneself and in others.
“The dramatic nature of adventure activities and the heavy use of peer support provide a mirror for the recovering addict to experience themselves in a new way,” Tico, who had walked the road to substance abuse and back, says.
But the adventure therapy is not for everyone at the recovery house. It is offered only to the boarders like Jimmy as an “after-care” service because this is held in an open environment. It is not for the clients who are still in their six-month recovery period. They are the ones prone to escaping from the center and the open environment tempts them to make a dash for liberty.
The house offers treatment of chemical dependency but not the guarantee of “full recovery.” It’s 50-50: 50 percent recovery and 50 percent continued dependency. The speed of recovery depends on the person himself.
Between an alcoholic and a drug addict, it is easier to treat the latter, a psychiatrist at the house says. Drugs are illicit and illegal and therefore more difficult to get, but alcohol is legal and therefore easier and cheaper to buy. An alcoholic displays no outwardly symptoms of abuse; most often, he is a functional individual. But a drug addict unmasks himself by his own appearance.
