We are excited to announce that on December 1, 2017 we are officially opening the doors to our new practice Whole & Healthy You. We aim to be a holistic outpatient addiction medicine service that provides quality, evidence based, multidisciplinary care with expertise in treating young people. We combine Medication-Assisted Treatment with Mindfulness as well as other wellness training.
I did not start this career intentionally. The day I walked into my first drug treatment center I had no idea I had started a trajectory that would eventually intersect with a national youth substance use disorder crisis. I went to that incredible place of healing because I wanted to teach people how to read. I started college to be an English teacher. In doing literacy work, I fell in love with recovery. I became a doctor initially to treat people struggling with addiction. When it was time to do advanced training, I decided that I would specialize in youth to focus on prevention as the majority of patients I encountered started using in adolescence. I went to Johns Hopkins to start an academic career in youth substance use prevention … just as young men and women of ages 18 – 25 became the “new face” of the heroin epidemic. My attention shifted from prevention to treatment. After training, my focus changed from study to practice.
I trained at some of the best institutions in the North to practice addiction medicine as an effort to fight the War on Drugs in the South. Medication-Assisted Treatment is an evidence based, humane model of chronic disease management that Whole & Healthy You provides patients and their families. In doing so, the evidence supports that their communities will also be healthier.
I often ask doctors and trainees I teach to “think outside the box” as we develop innovative strategies to treat substance use disorders. Launching Whole & Healthy You is my outside of the box answer to innovation in treatment of substance use disorders in particular in response to the Opioid Epidemic.
As we open this new practice, we will initiate services like regular meditation groups and health seminars. In the near future, we plan to expand our outpatient detoxification services and add auricular acupuncture. We’re looking forward to serving individuals, families, and our community as a whole that struggle with the disease of addiction and to help others return to a place of being whole and healthy again.
