Healing addiction is more than just a matter of treating an illness or resolving a behavioral condition–it is a matter of finding meaning in one’s encounter with shadow, and of discovering one’s path forward in the process.

After more than 25 years of work in the addiction treatment field and more than 30 years of personal recovery from heroin addiction, I remain committed to working with people actively engaged in recovery–whether from alcohol, opiate, and other substance addictions or from codependency and other relational and process additions–with a trauma-informed focus on intergenerational, spiritual, and other underlying concerns.

In my personal and professional experience, among other things, addiction is relational–that is, it is a relationship with the substance on deep psychological and energetic levels, and it can be healed through working directly with those dynamics in a variety of ways.

Often made more complex by the experience of personal and intergenerational trauma, addiction is also a call for transformation on multiple levels–a crisis that is not just a behavioral problem, but an opportunity to heal.

These relational, intergenerational, and transformational processes that underly addiction, when unexamined, are sometimes at the root of feelings of stuckness, deep shame, and a variety of other emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal concerns–especially when people struggle to remain abstinent despite their best efforts, or when people in recovery remain unhappy even after years of abstinence.

Working with these and other relevant concerns requires a great deal of sensitivity–especially when people have experienced significant trauma or have other ongoing mental health concerns. Whether working with addiction and recovery issues in depth psychotherapy, with Chinese medicine, or both, I make every effort to approach this process with sensitivity to the wide range of political, cultural, historical, and psychological dynamics, and to balance the psyche’s call for transformation with the need for support and practical solutions.

For more on my approach to the complex issue of addiction recovery, you may want to explore my book, The Trusting Heart: Addiction, Recovery, and Intergenerational Trauma.