Certified Addictions Recovery Coach and Intervention Specialist, James Healy, has recently launched a free online course that will focus on serving the Addiction Recovery community.
Healy‘s coaching agency, The Art of Sobriety, helps addicts, alcoholics and others find a successful path to sobriety, restore relationships and healthy lives.
“With so many people being affected by addiction in some way, I felt compelled to share my experience and knowledge. If you don’t personally know someone who has been touched by addiction in some way, you’re living under a rock,” said Healy who is also the host of the popular podcast, Recovery Innovators Radio.
Recently, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released of a first-of-its-kind report calling for “a cultural shift in how we think about addiction.”
“For far too long, too many in our country have viewed addiction as a moral failing,” Murthy said in the report. “It is a chronic illness that we must approach with the same skill and compassion with which we approach heart disease, diabetes and cancer.”
The report comes at a time of great concern about addiction and uncertainty about how the Trump administration will respond to it. Drug overdoses have surpassed car accidents as a cause of death, in a surge driven by the opioid epidemic.
Prescription painkillers have killed more than 200,000 people since 1999 and their abuse has led to a resurgence in heroin addiction.
Even more alarming, with the focus on the astounding impacts of prescription painkiller and heroin addiction nationwide, the fact that alcohol related deaths are on the rise has slipped through the cracks.
A story in the Washington Post stated, “Alcohol is killing Americans at a rate not seen in at least 35 years, according to new federal data. Last year, more than 30,700 Americans died from alcohol-induced causes, including alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis, which is primarily caused by alcohol use.
In 2014, there were 9.6 deaths from these alcohol-induced causes per 100,000 people, an increase of 37 percent since 2002. This tally of alcohol-induced fatalities excludes deaths from drunk driving, other accidents, and homicides committed under the influence of alcohol. If those numbers were included the annual toll of deaths directly or indirectly caused by alcohol would be closer to 90,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The demand for addiction treatment services is growing faster than the capacity to support due to the recent uptick in both opioid and alcohol abuse, and The Art of Sobriety will help service that need.
Healy said, “We are hearing about this daily, celebrities and “Average Joe’s” are dying at astounding rates from something that is completely avoidable.”
“People can’t always get to treatment for a variety of reasons – finances, work, family, pets or school can often get in the way. So if I can save one life with the Free Sobriety Course, I feel I have succeeded.”
For more information on James Healy, The Art of Sobriety and The Free Sobriety Course please visit http://artofsobriety.com, http://freesobrietycourse.com or call 406-414-6442.