By Beau Black
Entering a recovery program raises a number of practical challenges, like how to deal with work, family, pets, and other commitments that must be temporarily placed on hold during treatment. In addition to these real concerns, recovery presents some unique challenges for high-profile professionals — concerns about privacy, career demands, and more. These are challenges that The Meadows Malibu is experienced at helping our clients overcome.
The residential setting at The Meadows Malibu is geared toward ensuring that professionals, athletes, artists, actors, and others can achieve their treatment goals in privacy and peace.
As a private, luxury treatment center located in California, The Meadows Malibu’s beautiful lodge-inspired facility with amazing ocean views caters to professionals with demanding lives. Our center is limited to 12 beds, assuring clients a high staff-to-client ratio and highly personalized experience, and the residential setting is geared toward ensuring that professionals, athletes, artists, actors, and others can achieve their treatment goals in privacy and peace.
The ability to customize the treatment experience is key to accommodating high-profile clients and busy professionals. This flexible approach lets our experienced treatment team accommodate clients’ professional and personal needs, which might range from being available for key business calls or court appearances to continuing specialized physical training or getting to external healthcare appointments.
The Meadows Malibu’s individualized, holistic, multi-modal therapeutic approach is complemented by chef-prepared meals, served family style, and extensive fitness and wellness offerings.
Many people who consider treatment may feel they “just can’t take that much time away from work, family, and life.” While such considerations are valid, it’s worth weighing the temporary disruption against the cost of continued addiction, and its toll on multiple areas of life — relationships, career, family, physical and mental health, even personal freedom.
Drug and alcohol abuse cost the US over $600 billion each year. The NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that “every $1 invested in addiction treatment programs yields a return of between $4 and $7 in reduced drug-related crime, criminal justice costs, and theft alone. When savings related to health care are included, total savings can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1.”
These national figures break down to real monetary costs to the individual. One might think those costs haven’t caught up to them yet — or their financial cost isn’t so significant to them — but the potential is devastating, in lost productivity, damage to relationships, lost time with family (whether one is present or absent), and damage to one’s reputation, not to mention the potential, multi-faceted costs of court proceedings and/or incarceration.
You have to ask yourself, “What is not getting help costing me in terms of productivity, promotions, professional sharpness, and the ability to be at the top of my game?”
Although many substances initially can make the user feel more productive, or like they can do anything, in the end, their functioning is decreased and physical and mental well-being compromised. Whether you’re a professional athlete, a top executive, an entrepreneur, or a stay-at-home parent, you have to ask yourself, What is not getting help costing me in terms of productivity, promotions, professional sharpness, and the ability to be at the top of my game?
Someone might think they have their substance use under control and that these negative effects won’t catch up with them. Sadly, many, many powerful, successful, talented, and intelligent people struggling with addiction have thought the same. We’ve all seen the headlines and known the personal stories of powerful people who ended up losing their jobs, families, and freedom because they couldn’t admit they needed help — or because they wouldn’t start the process of getting that help because of the cost to their career. Why risk that?
The near-term investment of time and resources in entering into recovery may seem high — even impossible — but eventually the extensive costs of addiction and its toll on virtually all areas of one’s life far outweighs the investment and temporary sacrifice of seeking help. And at The Meadows Malibu, we can work with you to minimize the disruption, and we guarantee that the rewards on the other side are worth it.