Karyn Hurley, MNLP, CH
For twelve years I took recovering teenage addicts into my home, basically operating a self-funded halfway house. Forty-five young people found their way to me, and on many mornings I found young people, sleeping on my front porch with a few belongings, waiting to get in. Some would stay a few days, and some would stay as much as a year.
I encouraged these young people to attend twelve-step programs, but I was convinced that there must be some physical component to addiction that is not fully addressed in the psychological and spiritual aspect of drug and alcohol recovery programs. In 1986, my search for answers led me to attend a workshop on how to treat addiction without drugs. Life from then on changed. I met a physician, Dr. Gant, who had already begun to think in the same direction and had actually formulated nutritional protocols for chemically dependent people.
The first time we spoke, I knew I was on the right path. He said that addiction was, in part, a biochemical imbalance and did not arise from moral failing. That was wonderful news! It fit with my intuition, which said that the kids who came to me were basically good kids and so was I.
I myself had had problems with drugs and alcohol since my teen years. With the help of a twelve-step program, I got clean and sober in 1974. I worked hard on my recovery, but I never felt right. Not understanding nutrition back then, I allowed myself to be put on an antidepressant medication in 1987 and began abusing the meds almost immediately. I believe that was one the crucial factors in my relapsing —first on drugs and then on alcohol. The relapse lasted for eighteen months. In 1980, I found sobriety and have maintained abstinence ever since.
Dr. Gant talked about the "feel-good neurotransmitters" in the synapses of the brain. Although this is overly simplistic, he basically held that much addiction came from a person's ability to maintain an adequate supply of these neurotransmitters, due to genetics, toxicity, nutrition, or stress. Also he said that once people began using addictive substances, the body makes less of the feel-blood neurotransmitters, thereby compelling the victim to seek more relief from drugs, alcohol, or food, causing fewer neurotransmitters to be made, and so on, in a downward spiral toward catastrophe. In perusing thousands of scientific papers, he learned that the body can usually make all the neurotransmitters if it has the proper nutritional building blocks, but that these building blocks cannot be supplied by diet alone.
I couldn't believe how lucky I had been to find him. I had prayed so long for this and I was finally going to be able to help these young people I immediately made an appointment with him, and I found our first conversation to be very enlightening. We recognized each other as kindred spirits, and we immediately became friends. This brilliant physician began seeing the young people in my sober living house for free and prescribing nutritional supplements. As a result, I saw dramatic improvements. There was decreased depression, decreased irritability, better attention spans, improved attitudes, less anxiety, and many other positive changes.
