Cedar House incorporates various evidence-based treatment approaches to design structured plans for clients seeking recovery from substance use disorders. One of those approaches is an integrative addiction treatment method called the Matrix Model that incorporates psychological orientations and therapeutic styles. Used in our outpatient treatment program, this model integrates cognitive behavioral therapy, family education, and motivational interviewing to help individuals struggling with drug or alcohol addiction. Research shows its effectiveness in enhancing client consistency and extending recovery for a wide range of substance use issues, and many organizations, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, endorse the Matrix Model method due to its proven success. Let’s review the early recovery skills in this approach to recovery:

1. Stop the Cycle

The best way to stop the craving process is to:

1. Identify triggers (people, places, objects, feelings and times that cause cravings)
2. Prevent exposure to triggers
   
3. Cope with triggers differently than in the past

Thoughts about using start an argument inside your head – your rational self versus your substance-dependent self. Often the thought of using passes through your head with little or no effect. But it’s important to identify these thoughts and try to eliminate them.

2. Identifying External Triggers

These are the people, places, objects and times that cause cravings. Consider using these charts to identify some of your triggers and categorize them as situations that are safe, low risk, high risk and those that should be avoided entirely.

3. Identifying Internal Triggers

These are feelings or emotions that cause the brain to think about using substances.

Although you may feel that your situations, thoughts, and emotions are not under your control, how you respond to those external and internal triggers is under your control. This chart can help you to identify some of your internal triggers.

4. Mutual Help Activities

Group participation surrounds you with supportive people who are going through the same struggles. Groups reinforce the message that recovery is not an individual process. There are alternatives to 12-Step groups, many of which are not based on the concept of a higher power. Although the philosophies of these groups differ, most offer a mutual—help approach that focuses on personal responsibility, personal empowerment, and strength through an abstinent social network.

5. Body Chemistry in Recovery

The brain goes through a biological readjustment or “healing” of the chemical changes that were produced by substance use. These are the stages you may experience as your body adjusts to recovery.

6. Challenges in Early Recovery

Learning new approaches to common difficult situations is important to everyone who wants to maintain sobriety. Try using these suggested approaches to these typical challenges.

7. Thinking, Feeling, and Doing

Habitual substance use changes the way people think, how they feel and how they behave. The goal in recovery is to learn to combine your thinking and feeling self and behave in ways that are best for you and your life.

People do desperate things to continue to appear normal when life feels out of their control. These desperate behaviors are called addictive behaviors – behaviors related to substance use. Sometimes these addictive behaviors occur only when people are using or moving toward using. Recognize when you begin to engage in these behaviors. That’s when you know to start fighting extra hard to move away from relapse.

8. Helpful Sayings from 12-Step

Short sayings that help people in their day-to-day efforts at staying sober.

• One day at a time – this is a key concept in staying abstinent. Don’t obsess about staying abstinent forever. Just focus on today.

• Turn it over – sometimes people with addictions jeopardize their recovery by tackling problems that cannot be solved. Finding a way to let go of issues so that you can focus on staying abstinent is a very important skill.

• Keep it Simple – Learning to stay abstinent can get complicated and seem overwhelming if you let it. In fact, there are some simple concepts involved. Don’t make this process difficult: keep it simple.

• Take what you need and leave the rest – Not everyone benefits from every part of 12-step meetings. It is not a perfect program. However, if you focus on the parts you find useful, rather than the ones that bother you, the program has something for you.

“I cherished the program. Cedar House to me is sacred ground because it’s where I first learned the 12 Steps and the Serenity Prayer.”

Jerry struggled through years of challenges with addiction, crime, homelessness, relapses and custody battles. Once he came to Cedar House directly from prison for the first time in 2011, the initial foundation was laid for a lifetime in recovery.

At the age of 15, Jerry began hanging around of group of guys who used him to buy their beer. He was a quiet kid who happened to look older than he was, so they invited him to party with them. They convinced him to drink beer and try smoking weed. Although it made him sick, he still recalled the “overwhelming feeling” of being high for the first time and starting to get hooked. He said, “It was a classic, textbook case. It had a snowball effect. Marijuana really is a gateway drug. After that, I got into cocaine, which led to the criminal system.”

Every time Jerry got into trouble with the law, it was directly related to his drive to pay for more drugs and alcohol. He said, “To sum it up, I was a tore-up drug addict.”

By the time he turned 40, he had been in and out of the prison system for most of his life. The court system allowed him to move into a program called His House where he got accustomed to rising at 5:30 a.m. and having his morning coffee over prayers and self-help books with fellow clients. He was technically still in custody but starting to desire a real change in his life.

The Department of Corrections moved him to Cedar House for residential treatment. After 25 years, he was finally sober. He and four of his new friends kept up their early morning routine there. They learned more and more about recovery and started to understand how they could change their lives. The more he learned, the more he wanted to know more. He had so many questions! He would catch staff in the hallway and ask for their guidance to deepen his understanding of the recovery process.

After five and a half months of sobriety, Jerry relapsed. His mom had a stroke and became hospitalized. His case manager took him to the hospital to see her and reviewed the 12 steps on the way there. A few days later, he went with his cousin instead and stayed overnight. Since he was still in court custody during that time, he wasn’t allowed to return to Cedar House. He stayed by her side for another week, but the stress led to drinking, and the snowball effect began again.

Jerry moved from smoking crack to meth and even both at the same time on occasion, which caused dangerous behaviors and hallucinations. When he was arrested four years later in 2015, he asked to return to Cedar House. He said:

“They really impressed me. They got me sober. I knew the information they gave me was real. It was life changing.”

During his experience with mental health court in sober living, he had some time to think.  He was 49 years old and knew he would lose everything if he didn’t commit to his recovery. He visited his counselors at court and perked up when they said his first 90 days would be at Cedar House.

In the Cedar House lobby as he awaited his turn for intake, Jerry noticed another client looking at him. This man ended up being his roommate. At night, Jerry would try to leave the door ajar to read the Big Book by that sliver of light, but his roommate would yell at him to shut the door so they could all sleep. Jerry said:

“The Big Book became my bible. I went to groups, worked out, read the Big Book, and asked questions.”

He didn’t want to fight with his roommate, so Jerry would bring his book into the bathroom to read at night. This routine of reading and focusing on the program laid a solid foundation for Jerry. That roommate became his sponsor, and they have stayed close every since. After 90 days, Jerry moved into sober living. He attended Sunday night meetings and panels until 2018.

That’s when Jerry’s mother passed away, and he relapsed again. He had regained custody of his children, but after relapsing, they were taken back into the system. He said, “I was crumbling. By the grace of God, I realized I was going to lose everything. I realized if I keep drinking and using, my kids will stay in the system.” He said:

“I had to take a deep breath and deal with the disappointment of relapse.”

On Dec. 29, 2019, Jerry committed himself once again to his recovery. He reflected back on the staff at Cedar House and said, “I remember everything they said. I would call and talk to Mike (his case manager). Every time he told me something, it rang true or eventually it would come true.”

Jerry is proud of everything he learned at Cedar House and the fact that he’s been able to mend his relationships with his family. With the help up Step Up, Jerry and his son are in stable housing. Now, he has four years of sobriety and earned his certified peer support license to help others on their path to recovery.

Cedar House Life Change Center embraces evidence-based treatment as the most effective approach to recovery, especially when combined with other self-help methodologies, like the 12 Steps to Recovery. Continue reading to learn more about the 12 Steps.

Step 1: ADMITTANCE

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “The first step is admitting you have a problem,” now you know where it comes from. Admittance, acknowledgement or honesty are all different ways of introducing the first step, which is to admit to yourself that you are powerless over alcohol or another substance or behavior, and that your life has become unmanageable.

Step 2: FAITH

Acknowledging a higher power allows you to lay your ego aside and accept that you need guidance and assistance throughout life. This offers a form of support when things get tough, and in the process of addiction recovery, things will get tough. The second step is about HOPE – hope that recovery is possible and a sober life is attainable.

Step 3: SURRENDER

Unlike the first two steps that focused on reflection and acceptance, step three is about taking action, making a decision and executing it. Surrender is key to successful recovery. This is a critical step because it ensures that you know that your addiction is bigger than you, and you need help to take control of your life back from the addiction.

Step 4: INVENTORY

A searching and fearless moral inventory requires you to take a good hard look at yourself, the choices you have made, and whether or not they are congruent with the beliefs you hold and the person you want to be. Before you can make changes you have to understand what needs to be changed.

Step 5: INTEGRITY

Making a confession to a higher power, yourself and another living person can lift a great burden and start to resolve feelings of guilt or shame that may otherwise lead you back down a dark path. While confession may seem simple and quick, after the previous steps including admission, it’s not.

Step 6: ACCEPTANCE

Allowing a higher power to make corrections regarding your shortcomings allows you to let go of them. This is not always easy to do as these behaviors and shortcomings have likely been a trusted coping mechanism for a long time.

Step 7: HUMILITY

Much like step 3, this step is the action step following the realization of our shortcomings. Bear in mind, we’ve learned a lot about addiction since the 1930s, and we know now that addiction is caused by many complex factors including genetics and environment or circumstances.

Step 8: WILLINGNESS

A thorough and honest list of the specific ways addiction has hurt you and your loved ones helps you realize the full extent of the damage addiction has caused to your life and the lives of others. This step is meant to be an honest account of how addiction has negatively impacted your life and allows for willingness to repair the damage.

Step 9: MAKE AMENDS

Forgiveness is incredibly powerful for both the offender and the one who was offended against. This is not an “apology tour” but rather a thoughtful and premeditated exercise in trying to make right with this people, so long as doing so doesn’t cause any harm. Not all people will offer forgiveness, and that is okay; a sincere apology acknowledges that you understand that it was wrong and regret it.

Step 10: MAINTENANCE

The work doesn’t stop after step 9 because 12-Step Recovery is designed to be a new way of living. You’ll need to continue making amends and admitting wrongs from here on out. Mistakes will be made continually, but it is vigilance that allows us to stay on track and continue growing.

Step 11: IMPROVEMENT

Prayer is speaking to your higher power, while meditation is listening. This step acknowledges that recovery is a continuous process and something that is never really “done”. By the time you reach the 11th step, you most likely have found a deep spiritual path that will be the guiding way for the rest of your life.

Step 12: SERVICE

The best people to help others are those who have been there themselves. Addiction is not “cured” once the 12 Steps are completed, and recovery will be a lifelong process. You may have to repeat all or some of the steps because there may have been issued that were not realized or worked through the first time. This is alright and encouraged.

“I wish I had been more scared.” As a young man, Mike experimented with anything and everything. If someone offered him drugs, he had no fear of how he might react. This risky behavior was a slippery slope, which led to years of drinking, drugs, crime, jail, poor health, damaged relationships, and dangerous situations.

He was a shy, nervous child but quickly broke out of his shell in junior high when he started hanging around with the wrong crowd. From that group, he learned about acid, mushrooms, speed, and alcohol. He said it made him feel good and boosted his confidence when he tried all the new substances that they offered him. Unfortunately, his partying got out of control, and Mike didn’t graduate from high school.  In his twenties, he steered away from drugs but started drinking more and more. This resulted in two DUIs and a severe case of pancreatitis, which led to his hospitalization. The doctor there prescribed an opioid for his pain.

“That didn’t scare me enough for me to get it through my skull,” Mike said, “Something really bad had to happen.” Once he left the hospital, Mike stayed sober for a couple of weeks but knew he wanted more of the feeling he had with his pain medication. A friend suggested combining it with alcohol, which Mike predictably wanted to try. Mike said, “I just couldn’t get enough of it. Popping one or two turned into ten or fifteen at a time.”

“Once I started taking oxy, everything went downhill. I was constantly chasing the high,” Mike said, and then shared that his desperation led him to steal from his family, random cars and several different stores. As a result, he was in and out of jail all the time. He continued drinking, using meth, and shooting up heroin. He said, “Anything you put in front of me, I’d do it. I couldn’t handle being sober.”

At night, Mike would walk the streets trying to get high. He said “I was looking for anything I could get my hands on. It was a 24-hour thing.” Someone on the street gave him a bunch of meth one night, and Mike went back to his hotel to use. He shot up much more than he could handle and had to rush to his dealer desperate for something to help him come down. Once he did, he passed out until 2 p.m. and woke up already withdrawing from the experience. He walked to Target, got caught stealing, and ended up in jail again. After his 40-day stay in jail, Mike was released from custody into drug court. Two days after his release, Mike relapsed and knew he needed help. He said, “I didn’t know how to stay sober.”

A woman named Karen from Victorville Drug Court met with Mike and suggested he try rehab at Cedar House for 90 days. He said, “I didn’t know what to expect, but I had run out of options.”

“It was amazing! I learned so much,” Mike remembered his Cedar House experience fondly. During his time in residential treatment, he volunteered in the kitchen and met several other men that he became friends with. He learned about relapse prevention and how to stop a thought before it turns into action.

He said that one of the methods that really helped him was having people in recovery come in to share their stories. He wanted to know, “How do they do it? I wanted to feel the way they did. They always seemed so happy. I wanted to be happy without drugs and alcohol.”

That’s exactly what he managed to do. On February 22, Mike will have ten years clean and sober. It is truly remarkable how far he has come. He is married with three children – a five-year-old daughter and three-year-old twin boys – and is a licensed flooring contractor. He said, “Everything is a lot better than it was, but I wouldn’t change anything. That whole experience made me who I am.”

Gratitude. It shined across every fiber of Carla’s being when we met her. She had a wide, warm smile and said, “I just want to tell you thank you because I am so grateful for Cedar House!” She readily expressed her appreciation for the Cedar House staff because her experience completely changed her life.

Both of Carla’s parents were heroin addicts. She grew up in a home full of drugs, addiction and overdoses. By the time she turned 16, Carla was introduced to meth, and her family not only allowed it but encouraged her drug use. She said, “It felt normal. It was a daily thing for people to be getting high at our house and overdosing in the bathroom.”

Carla lost both of her parents to heroin overdoses. She and her seven younger brothers and one older sister were left with severe substance use disorders. As a young woman, Carla had seven children of her own, but the first three were taken by the state when they discovered a burn on her daughter’s leg from her father and learned of their drug habits. She said, “That’s when I lost it. After that, it was full-blown drugs. I just lost my mind.”

They became homeless, staying at parks or anyplace where she could find drugs. She and her younger children tried living in a domestic violence home, homeless shelter, and other recovery homes, but she couldn’t manage to overcome her addiction and get on her feet.

Six years ago, Carla announced to her boyfriend at the time: “I can’t do this anymore.” She was ready to change her life, but he wasn’t ready to allow it. When Cedar House returned her call about admission to the program, her boyfriend didn’t tell her. She continued waiting and checking in every day, but she began to lose hope. Finally, she decided, “My kids would be better off without me. I was going to jump off a bridge.”

Thankfully, Carla happened to answer his phone one day when they were getting high together in his garage. It was the admission team at Cedar House offering her and her daughter each a bed at Maple House, the Cedar House program for women and children.

At first, Carla found it difficult to accept change. She didn’t want to be there and struggled with the program, until she met Kathleen, Cedar House’s Clinical Director. Carla said, “She changed my life dramatically. She is awesome.”

After completing 60 days of the program, she started looking forward to building her new life. She said, “I was feeling really good. Six years later, I still never called my boyfriend back.”

With her 10-year-old daughter, Carla moved from Maple House to a sober living apartment for six months and continued with outpatient treatment. She enrolled at Northwest College to become a dental assistant. After graduating, she quickly moved up the ranks at a dental office from Intern to Specialty Assistant to Treatment Coordinator to, finally, the Community Outreach Specialist. She said, “I’m a go-getter. I’m a fighter. I knew there was more out there for me.”

Since then, Carla acquired a driver’s license, a car, insurance, and a house. She has a relationship with all of her kids and is now a grandmother with two grandbabies. She said, “God will give you back everything the devil takes away. I’m so blessed. I owe Cedar House my life. I would have jumped off that bridge. They never gave up on me.”

What a truly remarkable reason to be grateful.

At Cedar House, we want to ensure that our community understands the dangers of substance abuse and learns how to recognize an overdose. By learning what to look for and how to react, you could save a life.

Some signs of an overdose include:

• slow, weak, or no breathing
• choking or gurgling sounds
• limp body
• cold and/or clammy skin
• small, constricted pupils
• discolored skin, especially in lips and nails.

It can be difficult to recognize, so it’s important to treat the situation if you aren’t sure. First and foremost, call 911 immediately. Do not leave the person alone. Next, administer naloxone if it’s available. Naloxone can reverse an overdose from opioids, including heroin, illicitly manufactured fentanyl, and prescription opioid medications. Often given as a nasal spray, naloxone is safe and easy to use.

We encourage you to learn more about overdose symptoms and treatment and spread the word about the dangers of drugs in our community. At Cedar House, recovery is within reach. If your loved one is at risk, make the lifesaving call today – 909-421-7120.