The New D.A.R.E.

WHI are launching our version of D.A.R.E. to help combat the misinformation that drugs are “bad”. This offering is particular for endogenous psychedelics and their preservation, care, science, and research. Here is more about our programming. HERE

Here are the reasons why Wounded Healers Institute are creating a new drug and addiction re-educational and awareness program:

1. Because they made healing drugs illegal, created a War on Drugs, and incarcerated populations of Healers and citizens. These decisions and justification were based on the lack of scientific rigor (due to addiction not being accurately defined in the literature) and common sense, particularly in the application of law and policy.
2. Because Children, Citizens, Families and Communities need accurate information on drugs and our research qualifies and can quantify a lot of reasons why D.A.R.E. was a product of a “diseased” political, industrialized system of projection.
3. Because D.A.R.E. was not psychologically or educationally evidence-based and is a good historical example of bad policy and implementation.
4. Because “law and order” created the D.A.R.E. program to be able to get into schools and since the law is not as morally developed as the other people and professions who would educate on these topics (HERE), we are offering our model to help show why.
5. Because there are not longitudinal qualitative or quantitative studies or research on every psychiatric medication.
6. Because there is favorable longitudinal qualitative research on psychedelics, yet they are still illegal.
7. Because psychedelics were made illegal despite there being no scientific evidence to back the claim that they have “no medical value”.
8. Because having psychological value was not enough to make them legal or keep them legal; therefore they clearly do not understand addiction, medicine, or these medicines.
9. Because psychedelics are organic to the body and have extremely low addiction rates.
10. Because the most addictive and destructive drugs are legal ones.
11. Because they did not know that cannabis was a psychedelic, CBD is equivalent to a Tylenol, and that the endogenous opiate and endocannabinoid system primary purpose is for healing.
12. Because in a free and legal society, medical doctors can only give permission to take their drugs.
13. Because medical doctors are not fully trained or educated in addiction or recovery enough to be prescribing medications, as evidenced by the fact that they once believed that they could create a “non-addictive” opiate, then more education instead of training is what they need.
14. Because transferring addiction is not a clinical aspect of addiction.
15. Because psychedelics are healthy and healing and they told us that they weren’t.
16. Because they can sell addiction services, even though they do not have addiction operationally defined in the DSM or in diagnostics.
17. Because not all Federal and State workers are drug tested.
18. Because “addiction is a treatable disease” is not a definition that the recovery community can honestly say is true anymore because it does not define our experience; our operational definition of addiction as dissociation brings more truth to the table. Addiction as Dissociation Model makes more common sense.
19. Because we are still living in a society where addictions are unconsciously considered moral failures, implicitly thought of as bad, and still illegal, when research clearly shows that decriminalization is valid.
20. Because we are still living a world where trauma is considered an abnormal response to an abnormal event.
21. Because dissociation is not a dirty word, but is made dirty by those who do not understand, don’t care to learn, and have decided that we do not exist; yet we do again and again.
22. Because addiction is dissociation and dissociation is addiction.
23. Because the medical model has not taught therapists how to entwine medication management into their treatment planning and clinicians are doing it outside of the scope of practice.
24. Because the unconscious is defined as not conscious.
25. Because the drug potency is the trauma and not the drug use.
26. Because people confuse the drug with the doctor and the doctor with the drug.
27. Because our program is what we are teaching our children about drugs, how to self-medicate, and as a lesson in civics and moral responsibility.
28. Because Van der Kolk (2014) showed that psych medications are not effective for PTSD and PTSD, dissociation, and addiction are not societally (law, politics, culturally) recognized as transdiagnostic (O’Brien, 2023a).
29. Because Naltrexone has (known since at least 1985) provided hard evidence that qualitative research has been based on hard science because the body does keep the score (we believe though the opiate, cannabinoid, and DMT endogenous (organic in the body) systems, the body is what remembers, and the body cannot lie because it is a differential system that can communicate its level of consciousness to another level of consciousness if not dissociated, unused, and untrained (O’Brien, 2023a).
30. Because the physical body is the psychological unconscious.
31. Because it is a free country, if we are willing to pay the costs to keep it that way.

Who are we doing this for?

1. For those who died in the War on Drugs, Crack and Opiate Epidemic, and COVID that was caused by an undiagnosed perfectionistic, altruistic, ambition addiction to professional identity, greed, profits, power, and control.
2. For families who lost their children due to the industrialization of medicine and law.
3. For communities and families dealing with homelessness because trauma, dissociation, and addiction are not accurately defined and morally operationalized.
4. For all who have been misdiagnosed, mislabeled, unconsciously drugged, unjustly hospitalized, lobotomized, electrocuted, legally imprisoned, poisoned, senselessly killed, or who have lost loved ones because of diagnostic privilege.
5. For our grandchildren and our ancestors.

Why?

1. Because we not the ones with the “drug” problem because not all of us are on drugs. We are on food (e.g., herbs, fungi, mold, grain, seeds, and roots) and these are evolutionarily and scientifically proven to be organic to our bodies and we do not need permission or a license to eat what foods are available to us on this free planet.
2. Because meditation is already evidence-based.
3. Because Healing is as well (O’Brien, 2023a).

Who are we?

1. Healers in Recovery (e.g., Body Healers, Dissociative Healers, Psychedelic Healers).
2. We are Parents, Community members, citizens, Healers, and Clinicians who want to learn the art of Healing from developmental trauma, normative dissociation, and universal addictions.

How?

1. Because learning about Healing leads to knowing what it is and what it isn’t.

Check out our Healer training schedule for 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 andhealing 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/