March 10, 2010
"I know Grandpa told me that to smoke is wakan (holy). The smoke you inhale represents the spirits of everything you put into the pipe. When you breathe in the smoke, you are asking to become one with everything or to become whole."
Dr. A.C. Ross (Enhanamani), LAKOTA
The smoke allows us to go from the Seen World to the Spirit World. It is in the Spirit World where we are all connected. In this way, we can become one with all things. Our pipe is sacred. We need to be respectful of our medicine. When we smoke the pipe, we need to have good thoughts because these thoughts are shared with the Spirit World. The pipe, the smoke, the spirits, our thoughts-these things are Wakan.
Great Spirit, today, let my thoughts be Wakan.
Meditation graciously provided by www.whiteBison.org
GSBH will perform a free Family Intervention for families who choose to use our GSBH treatment center. Please call for details.
Gentle Spirit Behavioral Health
Interventions, Treatment and Transitional Living for:
- ALCOHOL - DRUGS - GAMBLING and OTHER ADDICTIONS -
PHILOSOPHY OF GENTLE SPIRIT BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
Gentle Spirit Behavioral Health (GSBH) is a drug treatment center in Illinois that believes if you treat people with honesty and respect and help them feel safe and understood, they will be more willing to look at, face, and change the consequences of their behavior. We have learned through 30 year of experience that the disease of addiction not only cripples the addict, but it leads to total devastation of the family. We have also learned that because the disease of addiction is so encompassing that 30 days of treatment very rarely works. We believe that a long-term, low cost program is the most effective way to get clients clean and sober.
Gentle Spirit Behavioral Health offers a wide range of services to help you, a family member, friend or co-worker to shed the destructive influence of addictions. You can find information in the programs section on some of the services we offer. Watching someone suffering from addiction self destruct is extremely painful, especially since they do not understand the severity of their disease. Often they think they can handle the problem and arena’t aware of their impact on others. If you or someone you know has a problem, find out by using our online assessment.
Families & Addictions by Susan Shipley
Raising The Bottom For Addicts
Gentle Spirit is a proven drug treatment center in Illinois for all addicts but specializing in heroin and opiate addictions. This is a non-traditional sober living facility that works mostly with young male heroin addicts ages 18-35. We must accept the fact that traditional Drug Treatment Centers do not work for most people. It is impossible to curb a disease that has taken years to develop in 30 or 60 days; and that is why we have such a high success rate. Many people believes that an addict must “hit their bottom” before they can get anything out of treatment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Gentle Spirit Behavioral Health raises the bottom for addicts before they have to hit the bottom on their own, jails or death
Our treatment is different than the traditional brick and mortar Drug Treatment Centers for the following reasons: We do not shove a curriculum down the clients’ throat and each client is treated as an individual. The reason our program works is because there is not a 30 or 60 day time limit; most clients stay a minimum of six months to one year and leave with a very solid foundation. We also help clients detox without using Suboxen or Methadone. We have been very successful in getting long term methadone clients completely free from methadone.
The keys to recovery are honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, humility, and some type of spirituality. Notice we said spirituality and not religion; there is a difference. If clients choose they may participate in our Native American spirituality program which many young men find very appealing or they may choose to attend church with some of our staffers. This facility is very affordable for most families compared to the high cost of other treatment centers. Bob Atkins founded Gentle Spirit in 2006. It started as an idea that we can help addicts get clean without the bureaucratic crap, red tape, and all the obstacles society puts in an addicts’ way of getting long term clean time. Bob has been clean for over 12 ½ years, but he used drugs for 30 years. He had to hit his bottom at the age of 43 before he sought help. Now with a life time of experience, unconditional love for addicts, and the help of a loving, caring Higher Power; Bob and his associates have begun doing the impossible: setting young men free from the horrors of addiction
Gentle Spirit is an outstanding Illinois drug treatment center & facility for treating young male addicts and alcoholics. There unique approach does not involve the typical bureaucratic treatment fodder. Rather, through a gentle approach to the clients they are able to gain their trust and cooperation. Once this is done they can begin to work on the disease of addiction with counseling, psycho therapy, 12 step meetings, Native American Spirituality, and over 40 years of combined treatment experience. We already know what doesn't work; typical 30 or 60 day high cost treatment centers. If you have tried everything else and are ready to give up, as a last resort, try Gentle Spirit. They have taken a complex problem and applied simple principles to help these young men.
