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Dr. Daniel Headrick offers hope for recovery to the people that are suffering with substance abuse issues.
His message is shockingly simple, but rooted in science and his 37 years of experience: “You’re not stuck with the same brain you have right now, your brain can heal.”
Dr. Headrick would know, he has detoxed over 17,000 people throughout his decades-long career in addiction medicine. On a personal level, he’s intimately aware, as a former addict himself.
“Twenty percent of the U.S. population is genetically set up to have this unusual attraction to alcohol and other drugs too,” he stated, noting that his entire family regularly drank.
Spiraling into addiction
Dr. Headrick got into medicine at the urging of his grandmother, who was the only one in the family that did not regularly imbibe.
He began his career as a family medicine doctor in a rural area of California, where right out of med school, he was thrust into a demanding position that saw him wearing many hats.
“I was delivering babies at home, covering the ER, the ICU, and reading my own X-rays and EKGs,” he said about his responsibilities as a young doctor in an understaffed hospital.
Dr. Headrick noted that despite taking care of alcoholics and addicts during that hectic time at the beginning of his career, he knew that he had a “very strong attraction to alcohol,” which he likened to “magic.”
He quickly became a functioning alcoholic and substance abuser that thought he could balance his high-octane career with a spiraling addiction.
“Doing drugs long enough, you become the drug and lose track of who you are,” he remarked.
His nightmare scenario happened on a night that he had been drinking during his off-day, but was called in the middle of the night to perform an emergency surgery on a young man who had been stabbed.
During the five-hour long surgery, Dr. Headrick could smell alcohol in his mask, and despite managing to save the man’s life, he was still drunk when he drove home and crashed into a telephone pole.
Even after that wake-up call, he didn’t stop. Dr. Headrick recalled that there were two additional drug and booze-fueled car wrecks that happened in the years that followed.
“You continue to take your chemical despite all of the negative consequences,” he commented. “Negative consequences don’t stop you. That’s when you crossed the line into becoming an addict.”
Hope for recovery: A new career path
Dr. Headrick said that when he finally went into recovery, he was very motivated and took the program seriously, following the steps to the letter.
A year into being sober, he got into addiction medicine after being inspired by his own personal journey with substance abuse.
“I was a healer and I was a patient at the same time, I was right with them,” he pointed out.
Dr. Headrick realized that for the first three months of sobriety, which seem to be the most difficult, he’s talking to the substance and not the patient that he’s treating.
“Technically you’re under the influence of your drug for the first 90 days,” which he says is evident in the functional brain scans that show dark areas of the brain that are “shut down and depleted” in substance abusers.
Dr. Headrick noted that it usually takes three to four months to take a brain scan that is fairly close to the “real” person and not the substance.
“You’re not stuck with the same brain you have right now for the rest of your life,” he stated. “That really gives them hope.”
Hope for recovery: The steps towards sobriety
Over the years, he developed a set of steps that he believes people striving to sever their dependence on drugs and alcohol must take.
The first step came from interviewing addicts that had 20-30 years of sobriety under their belts, who all admitted that their success came from admitting that they were “powerless” against substances.
“You just happen to be powerless over alcohol and drugs,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t mean you’re a weak person.”
He has his patients say their name and that they are “powerless” over their substances of choice out loud. His reasoning is that “Your brain needs to hear that coming out of your mouth, because part of your brain doesn’t believe that.”
According to Dr. Headrick, the next big step to conquer is negative thinking, because taking a chemical to cope with bad feelings is giving that negative thought a “little reward.”
The third step is that his patients must get “high on life,” and discover a healthy addiction.
“Find whatever it is… a dream, a mission, your passion, your purpose,” he encouraged. “If they don’t have hope, nothing’s going to work.”
Hope for recovery: An inside job
At the end of the day, Dr. Headrick believes it’s his mission to give people hope and that by working hand and hand with patients, they can get through anything.
However, he acknowledges that the recovery and healing process is ultimately up to the addict to put in the work towards achieving.
“It comes from you, it comes from inside. It’s not from your sponsor, or from me. It’s you, it’s an inside job,” the healer said.
