Are you looking for ways to help your child find addiction recovery?
Would you love to have a blueprint for recovery?
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Bell at the preview of The Anonymous People.
Dr. Bell is a northern California practicing chiropractor and specializes in individuals helping them with addiction recovery.
Please welcome Dr. Herby Bell to our community!
Dr. Bell tells his story and his thoughts about the holistic approach to recovery. Two ideas stood out for me. One was the idea of prehab, rehab, and posthab, which expands prevention and long-term recovery. The second is the idea of moving well, eating well, and thinking well, which is a wonderful reminder to take care of ourselves, no matter our situation.
With that being said, I’ll let Dr. Bell take it away.
Please explain what do you do and why are you involved in recovery?
When I was nine years old, my physician father, also addicted to drugs and alcohol, committed suicide. That was the first anchor in the family that this was going to be a legacy. Growing up, I swore off all drugs and alcohol and of course, became addicted to both.
I’m a recovery person, myself and now my middle son is an opiate addict in recovery, so I have what I describe as these two bookends, my dad and my son propping me up very enthusiastically and passionately to do this work.
It just really gets me out of bed in the morning.
I say thank goodness every day. Many people don’t have the distinction or the good fortune to say that they have found their life’s work, and through serendipity, I believe I surely have.
What is the Blue Print for Recovery, and how does it work?
In my own recovery, I found that if I wasn’t moving well, if I wasn’t recruiting my body to produce the brain chemicals I needed to feel good in my own skin, and if I wasn’t eating properly, I was just in another addictive cycle looking for that hit through sugar, or other behaviors.
I really found a way to fine-tune through exercise and good nutrition. Through my ongoing psychological process, whatever it was, 12 steps, psychotherapy, or native American sweat lodges through the years. I had a real good integrated approach.
That is what the Blue Print for Recovery is. We say move well, eat well, and think well all of the time, for some period of time, one day at a time. We incorporate chiropractic as the beginning, non-invasive, very gentle movement to get the body’s core moving properly and then add a thoughtful exercise regimen.
Over the course of a ninety-day period, we ask people to move away from the standard American diet of carbohydrate-rich and sugar-rich foods and move more towards wholesome nutrient-packed foods. I incorporate the Paleo diet into our program, which takes time over the course of those ninety days.
Everybody is in a little bit different place on the continuum as they join us. The thinking well piece is an ongoing psychological/spiritual process. It is whatever works for folks. We’ve got recovery coaching at the office and a couple of men’s groups as adjunctive approaches to the thinking well piece.
Our tagline is Focusing on Wellness and Specializing in Addiction Recovery Care.
They are two in the same thing. From all walks of life, the idea is that all of us are experiencing this renaissance, moving back into a wellness-oriented life, a sustainable life.
This is a common-sense approach. We do not have a solid infrastructure for people to go out and habituate these lifestyle practices in a way that works. Ninety days seems to be a real good time period for people to take on practices, and then the rubber meets the road.
Why do we live in a culture where addiction seems to be so prevalent?
I’m a left-handed, goofy-foot, alcoholic, surfer chiropractor, and I have many big ideas around this. The big answer is that we have lost touch with the whole. We have really lost touch with the fact that we are all inextricably connected to all things and each other.
We have compartmentalized so much through our consumer culture.
“What have I got, and what do I take for it?”
Instead of:
“What’s out of balance? What’s toxic? What’s deficient, and how do I get back to sufficient and pure again?”
People are grasping at straws to find compartmentalized answers for what should be a holistic solution. We are moving out of a compartmentalized mechanistic culture back into an integrated, holistic look at things. It’s going to take some time for that sort of paradigm shift to take hold.
We are sort of out of touch with the rhythm and the cadence of the earth. We are natural ecstasy deprived. We are looking for ways to soothe ourselves. We are always looking for pleasure as human beings, and of course, these synthetic ways to soothe ourselves through substance and behaviors are being handed to us right and left.
That is not the answer, as we have seen.
What tips do you have for parents when they find out their child is experimenting, dependent, or has crossed that line to addiction?
Get in touch with their own intuition. The answers are inside if we have a process to be introspective. Let’s look at how we are taking a look at our lives and start the education process very early on. This is an intergenerational, family legacy, multi-factorial problem, including a genetic predisposition. It requires a holistic, integrated approach.
Education, education, education.
Open up the conversation. Let’s get addiction out of the closet and turn over every stone we possibly can because there are different strokes for different folks.
Our friend Lisa Frederiksen’s Second-Hand Drinking work really nails it. It looks at what happens unconsciously in a family and brings it to a conscious conversation. Lisa’s work is really seminal and first cabin stuff.
What are your thoughts about our current addiction treatment system?
The experience we had with our son going to a dual diagnosis major hospital in the country turned out to be a long process and extraordinarily expensive.
Addiction treatment central, or we call it “Big Addiction,” is doing the best it can, but it is fabulously expensive. I don’t think it has to be if we will get more of an infrastructure and more of an early education program.
I love the concept that we’ve got rehab, but now let’s get prehab, and let’s get post has. Let’s bring it into the culture early on to prevent a lot of this costly treatment. We can find a way to offer continued–aftercare–much like diabetes or heart disease. Ultimately that will abate a lot of costly relapse episodes and recidivism in our prison systems.
It can be more robust; it can be spread out more in the culture. We like to say, “Let’s have the addiction treatment community be the entire community from the beat cop, to the teacher, to my brother.” Everybody can come up to speed on this because addiction touches all of us, one way or another.
Then I think we’ll see a shift.
What are your thoughts about “Big Addiction?” What would you like to see that would help with addiction recovery? Be sure to let us know in the comments?
If you liked this post, please share it on social media. Thank you!
Herby Bell, D.C., D.A.C.A.C.D(c), has been a practicing chiropractor for over 30 years. Before graduating with honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at San Diego. His post-graduate training in sports-related injuries and applied spinal biomechanics (F.A.S.B.E.) positioned him for his practices in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas. He helped a wide variety of people–from children to geriatrics and NFL football players to professional surfers.
Dr. Bell has studied and practiced mind-body-spirit fitness and wellness protocols for three decades. As a candidate for diplomate status with The American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders, he is a firm believer that lifestyle choices and practices are paramount to overall good health. Good lifestyle choices include moving well with a functionally sound exercise regimen, eating well through natural and nutritionally sound foods, and thinking well through mindfulness and other practices.
He is currently in private practice at Recovery Health Care in Redwood City, CA, specializing in individuals with addictions. Herby also lectures at The Sequoia Center, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Redwood City, and he produces a podcast entitled Sober Conversations (iTunes) exploring sober and wellness lifestyles.
Thank you for reading. Don’t forget to sign up for the Sunday newsletter with information and inspiration to help parents. Sign up now.
