Applied Recovery
Introduction
As a professional, imagine walking into a new client’s house for the first time and discovering that the parents had a fully functioning prison in their basement (complete with staff, armed guards, and administration) for when their children were misbehaving, and a full lab for drug testing analysis. Now, imagine you are a licensed professional and mandated reporter, required to complete state-sanctioned child abuse training– would you call CPS?
Orientation
What if the past, present, and future are all happening at once and cannot be separated by force, love, or reason? What if there is always a child in the room? What if citizens do bad things or “become bad” due to undiagnosed conditions?
Reorientation
Our argument is this: Addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious remain poorly understood by modern psychology because this industrialized field has yet to produce operational definitions for these terms that commoners can easily understand. We have done this (O’Brien, 2023a). Since the DSM fails to operationally define addiction, how can law and society reliably determine right from wrong or imprison someone for a superfood like a psychedelic? So, if you, as a mandated reporter, walked into America’s current house, would you have to call CPS given what you now know? Or would you call the police, ambulance, 911, or 988?
Data
In a therapist chat room, users questioned the integrity and trustworthiness of those who consume “illegal drugs”, suggesting that such a person displays “red flags” and that they are unfit for hire into such a profession. Because the moral privilege standards (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2025) are so high– and with such a prestigious legacy– the field of psychology has proven itself to be a shining historical example of moral authority. Others pointed out concerns about insurance issues, licensure, and reputational risks that would negatively affect the business and possibly the profession as a whole. The chat room participants ultimately concluded that such a person must not have done their own psychological work. However, if everyone in the chat had also done their psychological work, we wonder how the answers to the following questions would change.
The endocannabinoid system was formally identified by modern science in 2012; a discovery delayed for decades because research in the field of psychedelics was ___________?
Cannabis products have been shown to reduce inflammation, anxiety, and stress in the body. Removing CBD from the population’s food chain has created the conditions of __________?
The scientific basis upon which society declared these healing superfoods illegal is ____________? Where is this evidence?
Discussion
Should the moral character of those who use cannabis and their apparent willingness to break the law be judged by those who do not have their terms defined, follow legal precedent, and don’t know why?
If licensed professionals define having “done the work” as simply not partaking in cannabis or psychedelics, then what they display is not moral character, but ignorance and moral privilege. To ignore the existing research and historical context surrounding cannabis, psychedelics, and the War on Drugs is to ignore one’s professional obligation to understand the unconscious, psychology, and common sense. In contrast, a psychological professional who recognizes that unconscious processes are at play in psychedelic plant medicine may possess a higher moral character than those who do not. They may also be morally developed, resolving unresolved trauma, promoting adaptive evolution, and supporting the innate healing systems in their body.
If Congress had formally declared the War on Drugs, then the laws might be legal and just; but because the government cannot legally declare war on a common plant or food or on its own citizens, the War on Drugs itself is inherently unlawful, unconstitutional, and a crime against humanity. Since psychedelics are agents of healing (O’Brien, 2023b), those in psychology who still equate compliance with drug laws to moral character must re-examine their standards of moral character, moral authority, and check their moral privilege. We already have (O’Brien, 2025).
Limitations
The only limitation is for those who insist that their science is the one we all must follow. Research on cannabis now requires state approval; yet for marketing purposes, no research license is needed. Meanwhile, citizens must purchase a license to consume cannabis medically, while no such regulation exists for benzodiazepines, which are essentially pharmaceutical alcohol disguised as anti-anxiety medication. Why no license to have kids, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or drink coffee? If a professional citizen disobeys federal cannabis law but complies with state law, should their moral character be questioned? If professional psychological citizens continue to remain unaware that psychedelics are innate healing agents and superfoods promote healing states of consciousness, then perhaps they are in the wrong profession. Similarly, if those in the field for over 40 years still do not know what psychedelics are, haven’t operationally defined addiction, and don’t see the drug use as traumatic (O’Brien, 2023a), then what have they been doing their whole careers?
Conclusions
Those in the field of psychology that do not want to work with children, addiction, or dissociation are going to be challenged by our work (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2025). Those who define addiction narrowly—as only drugs and gambling—will take issue with our framework. But that is exactly what is needed: Take issue with wisdom and ancient logic. What is not needed is the demonization of those who bring psychedelic healing wisdom to people who are unaware of it, reject it, or fear it. Those who imprison fellow citizens for using healing superfoods reveal the same moral failings they project onto the addiction population when they speak of “moral defects” or “moral character”. Maybe we learned that defect from watching them. Maybe we understand better because a brain on these drugs is healthier than one that is not. Which science you follow, and when you follow it, reveals whether you have the level of moral character that recovery requires to be considered morally blessed.
We have been humbled by the same force we are all addicted to in one way or another. Applied Recovery answers the obvious question, “What isn’t psychoactive?” by reminding that exercise is also psychoactive (O’Brien, 2023b). Therefore, the distinction between psychoactive drugs and psychoactive foods lies in their origins: one is lab-synthesized and the other, if homegrown, is of the Earth. The right to cultivate what is innate to this planet is an inalienable human right of men, women, and children. We do not need your degrees, certifications, or mandates. We do not need an education from professionals who do not understand what they are regulating. What we need are fewer licenses, mandates, and interventions from outsiders who misunderstand an entire ecosystem of healing. We see the industrialization of productive systems as an addictive and dissociative force of nature that is reenacting intergenerational, unresolved trauma on a societal scale. As is within, so is with-out. What you can do about it is know the difference. If a psychological professional claims that using illegal drugs is a red flag—grounds for dismissal or discrediting—then their education, competency, and quality of service must be questioned. Psychedelics, and cannabis as a psychedelic, are literally the immune healing infrastructure of the body. They are the psychological unconscious. If you didn’t know, now you do. Live accordingly.
Into the Future
If professionals in the field of psychology expect to be believed, they must walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, particularly their clients’. And especially those whom their treatments have failed; not because of misapplication, but because of the inadequacies of the profession itself. Those who were forced to heal against their own will, common sense, intuition, families, morals, feelings, or conscience have a lived experience of treatment that stands apart. Those who were locked in prison for having a “disease”, enslaved by unnamed, undiagnosed, and unaddressed addictions in others, or otherwise had to find their own way are the ones they should be following. Those that do not know who they are or where they are going and do not care about others are the ones that we stay away from. Unless they come to us, we have no reason to go to them. Unless they acknowledge us, we have no reason to acknowledge them. And until they know themselves, we have every right to be ourselves. When science supports opinions that defy common logic and common sense, prevent common decency, and dismiss lived reality, then that science is not science; it is the expression of ignorance, arrested moral development, and spiritual immaturity by those who do not understand what is what, who is who, and what they can actually do about it. What it can be considered is propaganda. What is real is what is right. Only once moral authority gives way to moral privilege can humanity be considered in recovery.
Carl Yung believed that psychology does not belong in the treatment of addiction because they have not been there. We interpret this as: They do not understand the nature of morality, spirituality, and emotionality. We also see that they do not understand the nature of addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious, which is curious to say the least, because ironically, recovery as a profession, was created by the system due to their shortsightedness (e.g., opiate epidemic and “non-addictive opiate” scam). Recovery is not about the treatment of addiction; it is about knowing what needs to happen for healing to happen. If one can heal from the underlying traumas (and subsequent dissociation) that created addiction, then addiction is cured. But if one addiction is validated over another, then they are separate but not equal. Addictions are caused by not being able to heal. If a system is actively preventing that, then they are, definitionally, the issue. Jung was moral and more right than wrong because he knew recovery and spirituality mean that not all who pray go to heaven. Jung honored the dissociative process instead of pathologizing it. He knew what the disease of addiction truly was. Apparently, there is still contention in the field, which is very telling and concerning and is why we created another recovery-based profession at the Wounded Healers Institute.
Is the definition of addiction a “treatable” disease (as SAMHSA and ASAM publicly state as their definition)? Yes, “treatable”, but not a disease that can be “treated” by immoral professions (i.e., legal and ethics-based professions). Remember, Chapstick is a form of “treatment”, so defining terms matters. Are we to continue to buy into a system that sold us weapons of mass destruction, told us cigarettes are non-addictive, psychedelics have no medical value, non-addictive opioids can be created, mental health is due to a chemical imbalance, natural immunity isn’t good enough, and that a vaccine can be flu shot? Or that addiction is a disease, or mental health a disorder? Or believed that prison was the best solution for someone with a disease? Practical spiritual solutions cannot be provided in good faith by professionals who believe they have the right to heal spiritual wounds, who sell their souls to become what they are not, do what is not necessary (imprison others), or unconsciously believe they are the ones healing someone else. Earning a degree does not mean that the spiritual work of recovery has been done, or that moral maturity has been reached, by those who teach (preach to) others what to do about something they don’t have defined, have not done themselves, don’t understand, and conveniently profit from.
It seems some psychological professionals have forgotten that a) addiction is not legally or operationally defined in the DSM, b) there are only two diagnosable addictions in the DSM (substance and gambling), and c) the disease of addiction is not a disease; it’s a normal response to a normal event (e.g., trauma-related dissociation). Recovery and healing are impossible when the same industry that causes the “disease” stands to profit from preventing its healing. People in recovery know the difference between what they can and cannot control, and what the past and the present represent. We know that reality and imagination are the same thing. We are all connected, we are all one, and we are all here because there is nowhere to go. Welcome to the reality that the term addiction is now synonymous with dissociation, the unconscious, dependence, attachment, and development, as our work has come to define it (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2025).
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: A Healer’s Journey Through Professional Recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/