the ModeraXL Team
A ModeraXL Moment with...
Christina T. Veselak
Day or night, it's dark with addiction. It's hard to see your way back to being normal, safe, healthy, and free.
So, how is it one woman can see clearly in the dark? How does she know the way out of the darkest corners of addiction treatment so well? The answer is easy and admirable.
Christina T. Veselak works in the darkest corners of addiction treatment, by choice. Among her rare specialties is serving as a lighthouse for the people wounded and wondering through those darkest corners of addiction. Through her work she shines the light of hope for detox, recovery, and a new life for addicts in the most danger.
You see, Christina works in counseling addicts through relapse prevention, especially those addicts who suffer chronic relapses. Simply put, she helps those people who just won't quit trying to quit their addiction.
Leading expert
With more than 25 years as a clinician, Christina Veselak is one of the world's leading experts on mental health nutrition. For the past 15 years, she has been among the few practicing psychotherapists who actively integrate clinical nutritional therapy into counseling for addiction and substance abuse.
Christina is a founding member of The Alliance for Addiction Solutions. She has presented at national conferences on topics from Nutrition and Brain Chemistry to Christian Spirituality and Addiction Recovery. Through her private practice in Aurora, Colorado for individuals and couples, Christina Veselak shows a caring, compassionate heart as big as the Rocky Mountains.
Here are excerpts of Christina Veselak in a 2009 interview with award-winning journalist, Question, in his research for a project on Innovative Practices in 21st Century Addiction Treatment":
Question: Can you discuss the "old ways" of treating addiction and why you feel they needed improvements?
Christina Veselak: The old way of treating addiction was focused on addressing the psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of the disease, and addiction is a disease. The old way was about giving behavioral tools to people with addictions in order to help them handle cravings and to build a new life.
What worked about the old treatment method was that it gave addicted people something of a support system with stress management skills and life management skills. The problem was that addiction is a biochemical, psychological, and social spiritual illness. The old way of treating addiction completely left out the biochemical aspect of the illness. It left out treating the brain.
TB: How is today's "new way" of addiction treatment different or perhaps better?
Christina Veselak: Incorporating the nutritional therapy approach into addiction treatment effectively does what the old way didn't. We're effectively treating the biochemical aspect of the addicted person's illness. We're effectively treating the person's addicted brain.
Think of a three legged stool and trying to sit on it. Now think of addiction as a three legged stool. There's the biochemical aspect of addiction as one leg of the stool. The psychological aspect of addiction is another leg. And the social spiritual aspects of the illness make up the third leg of the stool.
The old way of addiction treatment didn't recognize or deal with the biochemical aspect. It only did two legs, completely missing the third leg of the stool.
Now look at the three legged stool as an addict in recovery. You're trying to be strong without continuing to use your addictive substance. You're trying to be comfortable. But you can't feel strong, you can't stay comfortable, and you can't be expected to stay in any real state of balance if you're only given two legs of the three legged stool you need.
When you bring in the third leg of the stool, you can sit comfortably and have a real sense of strength and balance. That's what we're doing in effective addiction treatment with ModeraXL. We're helping people to be strong, comfortable, balanced, and stable for life.
TB: Christina, I understand amino acids have long been a part of your program in treating people with addiction to drugs or alcohol. I also know ModeraXL has been a long time in the making because it's more than just a couple of amino acids. Can you explain why you're involved with this product?
Christina Veselak: I've been using amino acids in my office for 15 years. They are fast-acting and can often take only a matter of minutes to kick in for people to have a noticeable emotional response. I'm a fairly cautious person, but I do like the formula behind ModeraXL. I understand what ingredients are in it, and why it's supposed to be helpful in an addicted brain return quickly to full normal functioning.
For many reasons, ModeraXL has the potential to get this helpful product and information out to all of the people who really need it most. Then hopefully they'll bring it into the mainstream addiction treatment community.
TB: Would you explain what you tell a patient of yours about how ModeraXL works?
Christina Veselak: I explain it this way. Addictive behavior such as using drugs or alcohol deletes the necessary brain chemicals we need to deal with stress. The brain really needs these chemicals just to work and function properly.
The sooner we can get the addicted brain to work again, the easier it is for us to apply all of the recovery tools we use in other settings. If your brain is still off line even though you've stopped using the addictive substance, it can't fully function without it.
So, even though you don't want to, the brain returns you to using again to try to get the chemicals it needs. What ModeraXL does is important. It very quickly resupplies your brain to have it reproduce its own chemicals, and therefore reduces cravings.
People just want to feel better. The minute they go into withdrawal they just feel awful. They feel so dreadful; they go back to using their addictive substance just to feel better quickly.
Question: Doesn't this information present a much different viewpoint than the one commonly shared by people that addicts just have to make the decision to quit using and then tough it out?
Christina Veselak: Yes. Too often today addicts are still told to just tough it out, or they're given a prescription for a pharmaceutical drug that also happens to be addictive. Then if they get through the withdrawal from their original addictive substance, they have to go through another withdrawal from the addictive prescription drug when they stop using it.
For example, an alcoholic may successfully get off from abusing alcohol, but to do it they're often drugged to the gills. And then they have to get off those prescription drugs that were addictive.
The process with ModeraXL allows people to go thru withdrawal a whole lot more comfortably. It also addresses what is known as post acute withdrawal. In post acute withdrawal, a person's addicted brain becomes so depleted of its neurotransmitters that even when they go through withdrawal, their brain is still not able to get back to normal.
The depletion of neurotransmitters in your brain caused by addiction means an addict can still feel anxiousness, cravings, stress and insomnia for a year or longer even after they stopped using their addictive substance. These feelings can last so long because the brain is very slowly rebuilding after the addiction.
ModeraXL brings in the necessary nutrients, and your brain rebuilds and recovers quickly. Post acute withdrawal symptoms just disappear. They are not there because your brain is getting what it needs.
TB: Speaking of needs, why might you tell a person trying to end their addiction that they need a tool like ModeraXL?
Christina Veselak: Because of the addiction, your brain has been so depleted of neurotransmitters. You are at a very high risk of experiencing a relapse even if you are totally sure you don't want to. Addicts don't relapse because they want to relapse and use again. They do so because they don't have the necessary tools or resources to do it.
Your addictive brain is highly sensitive. Once your neurotransmitters drop below a certain point, your brain will crave the drug of choice because that addictive substance is what it uses to fire the neurotransmitters to perform a certain function.
You cannot handle stress without neurotransmitters. Your addicted brain is desperate to find the chemicals needed to cope with stress. If the chemicals are no longer there naturally, your brain will again turn to the drug.
Our job in addiction treatment is to use the necessary nutrients to keep the brain reservoirs full, so that when stress hits addicts again have neurotransmitters and can cope successfully without turning back to their drug of choice.
Question: Most addicts try to hide their substance abuse and go it alone trying "cold turkey" or other methods without seeking any kind of help personally or professionally. There are also many people who are loved ones of addicts who themselves are saddled with feelings of guilt or responsibility.
As someone who specializes in helping individuals and couples overcome addiction, it seems important I ask you this. How do you describe addicts? Are they weak people? Are they bad people? Or are they merely people dealing with a disease?
Christina Veselak: Addiction is a disease. Addicts are people who bought into something they simply can't find their way out of, but this is not because they are weak people or bad people.
The effect of using addictive substances, drugs, alcohol or chemicals means you then need more and more of it in order to keep your brain functioning. Addicts don't take drugs to get high.
There are three stages to addiction. Initially, a person uses a substance to get high to get a pleasurable response. Then, the brain wants them to use again.
Once an addiction kicks in the brain becomes depleted. The reason an addict uses again is to feel normal, not because they want to get high. In late stage addiction, they are using just to be able to function. An addicted brain's supply of neurotransmitters is so depleted, the addict can't seem to get out of bed in the morning and find their shoes without using.
Addiction makes the person look weak because the neurotransmitters in their brain are so depleted. This is why I tell addicts the reason they relapse is simply because they weren't given the right type of tools to effectively recover. It goes back to only being given two legs of the three legged stool they need for a successful recovery from addiction.
ModeraXL effectively treats the biochemical aspect of addiction, the brain.
