Detox from Drugs and Alcohol can be comfortable

DEXTOX from Drugs and Alcohol can be a comfortable

Treatment of Addictive Disorders in the 21st Century

By a former Medical Director @ Present Moments Recovery

Recent advances and experience with the treatment of physical, chemical and habitual dependence, and with attempts to individualize treatment and engage unwilling or biased participants in traditional 12-step programs demand a discussion of how treatment can be more successful currently, than in the past.

“Treatment” consists of the gamut of use and abuse to identification, intervention, detoxification, introduction into rehabilitation, dedication to recovery, lifestyle changes, sober living, intensive outpatient and ongoing individual and group therapies. Predictors of successful recovery include rigorous self honesty, willingness to change, accepting direction, cleaning your side of the street, identifying and dealing with past issues so you can let go of them, social networking, admission of one’s faults to another human being, seeking authenticity and assisting others. As one who has personally found a new way to live in the 12-steps, I know to the deepest introspection; that to each of these contributors to successful program of recovery I can respond with “Yes, and by the way; AA has that”. As a treatment professional for 25+ years and with 28 years of dedicated personal recovery and a commitment to addiction treatment as my personal cause; I would like to discuss some recent discoveries that can serve to increase the success of recovery treatment.

The detox with Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) is a game changer. I believe that therapeutic use of NAD will prove to be one of the greatest discoveries in medicine since Fleming invented penicillin. As an experienced Detox MD, and a member of “Like-Minded Docs” I have managed hundreds of patients with traditional “white knuckle” detox, and now personally observed almost 100 detoxes with NAD infusion therapy. NAD is a game changer. If you respond with the common 12-step old-timer response “there is nothing really new. They are just promoting already known concepts to make it sound new, softer and easier”: you are partially right, and partially wrong. If you are staunchly in that belief, you are just ignorant. The intent of this article is partially to attempt to enlighten you to an absolutely better detox: NAD. The part of the statement that is true, is that NAD, or Coenzyme 1; part of Vitamin B3; that is present in every living cell of your body and responsible for many intracellular, extracellular and nervous system health was what Bill W. and his doctors discovered in the 1930’s. The problem was that, for reasons we won’t discuss here, they used the entire Niacin molecule, and not the pure NAD portion. The pure NAD, only recently available from a limited manufacturing process and administered with concomitant nutritional protocols with care for purity and stability of the pure NAD molecule; results in an incredible benefit for the detoxification process.

In summary: *(Adapted, in part from “The NAD Story—The Big Picture”, by James Watson MD)

1. Alcohol metabolism causes NAD+ deficiency 
2. NAD affects the reward circuits in the brain (nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area) common to all addictions that involve endogenous brain opioids, GABA and Dopamine 
3. NAD affects the stress circuits in the brain, which are responsible for the discomfort known as withdrawal 
4. These stress circuits play into the high occurrence of mental disease, specifically anxiety/depression and the various range of Bipolar Disorders 
5. NAD plays a role in treating the “neuroadaptive” responses in the brain that cause tolerance, sensitization and withdrawal 
6. NAD, through a separate action on brain chemicals known as “Sirtuins” allow the brain to remain “happy” and further reduce withdrawal symptoms 
7. NAD has a profound effect in opiate abuse patients due to epigenetic factors and gene expression. 
8. NAD causes a level of clear thinking (mental clarity), brain rejuvenation and a sense of peace that conduces to hope and a sense of “yes, I can recover” 
9. The use of NAD, combined with nutritional supplementation protocols we have developed, reduces the need for standard detox medications, which have their own deleterious effects. 
10. The NAD significantly reduces cravings over standard detox; almost like the patient had never been exposed to the alcohol or drug—truly miraculous to observe personally. 

This discussion is not the platform for a scientific explanation. And there are many more ways that NAD has been shown to enhance the detox experience. But I have simplified some of these proven scientific discoveries to display that there is real science to what we see in using NAD in clinical detox situation. When I personally saw this, I was so impressed that I have dedicated my life to helping recovering alcoholics and addicts acquire NAD treatment. One of the things I most like is that; the infusions are administered over several days. So I have a captive audience, with a clear brain, to drop a little recovery on them, and hopefully ruin their drinking or using forever, like Johnny Appleseed, except dropping mustard seeds. My favorite thing to do, is to talk with alcoholics and addicts, especially those new in recovery, about the disease and treatment of addiction. My clinic is NAD MD, Inc. and my website is NADMD.com.

I am not saying that NAD is a “cure”, but in my experience NAD is absolutely the best first step in recovery. You still need a program of recovery, guided to the appropriate level of care for that individual, a plan, ongoing therapy, counseling and other techniques to find a new way of living and a lifestyle change, learning to place sobriety as the first priority. We have found that various techniques, such as NLP, and various psychological techniques have a much improved impact on a clear NAD brain. Also nurturing nurses and alternative physical methods such as yoga, stretching, massage, acupuncture, equine therapy, and other techniques create a detox experience that gets the newly recovering patient into a new path, a path to health and self-nurturing different from their previous deterioration into abuse, hopelessness and despair.

With the increasing prevalence of alcoholism and drug addiction in our society, and the informational technology seeming to enhance self-centeredness, isolation, self-directed crazy decisions, and disdain for traditional treatment, we have employed easier ways to enter recovery; such as letting a person live according to their conscience, or a sense of doing the right thing for the right reason and letting go of expectations or control. This is increasingly difficult with Millenials and Generation X patients.

As some of my friends and mentors would say: “Phil, it’s just the same thing packaged in a way for marketing purposes.” This does not pertain to NAD, as NAD will be shown to be one of the greatest advances in alcohol and drug treatment. But as far as rehabilitation, we must fashion recovery into a pill the newly recovering person can swallow, to accommodate those who are reticent to trust anything but their own self-determination and control; a characteristic of most of us already exhibit in early recovery.