For those who are interested in making psychedelic integration and recovery coaching a full or part-time vocation, our friends and colleagues at Being True to You are offering their annual Addiction Recovery & Psycho-Spiritual Integrative Coaching Certification program starting on June 2nd. This program provides in-depth education on how to best support people before and after transformative psychedelic experiences with a dual focus on substance abuse recovery and psycho-spiritual healing and growth. Psychedelic pre-care and post-care integration support is still a very new field, and as students and graduates of the program ourselves we are excited to share this opportunity for those who are looking to deepen their understanding of how to best use these medicines and harness that wisdom and be in service to others. We recently caught up with Deanne Adamson, the founder of Being True to You, to discuss the evolution of this program and who it is designed for.
Thanks once again for speaking with us Deanne. Can you talk about the genesis of this certification program?
We started this coach certification program four years ago. Our model was built by working directly with clients in need, and I think that’s what so unique about it because it’s not a model that was taken from textbooks or from academia. We’ve worked with over 2000 families mainly around addiction treatment with ibogaine, but also through the other big psychedelic medicines. Clients would tell us what they needed and what was missing from the recovery industry which many of them had been in unsuccessfully for 5, 10, and up to 20 years. What we saw was that everyone was saying very similar things. There’s a bunch of segmented services available to people but nothing tying those experiences together, and there was no aftercare integration industry at all. Conventionally you have treatment, retreats, and sober living, but there’s no continuum of care. The closest thing would be community support groups, but they are often focused on only one thing, like sobriety for instance.
We also saw that many of these people were being intentionally or unintentionally stigmatized due to their illness, and labeled with their diagnosis. We realized that not only do we need precare, aftercare, and a continuum of care, we also need to treat people like humans. Our goal is to create a humane transformational program without a ceiling where people can evolve beyond their current phenomenon. We have built this program in a way that compliments the current industry, so that we are not in opposition to it, we’re just filling in the gaps. The training is helping people of all kinds- medical and legal professionals, such as: doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists, probation officers, and community helpers, sponsors, coaches, and mentors- to round out their professional services or just enhance their ability to support somebody who is struggling, because there are so many important pieces that are neglected in this industry.
Can you explain what the program entails?
This program starts June 2nd and runs through August 30th. It’s a 3 part series that is broken up into a supporters guide first, a recovery coaching guide second, and an integrative coaching guide last. Together this is 25 chapters or classes over a 3 month period, to include additional workshops, hands on training, and interactive discussions. We do two live classes a week on Monday and Wednesday for two hours each, but these are recorded for those who cannot attend the live class. We cover a variety of topics ranging from the nature of addiction, the process of transformational recovery, preparation and integration, and how to support people through all of it in one-on-one scenarios, group situations, and within families.
In the addiction recovery guide we look at 10 different chapters of recovery coaching, such as what it is, it’s history, how it came to be as a profession, and what the skills, ethics, and competencies are. We also share some of the proprietary models that we have created in our time working with people through addiction, and explain our philosophies of addiction and transformational recovery. The psycho-spiritual guide looks at the different ways that we can heal our psyche, and understanding how the psyche splits off and fragments, which shows up to the medical world as disorders and mental illnesses. Through certain healing modalities and awakening practices people can come back into balance and harmony with their true self. And so we describe what that transformational process looks like, and how a coach guides this from a non-medical perspective.
And then of course we look at entheogenic medicines since so many people are turning to them as their healing modality. There’s no way to tell what’s going to happen during an entheogenic journey, as it’s different for everybody every single time. So we talk about how to prepare people beforehand, what the integration process look like afterwards, and the fundamental dynamics that run throughout that process. So it’s quite a comprehensive program.
What kind of people is this certification program geared for? Who should and shouldn’t sign up?
We look for people who have experience in addiction recovery, psychedelic medicines, and transformational work, and of course professional experience and credentialing is a bonus; but we also look for strength of character, integrity, and a high degree of ethics and morals. We want those who are very advanced in their own personal journeys, meaning they’ve been through a number of life’s hurdles and hardships- whether that be addiction, or other psychological, physical, social, occupational, or spiritual hardships- and have overcome them. We want naturally genuine and good people who want to help others with integrity- basically people that are walking the talk. We also want people that are excellent communicators and excellent listeners who can be a sounding board for others as they go through these experiences in the most unbiased fashion possible.
When it comes to those who shouldn’t sign up, if you are really attached to a particular dogma or approach, this would have to be balanced because our philosophy is “being true to you” and we don’t necessarily want to teach a particular path, rather we want to help clients find that within themselves. We emphasize that coaches need flexibility in their mind to help a client be true to themselves and be exactly who they are. For instance, some people in the community assume that new age consciousness and certain psychedelic worldviews are more accurate and better than our traditional upbringing taught us, and that religious views let’s say are ‘less-than’. That is simply not the case. We need truly neutral people that can come in and guide a person without putting their own assumptions or discoveries about life into the mix. In the past I’ve had coaches that have tried to pull people away from Christianity for instance and into a new age approach, and we can’t do that. There are many powerful things imbedded within religious context, just as there are with other belief systems. We have to let people find their truth and way for themselves, and we encourage universal neutrality to guide someone in an unbiased fashion, and with a compassionate heart.
Any other thoughts on this program that you’d like to share?
It’s fun watching people come in and transform through our program because as we’ve been told numerous times, this coach training program is also a personal transformation program. Graduates tell us “I did this to become a coach but my whole life and my whole family has transformed through this!”, so it’s kind of cool how that happens. It’s nice to watch people completely transform, especially those who have not had much experience with personal development before coming through the program. It’s not us so much as the process of learning about personal transformation and how to bring it out in yourself and others.
To sign up for Being True to You’s Addiction Recovery & Psycho-Spiritual Integrative Coaching Certification program, click here. You will receive $500 off the cost if you register by May 30th.