Your book has changed my way of thinking. And has given me something I have not had in years.. Hope. I talked to Juniper about your rehab program and hope to come there in the near future. To think I could live without Xanax and other drugs would be a miracle. I have never responded to a book or person in my life. Your book has me thinking I might actually live like a "normal person" or something of that nature - what a thought! Pax, your ...
Hi, my name is Pax Prentiss. I am 33 years old and I have been clean and sober for seven years. I am the cofounder and codirector of the Passages Treatment Center in Malibu, California, along with my dad, Chris. We opened the Passages program because of our sincere desire to save the lives of people who are suffering from alcohol and drug dependency. During my 10-year battle with heroin, alcohol, and cocaine, I sought treatment at many different rehabs and found little help. Most centers were offering the same type of treatment-group meetings. I found it hard to discover and heal the underlying problems that were causing me to use when all I had available was the group approach.
I eventually sought one-on-one therapy tailored to my individual needs and found that it was much more effective. After curing my addiction through this wonderful one-on-one approach, my dad and I decided to open a rehab center that offered the same approach. Passages is based on the program that cured my addiction and has now cured hundreds of others, most of whom had been to other treatment centers seeking help.
During those years of my addiction, I felt pain and suffering the likes of which I never believed possible. Each time I thought I couldn't get any lower, something catastrophically bad would happen to me that would take me deeper into my pain and suffering. My only goal in life was to get high. I lied and cheated everyone in my path to do so. I sold everything I owned until I had nothing. I was beaten, kidnapped, and almost murdered by dealers from whom I had stolen drugs. After barely escaping with my life, I was taken to the hospital to have my face put back together.
Even after that nightmare, I didn't give up my addictions. Something deep and intractable was holding me in its grip, and no act of will was able to release me from it. I came to the point where I literally lost everything I had. One day, I found myself standing in the streets trying to sell my shoes for ten dollars to get heroin. Standing there, I looked up at the blue sky and I knew that if a miracle didn't happen for me, I would soon die.
With my dad's support and a lot of hard work searching for the breakthrough that would cure my addiction, the miracle finally happened. If I could go back in time, armed with the information I have now, it would be much easier to get sober and to stay sober. That's why I'm writing to you now-so you don't have to go through what I went through.
Why Traditional Programs Don't Work
As I said, I have 10 years of drug use behind me and seven years of sobriety. That's 17 years of research into the world of addiction. After spending a decade of my life trying to get sober, and now having helped hundreds of others find their freedom from dependency, I want to share with you those treatment methods that actually work.
Lots of people spend their entire life trying to get sober. I made over 40 attempts myself and I have talked with many people who have been in over 10 rehab centers. Months, weeks, or even days after they get out of treatment, they relapse again. If this has happened to you, you have probably asked yourself: "What's wrong with me? Why can't I stay sober? I don't want to live like this, but for some reason I can't control the urge to use."
Unfortunately, many treatment options often leave you worse off than before you entered the program. One of these is the traditional group meeting format. In almost every treatment center across the United States, group meetings are the primary treatment modality, with little or no private counseling sessions. There are many disadvantages to using only group meetings for treatment, but the one that is most problematical is that it is unlikely that you will be able to heal your deep-seated, underlying problems in a group session-and if you don't heal the underlying problems that are causing you to use, you will rarely be able to free yourself from dependency. Group meetings can educate you, but they are usually not effective in healing. I have found that you can have all the education in the world, but if your underlying problems-the problems that are causing you to turn to drugs or alcohol-are still present, you will most likely go back to drugs and alcohol repeatedly.
Another problem with most group meetings is the kind of education they provide, which, without intending to be, can actually be detrimental to recovery. I have sat in hundreds of group meetings and left feeling more hopeless than when I got there. In such settings, you will often hear concepts such as "Relapse is part of recovery," "You have no power over your addiction," and, even worse, "Addiction is a disease, there is no cure for it, and the best you can do is learn how to live with your disease." These popular misconceptions are pounded into your head, day in and day out. As a result, people suffering from addiction come to believe that in order to stay sober, they have to relapse once in a while.
I have found that the opposite is true-relapse is a return to dependency; it is not part of staying sober. One mom called my dad and told him that her son had just returned from four months in a Florida rehab and the day he came home he relapsed. She said that when her son was leaving the rehab, he was told that he would relapse three times. So when he did relapse, he announced to her, "That was only the first time." With beliefs like that, what are the chances of anyone staying sober? We all know what a disease is, and nobody wants to be "diseased." How would you like to walk around your whole life thinking you have an incurable disease? Count me out. I like to think of myself as healthy, happy, and free.
With the negative programming people are getting at many treatment centers, it is really no wonder why relapse is the norm and why the success rate is only about 5 to 15 percent. The primary reason the success rate is so low is that these centers do not focus on healing the underlying problems that are causing people to use drugs and alcohol in the first place. And the reason they do not look for the underlying problems is because they believe addiction is a disease. They believe that the disease is the cause of the dependency when it is truly only a symptom of something deeper.
The use of group meetings to treat alcoholism and addiction began around 30 years ago when the first treatment centers starting showing up. That was the best option at the time, but that was 30 years ago. Today there is a higher standard of treatment. The whole world has moved forward and great advancements have been made in the field of healing, including new and cutting-edge ways of achieving health through modern medicine, holistic medicine, Eastern medicine, psychotherapy, marriage and family therapy, blood work analysis, massage, hypnotherapy, and much more. Yet, while the rest of the world advances, the addiction industry largely remains in the same place it was 30 years ago. If you had a life-threatening illness and you needed expert medical care, would you go to a hospital that was using methods devised in 1970? Of course not. We've advanced leaps and bounds since then.
The Hand-Tailored Program That Will Help You Achieve Total Recovery
Everyone who becomes addicted has underlying problems in their life that cause them pain and suffering and they have sought drugs and alcohol for relief from those problems. That is the real reason people use drugs and alcohol. If the pain were not present in their life, they wouldn't need to use and abuse drugs and alcohol. This philosophy is actually very simple at its core-the underlying problems cause pain and suffering, and the drugs and alcohol numb the pain. This was the key I had been searching for all those years. It wasn't until I discovered why I needed to use drugs and alcohol that I was able to cure my dependency.
The best and most effective way to heal underlying problems is through one-on-one therapy, and a lot of it. When you sit down with a private therapist who is an expert in the field, with nobody else in the room, you can really start to do the individual healing work you need to do. There is nothing in the world that compares to cutting-edge, sophisticated, one-on-one therapy. Group meetings that focus on everyone in the group do not even come close.
That is why the recovery program we've designed at Passages provides each client with 20 hours a week of private therapy with a variety of therapists. I know deep down in my heart that this is the best way to help people heal. Our track record speaks for itself. I have watched hundreds of people go through this program with awesome results and, most important, they are able to maintain permanent sobriety.
Someone who has been using drugs and alcohol for a long time usually has many underlying problems. These can include problems with family, physical ailments, psychological ailments, childhood trauma, chemical imbalance, depression, anxiety, social phobia, poor self-image, insomnia, high blood pressure, vitamin deficiency, fear of failure, low energy, ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and much more. Therefore, it takes more than one kind of therapist to help cure someone who has a wide range of underlying problems, including physical and psychological ailments. At Passages, each client works privately with 10 different therapists and a medical doctor we recommend, each one specializing in a different field.
If you were in the Passages program, you would see most of these practitioners twice a week, for a total of 20 hours a week of private therapy. At the end of each week, your 10 therapists have a treatment team meeting. In the meeting, the therapists pool all the information that they have gathered from you to create a program tailored to your specific needs using the most effective one-on-one therapies. After they have agreed upon a solution, they redesign your treatment program for the next week. That way, your treatment program is constantly progressing as you progress. This process takes place every week that you are at Passages, until the day you graduate. At the end of one month, you will have had 80 hours of private therapy with your treatment team-four hours a day of private one-on-one therapy, five days a week. This means that regardless of what your underlying problems are, we can most likely help you to discover and heal them.
You Can End Your Suffering and Your Struggle
I know how hopeless you must be feeling right now. As bad as it may seem, it can all change and become beautiful again. It is crushing to me to see beautiful, wonderful people throw their lives away. That is why my dad and I have dedicated our lives to helping people find their cure. I don't want you or anyone to suffer as I have. You don't have to suffer any longer. You can save yourself many years of struggle in and out of treatment centers if you come to Passages and use our highly effective one-on-one approach. I know you will love it and, most important, I know it works.
Today I am cured 110 percent. I have not had a drink or a drug in my system for over five years. The Passages Program worked for me, and now you or your loved one can experience what it is like to be truly cured of addiction. All you need to do is believe that a cure is possible and be willing to take the next step. Please contact us at . We are waiting for you and will be with you every step of the way.
In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about the Passages approach or share information about this unique program with someone who needs support, I invite you to pick up a copy of my dad's recently published book that is based on the Passages program, The Alcohol and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery by Chris Prentiss. It is available at neighborhood and online bookstores nationwide. The book talks about the three steps to permanent sobriety, the four causes of dependency, and the importance of healing the underlying causes of any dependency. In it, I also tell the story of how I made my breakthrough to permanent sobriety.
Statements from the Passages Co-Founders 
