The Cottonwood Tucson Experience

The Breakfast Club

We all come to Cottonwood Tucson for various reasons, bringing along all shapes and sizes of baggage; with the common denominator being the desire to get well. It is understood that some have a greater desire than others do. At Cottonwood, we are stripped bare and completely exposed in an environment that is safe and nurturing. It is because of the caring and sharing that goes on that amazing bonds are built while on campus. We have taken those bonds beyond the campus.

For the past two years, since our mutual time at Cottonwood Tucson we have stayed in close contact. The "Breakfast Club" began as a group that had early breakfast together on the upper patio. We come from all over the world and are bound by common Cottonwood experience. Each breakfast began with going around the table one by one, giving your three core feelings for the day, and answering a ten-question self-evaluation. We could then move on to having breakfast.

We continue our experience via email, through the marvels of modern technology. We try to check in as often as possible and each email begins with your three core feelings. This is the safest place on earth. You can share any information that you choose and feel comfortable. Knowing that you are going to get responses that come from love and caring. If someone is not contributing for any length of time they are checked up on and reminded that whatever reason they are not communicating does not matter, we want to hear from you. You will never be reprimanded for not writing whatever the reason. This is all done out of love.

The Breakfast Club has become a family. We visit each other, hold reunions, meet each other's "real" families, and are as close as people can be. We owe this to Cottonwood and our own individual experience there. Cottonwood has introduced us, showed us how to open up and let in others with no judgment and develop the ability to share. Being able to share is a key force in each person's recovery.

With all this said, we want to thank Cottonwood Tucson for giving each of us the knowledge and tools that brought the Breakfast Club together.

Ellen S., Cottonwood Tucson Alumni

Press Trivializes the Treatment Process and Devalues the Suffering

I read this morning that Casey Johnson, heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, died alone in her Los Angeles apartment after a well-publicized life of drugs and partying. I feel sad to hear yet another story of a celebrity who succumbs to addiction after cycling in and out of a series of boutique rehabs.

If you follow the news the story is familiar. Train wrecks of pop check into posh $100,000-a-month beachfront rehabs, where they demand - and appear to receive - special indulgence. In my mind this kind of press trivializes the treatment process and devalues the suffering that I see every day as a therapist at Cottonwood Tucson. In the morning paper I read of the rich and famous going to treatment to save face and then go to work and treat less famous patients who struggle to save their lives. Too often, the news media leave general public with the notion that treatment doesn't work.

I know better. As an "in the trenches" clinician, I see overwhelming evidence that treatment does in fact work. While miracles can be hard to quantify, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's National Outcome Measures show that treatment results in improvement in every life domain, including: abstinence from alcohol and other drugs, decreased symptoms of mental disorders and improved functioning in all major areas. The same study reports that those who have completed treatment also have decreased involvement with the justice system and are better able to find and keep safe and stable housing for their families.

That's what miracles sound like when measured in the dry, public sector language of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. For a more personal take on the value of treatment, please consider the words of a grateful mother who recently sent a thank-you note to one of the family therapists at Cottonwood:

"We are still floating. None of us will ever be the same.
Our son is doing great - happy and clean out in
California. He told me the other day that he had gotten
a sponsor. The sound of his laughter has returned to us.
We have gotten a miracle."

I wish you could have had one too, Casey.

Jeffrey C. Friedman, LISAC
Primary Therapist
Cottonwood Tucson