Of course everyone who drinks alcohol, consumes a mind/mood altering drug, both illicit and prescription, and drives is certainly at risk of killing another driver, passenger, or pedestrian, nonetheless, driving while impaired and drunk driving are behaviors that occur along a continuum of intensity, frequency, and duration.  First, this post will outline the uniqueness to the impaired driver in contrast to the drunk driver, and in doing so make some suggestions to address both.

Driving While Impaired

Suppose it is Saturday night, you had a rough week and have been away from home working, and your partner wants to go out to dinner.  At dinner, you opt to have a couple of beers and a glass of wine.  The course of your consuming alcohol took two and a half hours.  You drive home and in doing so get pulled over for a tail light infraction.  The cop smells the alcohol and you submit to a field sobriety check.  You pass, in part, because the amount of alcohol you drank, the amount of time that passed since your last drink, and the rate at which alcohol was metabolized.  In this situation your blood alcohol count was below the legal cut off of .08.  Even though you were below the legal limit of .08, you were still impaired.  Your reaction times and depth of vision were affected.

Now suppose it is Sunday, and it is the day of the big game of the week.  Looking forward to this game, you shaped expectations that influenced your anticipation.  At your friends’ house, you spend the next four hours drinking six beers; and then you drive home.  Depending upon your body mass, stress level, and what food you had to eat, there is a good chance the outcome would have been different.

In both of these situations, the intent was not to drink to intoxication, the intent was to have a good time, relax, socialize and feel good.  In this case, the psychosocial impact of a consequential DWI would have a devastating impact on your mindset, let alone you career and economic wellbeing.  For many, the burden enough to a loss of license, along with the humiliation and regrets for by being arrest, would, in many cases be enough to warrant behavior change.  The realization would be that it costs less to throw away your keys and spend the day looking for them then paying out for legal fees and loss of wages.  For that matter, the cost to take a taxi a hundred miles would be less.

In these two examples, as in many more like them, the act of DWI was an irresponsible consequence.  Without getting into statistics, on any Friday night, after 10 PM six out of ten cars passed will have an impaired driver.  More if these cars are leaving a bar.  These six drives could be in the career paths of cops, judges, attorneys, doctors, politicians, contractors and so on.  When it comes to DWI, it is an equal opportunity experience.  The only difference between drivers who are caught is which driver is above the law, and which driver is ruled by the law.

Change is a process at goes both ways.

For the impaired driver, there are three factors that need to be educated and counseled up that includes a significant influence.  The three factors are, 1) desensitization, 2) disinhibition, and 3) principles of reinforcement.  The significant influence to these three factors is what I refer to as the In-Group of Intimidation.  The In-Group is a group of insecurities that we all experience as part as out opportunity to life.  The difference between one person and another is the rational or irrational perspective one filters his or her insecurities through.  If he or she filters insecurities through lens of weakness, the irrationality dictates the outcome in drinking and drugging behavior between impaired driving and drunk driving.   Alternatively, if, however, he or she filters insecurities through lens of strengths, then a completely different mindset dictates the drinking and drugging behavior where the opportunity to do the right thing is real.  The key her is opportunity.

If arrested, by framing the DWI as an opportunity to learn from, the process of change is going to be health orientated.  If, however, as most states dictate, the person is put in a program that applies cookie-cutter programming, then the DWI is framed in a negative perspective, the motivation is simply to get through programming, and experience is one to keep in the closet.  A more effective approach is to offer counseling that has a Get Real theme, for example, the desensitization effect.

Desensitization Effect

To get real means to know that we are all human and in our capabilities, we cope.  When an arrest for DWI occurs, there is a process in place that keeps the experience real.  Then, after the involved person gets his or her license back, is entrenched in his or her career or school, is feeling pretty dam good about his or her life, the impact of that DWI arrest and consequence takes second seat.  In fact, the more time that passes since the DWI, the less influence it has over its prevention.  This is something that is not unique to an impaired driver; as related to our life experiences, this applies to all of us.  Of course experience teaches, however, the lessons remain viable only if a healthy relationship is embraced.  In fact, there is a well-known idiom to support this effect and that is, “Time heals all wounds.”  What is missing her is what I refer to as a matter of perspective to its relation. Unfortunately, no program out there addresses this effect.

Disinhibition Effect

Unlike the construct of the desensitization effect, the disinhibition effect is a physiological effect.  Alcohol, like all other mind/mood altering drugs, is a drug.  Since we are chemical beings first and foremost, anything consumed alters our chemistry.  Since we have learned how to be at the molecular level, alcohol then has the effect of altering that being.

When you consume alcohol, once the bioavailability has been metabolized, crossed the blood brain barrier and entered into the synapse of neural networking, alcohol acts as a depressant.  It depresses the neurotransmitters that regulate behavior.  For example, after consuming alcohol the most bashful, shy person feels liberated to getting out on the dance floor and makes a night of it.  The irony is that rather feeling like a depressant, the first use of alcohol feels like a stimulant.  It does so by specifically affecting three neurotransmitters: norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine.  With the metabolites of alcohol acting upon the reward center of the brain, more specifically the Ventral Tegmental Area and the Nucleus Accumbens, the release of norepinephrine effects arousal, serotonin, mood, and dopamine pleasure.  These effects are experienced in both the executive functioning area (prefrontal cortex) and the seat of emotion (limbic system), which, when taken together form the disinhibition effect through a mescorticolimbic dopamineogenic pathway, the life is good pathway.  Once experienced, and it only takes one or two drinks, rational thought, logic, and reason are out the window and the person is disinhibited to do that which his or her “normal” mindset would not allow.

With the disinhibition effect, the prefrontal cortex is indeed the first structure of the brain that is effected by alcohol., however, there is a ceiling effect.  With this point, know that something does not occur and that is by consuming more alcohol you feel better; you don’t.  Once the disinhibition effect is trigger by the consumption of alcohol on the structures of the brain listed, the rest is a matter of U Tube and Facebook.  The brain is like a sponge.  The more you drink, the more the sponge is full and shit leaks out.  Once the prefrontal cortex reaches its ceiling release, alcohol is further processed through the vocal areas of the brain, the Wernick’s and Broca’s area.  Now you begin to talk faster and slur your speech.  Then after the vocal areas are full, alcohol is further processed onto the emotional center, the limbic center.  Now you are doing things you would not normally do, slurring your speech, and emotional.  It does not stop her.  When the emotional area is filled, alcohol moves onto the cerebrum where coordination takes place.  There is one more region that alcohol can effect and that is the peripheral nervous system that is subdivided into the somatic and automatic nervous system.  It is the autonomic nervous system that controls involuntary muscle movement like the heart.  Drink enough alcohol and you can kill yourself without intent by going night-night forever (e.g., acute alcohol poisoning).

Principles of reinforcement

Vows of abstinence, are broken far more readily than the principles of learning that shaped the behavior, drinking and drugging behavior.  Humans are pack animals, we are social interactionists, and through our interactions we define not only our social self, we also shape the influence of our personal self.  For some, it is more important that people like them over and beyond what the involved person thinks of him or herself.  This field dependence, external locus of control influences many irrational acts like people pleasing.  People feel good when other people accept them, associate, joke and kid with.  If, out with others, the principle of reinforcement dictates that people are motivated to fit in, and through that course have a good time.  If that includes drinking alcohol or doing some drug, so be it.

The Big Three

In and by themselves, the desensitization and disinhibition effect along with the principles of social reinforcement, there is less risk for repeat DWI.  However, put them together then the possibility changes from if to a matter of when.  For example, five years ago you had a DWI.  A year or so later you got your license back, stopped begging for rides, focused all of your energies on reestablishing a strong work ethic.  Then one weekend night, you find yourself out at a party or some sort of social function that you drove to.  Wanting to have a good time and maximize the possibilities, you have a drink.  It has been four or so years since you lost your license; the influence long since past.  Then, as you socialize, you feel the effects of disinhibition, people are paying attention to you, laughing at your jokes, you are having a great time.  Someone offers you a second drink and the party is on.  Then a third, and now rational thought, logic, reason and concern is out the window.  Now it is time to drive home.   When you follow this path, give into the big three you are on the way to transforming that occasional drink and drive to the habitual drink, get drunk, and drive.

Driving Drunk

The drunk driver is at the extreme end of the impaired driver.  The drunk driver has no intent at all beyond being drunk.  Driving holds no responsible respect.  For the drunk driver, consumption of alcohol is paramount to his or her life, as he or she cares little for life.   The drunk driver has no concern for his or her life, let alone the possibility of taking another.

For the most part, the drunk driver is intoxicated out of self-loathing, degradation, and disgust.  Although he or she may or may not be suicidal, he or she is avoiding, killing some co-occurring mood disorder.  How many DWI’s, for that matter whether or not he or she has a valid drivers licenses at all, means little.  In fact, not having a valid drivers license is motivation for drinking to numb the feelings of doing something wrong.  For this driver, the goal is intoxication, that disconnect, and driving is a means of obtaining that goal.

For the drunk driver, unlike the impaired driver, frequency, intensity, and duration are factors.  The drunk driver’s frequency of alcohol consumption may consist of drinking alcohol before, maybe during, and after work, if he or she has a job at all.  His or her intensity of consumption is limited to only the amount of what alcohol and type he or she can get a hold of.  Duration is limited to whether or not he or she takes him or her down, or by virtue of arrest, the judicial system takes over.   Certainly they are not going to wake up on a Sunday morning and think of turning their life around.

For the dunk driver, frequent, intense, and long lasting consumption is the means to the end, the end being a disconnect from his or her responsibilities of living a life.  Compounding this concern, after extended use of alcohol, physiological and behavioral tolerance occurs.  Due to the drunk person’s tolerance level, bartenders keep serving, liquor stores keep selling, and driving intoxicated is an every day event that more times than not rewarded with a safe return home.

I once had a client who was a 35-year-old, 5’ 4” female who weighed in as 105 pounds.  She was arrested for her second DWI.  Interesting enough, it was her second DWI, however, by  her admission- she drove drunk every day.   Her BAC was a .38. and that was taken three hours after her reported last drink.  Impressive, in that by all behavioral science rights, she should not have been standing let alone driving.  As the drunk driver, her motivation was to drink and get drunk, while the impaired drivers motivation is to have a good time, which happens to include consuming alcohol.

The best way to approach self-help is to be real with yourself and the world you want to live.  To be real with yourself means, know your expectations.  Know that your expectations are born of beliefs , beliefs in who you think you are, your personal self, and your beliefs in how you want your world to be, your social self.  Taken together, your personal and social beliefs form your mindset and it is your expectations that function as the filters through which you relate to your world and those in it.

Expectations are indeed the purpose of the mind, hence the filters to your mindset.  I often say, our eyes look out through that which we experience within; our beliefs and through our beliefs, we expect.  Our expectations are our construct, our mental developments,  through which we regulate our lives.  When met, we feel good.  When not met, we feel bad.  This feel-good-feel-bad duplicity sets an interesting point.   When we feel good, we feel good  because our want for competence is met, and when we feel bad it is because our want for competence is replaced by incompetence.  This works well for our personal self, but what of our social self?  Here, when in our worlds, when we feel independent, in other words embrace our power of control to live well; to be psychologically independent we feel great.  Alternatively, when we feel dependent, in other worlds surrender our power of control to a life not live, psychological dependent upon would of, could of, should of.

To expect is a matter of human uniqueness, how we expect is a matter of opportunity or obstacle.  We approach opportunity for we desire opportunity.  We avoid obstacles for we fear failure.  What we expect from our emotional content is rational or irrational.  Rational expectations are going to help me get to where I want to be, and irrational expectations are going to prevent me from were I want to be.  Do you know where you want to be?  Let me give you a couple of clues, is how your living your life working for you today?  What do you validate as real?  Since no one is a finished product until that time when lay horizontal with tag on toe, if you validate the life lived now as real, then what is the opportunity for tomorrow?  Pay attention.  You are your best expert, or for that matter, you are also your worst expert enemy.  When down, you are downing yourself.  When up, you are upping yourself.  Every action requires a preceding thought and no matter what you do, it, from thoughts, feelings, and action is compensatory, you are getting something from it.

So what is the MyDiscover Model.  In brief, the MyDiscover Model is a perspective of change that originates from the point that everything is relational to power of control.  You either have or want power of control which is the human condition.  If you recall from previous writing, the human condition is a wanting condition never satisfied.  It is the want of competence and independence.  Taken together, competence and independence are power of control.  The alternative is abusive power and control.  Abusive power and control are of incompetence and dependence.

In all relationships, there first exists attraction.  As the relationship proceeds, it proceeds according to its compensatory desire.  We all want to feel good, and this is the attraction to the use of alcohol and drugs, and just as any want that is not validated, negotiated, and compromised, in a word, RESPECTED, then the want to feel good transitions into the need to feel good.  As the relationship continues, the need to feel good transforms to the need not to feel bad.  The cycle is compensatory, in other words, it, the act, serves a purpose.  As in all relationships, without validation, negotiation, and compromise, the very first attraction transforms into the conflict that sets the stage for self and other destruction.

Validation, negotiation, and compromise taken together form respect.  When it comes to such abusive acts as alcohol and drug abuse, in order to embrace lasting change, one must, without minimization, respect the medium of abuse.  Alcohol is everywhere and to be a part of a society that supports it use such as the United States, then those who have crossed the line of attraction to abuse need to respect, validate its power.  To validate simply means acknowledge that as a mind/mood altering substance, alcohol does have power to destroy life.  All that is required is for alcohol to be consumed.  What happens next may or may not be headline news.

Headline news, there is not a NH LADC who doesn’t shake his or her head at the headlines.  As of recent, one was on the law makers of New Hampshire extending the closing time of bars from 1 AM to 2 AM, prior there was talk on taxing beer that never passed, and the frustration that instigates alcohol abuse continues, those frustration being no jobs, low wages, lack of health care for those who work hard, higher taxes, and so on; sorry for the tangent.

To negotiate represents the mindfulness of understanding that we all have a mindset.  Of course we have one mind, however, our one mind is the set, the perspective between who we think we are and how we want our world to be (e.g., personal and social self).  Through this relationship, between person and social self, we form expectations.  To form a healthy relationship with alcohol, one has to negotiate the fairness to what one thinks he or she needs (i.e., expects).  This negotiation sets the path for compromise.  You don’t need, you want, prefer.

If there is one thing I have learned from my mentor, the late G. Alan Marlatt, it is that vows of not doing something are broken far more readily than the principles of learning that reinforce the behavior (substance abuse).  So, you initiate your recovery, meaning you initiate not doing something (e.g., drinking or drugging), go to meetings, get your head filled with AA or NA and swear you will never do this or that every again, and for many you instigate a self-imposed limitation by labeling your self a behavior such as alcoholic or drug addict.  Time passes, you fulfill the requirements of your discharge summary, apply for your license, are back on the road, working, participating and enjoying life.  Now the risk of DWI is at its highest.

One day you find yourself at a barbecue, party, or restaurant.  Someone is polite and asks you if you would like a drink?  Your first impulse is, ya, sure.  You have a drink and start socializing with those around you.  People are laughing at your jokes, enjoying your company, you are having fun.  You have another, find yourself caught up in the flow of the event.  Now you have to drive home.  You rationalize, “I only had a couple and I do not live that far away; you drive.”  Arriving home you pat yourself on the back for staying out of trouble.  A few weeks or months later you find yourself in a similar situation.  You think, “No problem, I can have a few, go straight home.”  So you openly drink, socialize, have fun and drive home.  This time, however, you had a few more than a couple, and worse, you have to drive a different path home.  This time you do not make it home, you passed out, smashed into another car, and find yourself laying in a hospital room with a cop at the door.  The other driver was killed by you, and to think, at one time you said, vowed, “I will never drink and drive again.”

Three things set you up: the desensitization and disinhibition effect, along with the principles of reinforcement.  The desensitization effect is that effect of lessening the impact of past wrongs on current actions.  The more time that passes from your struggles, for example, your walking because of a DWI, the less influence that struggle has on current behavior.  When you get your license back, drive, involve yourself in work and family life, what happened a couple years back has little influence.  Then the disinhibition effect, this is when you consume a mind or mood altering substance.  After your first consumption of the substance, immediately you feel the effect, the glow, the euphoric sedation, the release of your behavioral inhibition through the impairment of the deeper reward center to your brain.

The brain is like a sponge when it comes to alcohol.  Once consumed, filtered through the lower centers to the limbic system, the ventral tegmental and nucleus accumbens, dopamine (the pleasure neuron) is release to the prefrontal cortex.  Here, executive functions are set, executive functions such as problem solving. When the executive function area is influenced with the dopamine, thought, logic, rationale, and reason are out the window.  Now, under the disinhibition effect of alcohol or drug, you are careless and perspectively fool proof.  Experiencing the enjoyment of being set loose, free from the psychological restraints of your “normal” insecure self, that reserved, calculating person, you are liberated from the perceived weakness of not good enough, unworthy, different; your hole just got deeper at a great horrific cost.   Caught up in the times, you drink, laugh, feel good; you drive and to think, you drove yourself straight to your own proverbial hell.

The situation outlined here happens too often.  One of the main reasons, well, actually two, alcohol and drug use serves a purpose and that purpose is to set you free from the insecurities as set by your own expectations, and the other is most programs out there that do their best to address the “insanity” of substance abuse focus on the behavior, more, anchor you to past behaviors while never offering the opportunity to embrace the stage approach toward lasting change.  Case in point, most programs are about recovery.  Why would you want to recover a life and its events lived?  The alternative is to DISCOVER the life not lived and sought after.

Everything that you experience is relational to your mind-set, the dictator to your behaviors.  Since all behavior is goal directed, then behavior is best understood as a cyclical sequencing of thoughts, emotion, and action.  Your thoughts, dictated by your mind-set intensify to the point of influencing the physicality of emotion.  Emotion drives you to act, and your actions influence consequences.  The consequences to your action offer the functional opportunity for competence and independence, just as they offer the dysfunctional opportunity for incompetence and dependence; the result is your lifeway.  Your lifeway is the pattern of behavior that you have come to employ that marks you as you are today.  To understand your lifeway, and if you are sitting in your shit of addiction or other abuse, you need a practical perspective.  Lets break a “mind-set” down.

The mind, if you ever found a book that was explaining the mind beyond the simple relation between what one thinks from what one experiences, then you wasted your time and money.  No one knows what the mind is beyond being the product of the brain.  Best guess is  the mind is the essence of being.  The essence of being that is brought together through the neural networking of the brain.  So, we have to guess what the mind is, and then we further complicate it through the limitations of vocabulary and reference a “mind-set.”  Since a set implies two, is the implication that we have two minds?  No, I will put myself out there and state we have one mind born of our brain that is put into play by the influences of the world around us.  For example, can you think of anything else that is referred as a “set” that is actually one  product?  How about a pair?  Ya, sure, a pair of sunglasses.  Even though a pair of sunglasses is one object, the same rational can be made of a mind-set; it too being one.  But still, I am puzzled by the reference of “set.”  Since no one really knows what the mind-set is, I am going to put myself out there and explain.  My explanation is that the mind-set is like two rivers that joint and form a confluence as one.  I am going to ask you to think, actually think about two perspectives that you sit with every moment of the day.

We all have a perspective of who we think we are, and again through the limitation of our vocabulary, we call that perspective our “personal self.”  We also have a perspective of how we want our world to see us, and this we call our “social self.”  These constructs, products of the mind, taken together are our mind-set as experience as our relational self.  It is our relational self, that self experienced between our personal and social self that we experience our worlds.  It is from this understanding, what you or I experience is relational to our mind-set.  Actually, I take this one step further and state that our relational self forms our primary relationship.  Our primary relationship is the filtering of our expectations.  Given reference to a pair of sunglasses, our expectations are the lens through which we look out upon our world.  If for example, the shade of lens that you look out through are green, then everything you see will have shades of green.  If red, then everything you see will be of shades or red.  So what you see, how you see the world around you is directly proportional to the shades of lens that filter your vision.  Now apply this logic to your mind-set.  Again, your mind-set is the primary relational perspective experienced between your personal and social self as filtered through your expectations.  So, if your expectations are rigid and irrational, then everything you experience is going to have a flavor of dysfunction, however, if flexible and rational, your experience is going to motivate you to reach out for where you want to be; assuming you know where you want to be.  Where you want to be is competent and independent in your primary relationship.   By the way, you are only responsible for this relationship and no other.

This presentation of a mind-set is important to understanding why a person would step on a sharp piece of glass.  They would do so for the simple irrational relation that the act and the resulting consequences serve a purpose.  So too of substance abuse, anger-based hostile aggression, and entitlement-based coercive domestic power and control.  Each of these behaviors are goal directed to avoid the overwhelming lack of substance that is relational to ones personal and social self.  Lacking substance people employ, for example, substance abuse for the want of substance (the human condition).  And yet, the behavior of abusing substance for that perspective of substance, that want of competence and independence, is a problem; indeed, here the solution is the problem.

Three concepts, the first, Mental Masturbation, second, Sitting In The Shit, and the third, Anchoring.  Mental Masturbation is the process of beating up on your self mentally because your personal and social self are in dire conflict.  You want, no, you thirst for competence, and yet, you experience incompetence.  Remember, this is all about your mind-set.  As a result of Mental Masturbation, you find your self Sitting In The (your) Shit.  Sitting In The Shit is the stage of dysfunction that you set up through your Mental Masturbation.  The concern here is that this experience was so incrementally, gradually acquired you actually created a comfort zone.  Your shit is your comfort zone.  But as you know, the experience is not comfortable, it simply keeps you safe, safe from taking those risks necessary to embrace change.  As long as you are sitting in the familiarity of your shit, you do not have to risk failure or rejection; your safe.  But make no mistake here, there is no growth in safety.

Anchored by your self-limiting mind-set, you settle for immediate gratification.  You drink and drug to avoid and to cope, you push people away through your radiant body language, you keep people from getting close through intimidation, and you act out through fear.  For others, other people, they  become ponds on a chess board to feed the irrational impressions of deservedness, centrality, and entitlement.  It all serves a purpose.   “It all serves a purpose” is a profound statement for it implies utility.  In other words, you reach out for your booze or drug to make something you need happen.  Kind of sort of  like the insecure person who reaches out by bullying others to feed his or her need for validation.  As in all purpose, it is not the alcohol, drug, other person, or partner that is the issue; the issue is the lack of competence and independence as experienced as incompetence and dependence. This statement too has profound implications.

If it is not the drug or alcohol, then why so much focus on the drugs and alcohol?  Why not focus on something more productive like eliminated the distress of the involved by creating jobs, lower taxes, offering health insurance, matching pay for work done, and so on?  After all, in my past two decades of clinical practice, I have never met anyone who abuses drugs, and alcohol is a drug, who felt  good about him or herself.  But as I think, not that I am a conspirator, maybe, just maybe the government doesn’t want to end the citizenry struggle, pain, and suffering of drug abuse because of the many industries the suffering creates.  I am going to think on this one and come back to it later, and I will.  As a NH LADC, a Board Certified Addiction Specialist, Anger Management, and Domestic Abuse specialist, it is my passion to wonder why people suffer, how to best help them embrace change, and if a finger needs to be pointed, point it.  I have lived two lives, one bad and one good.  Where I have been most people do not survive, and it is through that lens I seek to learn all I can about human nature and the suffering we implement upon ourselves and others.

1.   How challenged do I feel in my life way?

2.  How fulfilled do I feel in my life way?

3.  How purposeful do I feel in my life way?

If your answer to any one of these questions was “I don’t, then you are not practicing the skill of mental health.  There are millions of people in this nation who work at jobs they can’t stand, people who surrender control and settle; as too there are millions of people who are in relationships that suck the life out of them who also surrender control and settle too.  In the wake of surrendering control, they compensate, they compensate through use of alcohol, drugs, anger-based hostile aggression and too often entitlement-based coercive power and control.

Indeed, alcohol and drug abuse (substance abuse) and anger-based hostile aggression are compensatory and do serve a purpose.  They have to, for they are born from the human condition.  The human condition is a wanting condition never satisfied.  Wanting what, wanting competence and independence.  The drive behind all addictive behaviors is the avoidance of incompetence and dependence, and yet the solution to the problem (alcohol and drug use) is the problem.  It is the problem for the simple fact that continued use constitutes physiological change at our most basic reward center to our brains.  Here, within the reward center to the brain, substance use releases dopamine.  Since we are all chemical beings first and foremost, changes at the molecular level such as dopamine necessitate amending to the change.  In effect, through repeated use, the chemistry that was set at conception amends itself, it changes.  Even though the chemistry that networks throughout the brain changes, it is not changed.  In order for the chemistry to be changed, it would require a finished product.  When in comes to networking of the brain, everything is altering on a constant bases.  It is for this very reason that the addict needs to use.  When the levels of certain molecules in the brain such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine lessen, the networking of the brain insists on more and the result is the cyclical compensatory behavior of thoughts, emotion, and action.  The end result is substance abuse and violence.  The MyDiscover model educates on the process of change, identifies the compensatory need that necessitates use, and offers the required skills to establish lasting behavioral (thoughts, emotion, and action) change.

As a nh ladc and anger management clinician, I an my staff will address your needs as unique.  No one is put into a box or treated with cookie cutter programming.  Nor do we you labeling yourself as a finished product like addict, drunk, loser, drug addict, or any other sort. You do what you do for your reasoning and it is through your reasoning that we help you sort out your motivation for use to abuse.