Workshop: Who Says I’m An Addict?! Dramatherapy In Rehab: Understanding Addiction and recovery
Sunday 29 November 2020
11:00 to 12:00
As practitioners, how do we support clients struggling with substance misuse and addictive behaviours? What do we understand about their struggle? It might be an alien territory for you, and you feel out of your depth. Perhaps you have experience with friends and family who live, or have lived with addiction.
Or may be you have identified your own patterns of addictive behaviours that you find difficult to manage, or now have under control. What’s your drug of choice? Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, food, sugar, sex, work, caffeine, exercise, rescuing, shopping or relationships? But when do these habits and dependencies become an actual addiction? At what point is someone no longer able to control the very thing they do to help them cope or survive in life - to the point when it might be taking over, or even killing them?
The chaos of addiction and it’s out of control spiral into unmanageability, isolation and hopelessness, not only ruins the lives of those affected, and everyone around them - but it can end them too. Yet the word addict is mired in so much stigma, shame and judgement, it can become a barrier to recovery, not just for the client – but the clinician too. Meanwhile, the actual mental, physical and spiritual process of addiction might be misunderstood by some healthcare professionals. Denial can be a dangerous form of enabling which can get played out in the therapeutic relationship.
Without a proper understanding, well-meaning interventions for those still actively using can be futile.
In this Zoom workshop taster session, I’ll be sharing my lived experience as a recovering addict and my clinical work as a dramatherapist in rehab, as an introduction to help you better understand addiction with compassion, empathy and insight. Together, we’ll explore what addiction is, where it comes from, it’s link to attachment, childhood trauma and the limbic brain - and crucially, how to recover from it.
Simon Marks is a dramatherapist and addictions counsellor and has worked at Mount Carmel Rehab centre in London since 2016. As part of the team, he delivers their addiction treatment programme. Simon also runs a private practice in Central London for gay men, specialising in LGBTQ+ mental health, addiction, chemsex, trauma and co-dependency. He delivers a full range of training programmes in these areas. Simon graduated from Roehampton University in 2016. He has been clean and sober for 13 years since September 2007, and remains in longterm recovery.