Staying current with education, medicine, science, and technology is more critical than ever and something that society must greatly value in all facets of life. This simple but all-important sentiment is a cornerstone of Actualized Recovery by Dave and Susan Kenney.
It stands to reason that we would all want the benefits of today’s advances in education, medicine, science, and technology to help us overcome personal adversity and other struggles. These struggles may include recovering from the shackles of addiction so that we can freely live our best lives as our best selves.
Introducing Dave and Susan Kenney
The Kenneys specialize in addiction recovery and wellness. Their Actualized Recovery concept represents a significant shift in how people address addiction and self-destructive behaviors. Their brain-first approach recognizes the human body’s most important organ for its pivotal role in driving behavior while leveraging this understanding to foster change.
For decades, alcohol and other addiction programs have lacked the benefits of modern science and other breakthroughs. Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, hasn’t significantly adapted its model to reflect advancing addiction science, neuroscience, positive psychology, or other evidence-based behavioral disciplines since first opening its doors.
Instead, its programs remain rooted in the beliefs held by its founders in 1935. Now, consider this: no other form of medical illness, disease, disorder, or even behavioral dysfunction treatment or care plan has remained entrenched in what society believed almost a century ago, nor should it.
Leveraging Modern Viewpoints
Actualized Recovery hinges on leveraging modern science for behavioral, emotional, mental, and physical well-being, releasing struggling individuals from the grip and shame of their conditions. It’s vital to remember that even highly lifestyle-driven chronic diseases—including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers—are not met with shame.
Instead, science and society alike meet them with compassion and empathy. Meanwhile, addictions are all too often branded, first and foremost, at fault. They carry a social stigma of harsh judgment for sufferers and their characters, or lack thereof. This conclusion brings with it crushing shame, further exacerbating the problem.
However, viewed through a wholly modern and scientific lens, science demonstrates beyond doubt that the roots of addiction are far more complicated than many have previously believed. The brain is so entrenched in addictions that neuroscientists have nicknamed addictions the ‘disease of neuroplasticity.’
Failed Efforts to Succeed
For far too long, efforts to treat addiction—whether through medicine or via 12-step and other similar programs—have tried but largely failed in their efforts to succeed. That’s because they actively opted against benefiting from ever-evolving evidence-based approaches that continue to revolutionize our understanding of the human brain and behavior, even today.
Today’s latest neuroimaging technology is fascinating and continually evolving, allowing science to see how the human brain works in minute detail. According to Dave and Susan Kenney, the evidence that the brain is directly related to addiction is overwhelming. Thus, the brain must be a central part of any successful recovery modality.
Addiction is not about character defects or lack of willpower; it’s all about brain power. Understanding that the brain drives behavior is a critical foundation of Actualized Recovery. With that, the Kenneys’ pioneering approach creates new opportunities for the world of recovery.
Your Brain Drives Your Behavior
The Kenneys want everyone to think of their brain as their body’s hard drive and understand that it runs everything they feel, think, and do. Their brain’s software, meanwhile, is different. The software consists of the programs and experiences they have, which are, in turn, downloaded into their hard drive or brain.
If your computer gets hacked and infected with a virus, none of the software will work properly. Your computer will be sluggish, do things it’s not supposed to do, and possibly stop functioning altogether.
Resetting and fixing your computer’s hard drive is the only way to resolve this. When you restore the hard drive, it will work faster and handle more tasks simultaneously with less energy and effort.
Overcoming Hard Drive Faults
If a hard drive is faulty, so is the computer it powers. The brain and the body are the same. With a faulty hard drive, you will very likely be struggling. You may feel annoyed, fearful, panicked, and convinced that something catastrophic will happen. With that, you’re agitated, anxious, overwhelmed, queasy, restless, and more.
You are emotionally dysregulated and physically exhausted. Consuming a substance like alcohol or marijuana—or engaging in addictive behaviors such as binge-watching, emotional eating, gaming, or shopping—gives you a reprieve from these overwhelming and unbearable physical or emotional states for a brief period.
You have temporarily changed how your hard drive or brain functions, and you may feel better, maybe even happy. Your brain quickly learns you need more of that substance or behavior for relief. It can’t predict that this solution will only bring temporary solace and will ultimately create many more problems.
Upgrade Your Hard Drive
The solution to all of the above is to upgrade your hard drive using a personalized approach to treatment. Actualized Recovery emphasizes individualized addiction treatment, simultaneously integrating science-led biological, psychological, and social elements focused on healing the entire person rather than just addressing the addiction.
This brain-first, technology-forward, science-led approach is critical to understanding what drives human behavior. The brain is your master hard drive, controlling your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Understanding this and appreciating the importance of acceptance—acceptance to adapt and implement new ideas for overcoming addictions and realizing sustainable recovery—is paramount.
Actualized Recovery from Dave and Susan Kenney encourages a fully integrative approach to long-term recovery that embraces the most recent and progressive scientific research. All other medical practices focus on the sick organ driving the illness, preferably with an integrative approach. In this case, that’s the brain.
It’s Brain-First (NOT Brain-Only)
Actualized Recovery recognizes that life is complex and integrated. It’s about viewing all integrated solutions through the lens of what optimizes brain function. Your brain—your body’s hard drive—is the one organ that holds within it the power for your life to flourish. That’s why a brain-first but never brain-only approach to addiction recovery is so important.
Most legitimate academic, professional, and scientific groups today who have studied addiction and recovery agree that it’s time to look at all forms of recovery from a brain-first paradigm.
It’s not about willpower. It’s all about brain power. Actualized Recovery is a proven therapeutic methodology to achieve lasting recovery and live a thriving, happy life.
