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Wounded Healer

Key Tenets of Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) by Dr. Adam O’Brien

The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) represents a significant theoretical contribution, rooted in the author’s phenomenological study exploring the intricate interplay of trauma, dissociation, and addiction, particularly focusing on the concept of “drug use memory”. The core argument of ADM is that the dissociative state, though often misunderstood and poorly defined in medical literature, is

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July 9, 2025 No Comments
Wounded Healer

Addiction as Dissociation Recovery Model

The Addiction as Dissociation Model presents views addiction as a trauma-related dissociation rather than a disease or moral failing, choice, or a disease. Observing that the drug use is traumatic to the body (and that the body is the psychological unconscious), addiction is an unconscious choice made in the body, and the moral failing are

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July 1, 2025 No Comments
Wounded Healer

Addiction as Dissociation Model OVERVIEW

The DSM lacks an operational definition of addiction, resulting in gaps in different diagnoses because our work found that it is transdiagnostic (O’Brien, 2023a). This disconnect misinforms legal and medical systems interpretations of mental expressions of distress and concern, which are then unable to apply scientific understanding effectively. Understanding that drug use can encode trauma

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July 1, 2025 No Comments
Wounded Healer

Addiction as Dissociation Continued

The Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM) discussed is called “Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation.” This means that when someone becomes addicted to something, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, or even behaviors like gambling, it might be because of underlying trauma that they haven’t processed properly. The idea is that the addiction serves as a coping mechanism for

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May 31, 2025 No Comments
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Wounded Healer

Recovery Made Addiction Simple

Recovery making addiction simple must begin with a critique of current systems– particularly how society has historically failed to treat mental health and addiction equally. They are “separate, but not equal”. Much like in the psychological professions, where newcomers are not always welcomed, inequality persists under the guise of structure; they are separate and not

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May 27, 2025 No Comments
Wounded Healer

Reducing Implicit Bias

What is implicit bias? What does “reducing implicit bias” mean to the professions and professionals who are legally mandated to take their own bias into consideration when working with citizens in precarious life situations where even psychology cannot agree on what is actually happening or what to do about it?

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April 1, 2025 No Comments
Wounded Healer

Recovery Manifesto

We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our petty, trivial desires. Real freedom is freedom from our petty, trivial desires. – Russell Brand

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February 21, 2025 No Comments
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Wounded Healer

Now or Never?

“Let’s get together to fight this holy Armageddon, for when the man comes, there will be no more dues.
Have pity on those, whose chances grow thinner, for there ain’t no hiding place from the Father of Creation.
Believe me. – Bob Marley’s “One Love”

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February 14, 2025 No Comments
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Wounded Healer

Autoimmunity

Introduction Using emotional logic, every “bad” person was biologically born into a society with some form of mother and father. Just like the mighty oak tree, starts from a acorn seed. As psychological professionals, we have had long to deal with the fallout from political strife, international wars, immigration reform, poor legal precedent, and the

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February 12, 2025 No Comments
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Wounded Healer

Moral Money

“Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of a civilized nations.” Thomas Jefferson 

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February 11, 2025 No Comments
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Wounded Healer

Pop Psychology

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol

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February 8, 2025 No Comments

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Disclaimer

The Wounded Healers Institute fully complies with all local and New York State laws, and all federal regulations. We are a harm and risk reduction, recovery-based mindfulness healing (non-clinical) program, and an (re)education company.

We do not promote illegal activities or provide resources for obtaining illegal substances or illegal psychedelic psychotherapy services.

The Wounded Healers Institute does not sell THC cannabis for any aspect of our program, training or events, and it is not a retailer, supplier, manufacturer, reseller, distributor, agent, representative or subcontractor of THC cannabis supplier or retailer.

WHI is selling legally allowed to sell CBD now. Our healing services do not constitute medical care, physical therapy, and we do not diagnose or treat mental health. WHI is a wellness and recovery program.

What we do do is provide educational experiences, create positive memories of healing that allow participants to access to their own innate healing and creative process. WHI provides wellness programming, posttraumatic growth opportunities, and skills to build resiliency factors that allow our healing model. WHI employs the spiritual and developmental model of Addiction as Dissociation and uses The Path of the Wounded Healer as our unconscious guide. See our research HERE

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