A Controversial New Way To Think About Addiction | Carrie Wilkens
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Wilkens talks about the stigma around substance abuse, potential alternatives to abstinence, and the role of meditation in recovery.
Carrie Wilkens, PhD, is the Co-founder, Co-president and CEO of the Center for Motivation and Change: Foundation for Change, a nonprofit organization with the mission of improving the dissemination of evidence-based ideas and strategies to professionals and loved ones of persons struggling with substance use through the Invitation to Change approach. She is co-author of the book, The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family and Friends: Evidence-Based Skills to Help a Loved One Make Positive Change and Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change.
In this episode we talk about:
- The stigma around substance abuse
- Defining terms: addiction vs. substance use disorder and why it matters
- How substance use disorder affects our brain
- How to diagnose a substance abuse disorder
- Whether there is an alternative to abstinence
- How we all need to be thoughtful about the relationship we want with substances
- How and why a substantial percentage of people naturally recover without going to treatment
- The strategies to use if you have someone in your life who you think is on a destructive path
- What positive communication is and how to practice it
- How we live in a quick fix society and recovery from substance abuse disorder is a slow process
- What actually makes people change
- The role of meditation in recovery—for the patient and the family
- And the importance of taking care of yourself so you can take care of others
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/carrie-wilkens
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast, I'm your host, your boy Dan Harris. |
| 0:20.5 | Hello everybody, as you may know, the statistics on addiction and substance abuse these days |
| 0:25.5 | are straight up dire. And even if you're not directly impacted by this, the odds are high, very high |
| 0:31.3 | that you know somebody who is. For decades, there have been some pretty widely accepted cultural norms |
| 0:36.8 | around addiction and substance abuse, specifically I'm talking about things like tough love, |
| 0:42.1 | codependency, hitting rock bottom, and then there's the big one, abstinence. If you want to get |
| 0:47.5 | your act together, you need to fully stay away from whatever substance it is that you've been |
| 0:52.1 | abusing. My guest today takes a rather iconic classic and possibly for some of you controversial |
| 0:58.3 | approach. Carrie Wilkins is the co-founder and clinical director at the Center for Motivation and |
| 1:03.7 | Change. She's also co-founder co-president and CEO of CMC Foundation for Change, which is a |
| 1:09.8 | nonprofit that provides evidence-based ideas and strategies both to professionals and also to |
| 1:15.1 | the loved ones of people struggling with substance use. Carrie has also co-authored two books |
| 1:20.6 | Beyond Addiction and The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family and Friends. In this conversation, |
| 1:25.8 | we talk about the stigma around substance abuse. We define some key terms, like addiction and |
| 1:31.0 | substance use disorder, and we talk about why those definitions matter. We talk about how substance |
| 1:35.7 | use disorder affects the brain, how to diagnose it, whether there's an alternative to abstinence, |
| 1:41.5 | how we all need to be thoughtful about whatever relationship it is we want with substances, |
| 1:45.9 | how and why a substantial percentage of people naturally recover without going to treatment. |
| 1:50.6 | The strategy is to use, if somebody in your life is going down a destructive path in your opinion, |
| 1:55.9 | what positive communication is and how to practice it, what actually makes people change and the role |
| 2:01.3 | of meditation both for the patient and the family. Just to say I am not an expert in this subject, |
| 2:06.5 | although I have abused many substances in my time, also I don't have a dog in the fight in terms |
... |
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