3/16 Meeting Recap
Speaker Deborah Jay, Hosted by John Curtiss
Thank you to John Curtiss for hosting a great meeting. Speaker Deborah Jay came to us from Grosse Pointe, MI. She is a national expert in the field of alcohol dependence and recovery, and a frequent spokesperson for the field as go-to expert for the Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Oz shows, as professor and guest lecturer, and as an author. Her personal passion within the field is Structured Family Recovery, and "It Takes a Family" is Ms. Jay's book on the subject. Her belief is that a substance abuser does not need to hit rock bottom before beginning the recovery process, and that when possible, families can and must take on a significant role in the recovery journey. Structured Family Therapy is a process that significantly decreases the likelihood of relapse by making systemic changes in the addict's family; in a sense, they are all in recovery together. SFT begins when the acute phase of disease ends (at the end of an intensive treatment program) and the chronic phase of the disease begins (when the individual returns home after the treatment setting). SFT is an approach based on the idea that parts (individuals) are inseparable from the whole (family, community etc). Structural Family therapy is systemic in that it maintains that the best way to positively affect individuals is to influence change for the entire family.