Substance Abuse

No place is better suited to helping young adults overcome substance abuse and addiction than the wilderness, and no one utilizes the wilderness experience better than Medicine Wheel.  In addition to regular therapy sessions and one-on-one and group counseling, clients are introduced to each of the 12 Steps.  This life-long journey begins in the wilderness where we focus on Steps 1-4:

  • The client admits he/she is powerless over his/her addiction and that his/her life had become unmanageable.
  • The client comes to believe that a Power greater than themselves could restore their sanity.
  • The client made a decision to turn his/her will and life over to the care of God as he/she understands God.
  • The client made a searching and fearless moral inventory of them self.

12 Step

Since its inception in the 1950s, 12 Step has been the principal means of dealing with addiction.  It is a time tested technique that has helped hundreds of thousands of people overcome addiction and reclaim control of their lives.  Due to the relatively short duration of the Medicine Wheel program, it would be impossible to tout ourselves as a 12 Step program.

Medicine Wheel clients are not with us long enough to fully work all 12 steps.  However, our unique setting provides the perfect opportunity for clients to experience steps 1-4.   Nowhere outside of a wilderness setting could clients recognize the unmanagability of their lives, garner faith in a higher power to restore sanity, turn their lives over to their higher power, and make a fearless moral inventory so quickly and with such re-enforcement.

Additionally, Medicine Wheel offers clients an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the 12 Step process.  Each phase contains an introduction to 12 Step work as well as assignments to help clients understand how it relates to their own experience.  Clients who choose to continue working the 12 Steps have a greater understanding of what this work entails.

Please explore our website or call an admissions counselor at (800) 898-1244 for additional information about how Medicine Wheel at RedCliff can help.