"Smoking and other addictions"
May 13, 2016
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From the editor...
Today's highlight is a new smoking addiction treatment
In December of 2015, the Institute introduced a treatment for smoking addiction to our certified therapists. In the five months since then, this new treatment has worked very, very well.
If you would like to get help for this problem, you can contact any certified therapist in various countries around the world. And like all their work, treatment is done on a 'pay for results' basis.
And if you are interested in the story of how this smoking treatment and our other technique for eliminating addictive cravings and withdrawal was developed, scroll down to the 'Feature Article'.
And more below...
Translations of our books into Russian and Polish...
Teaching biologists and other scientists...
The latests Institute blogs...
Greetings from our new CEO...
We try to do a newsletter at least every six months, but already almost a year has passed. Sigh.
Till next timeā¦
PS. Want to be sure you get our newsletters? We suggest putting our email address Newsletter at PeakStates.com into your contacts to keep our newsletters out of your spam filter. And you can update your email address (or stop getting newsletters) with the link at the bottom of this email.
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Feature Article: "Treatment for smoking and other addictions"
By Dr. Grant McFetridge
Research is not a job for the faint of heart. Trying to develop something new usually takes many frustration-filled years to even get something that can sort of work. And once you have something that can sort of limp along, it usually requires more years of development until something simple that can work consistently is created. And our addictions project was a perfect example of this development cycle.
A bit of the research 'backstory' on our addiction treatment
First, how does a project like addiction even get chosen from among all the many possible needs? Well, Dr. McFetridge knew and greatly respected a First Nations alcohol addiction counselor in British Columbia, and wanted to find some way to help him. Since existing techniques worked so poorly, Dr. McFetridge hoped that the new field of psychobiology he was developing would provide an answer. From 2004 till 2010, Dr. McFetridge and Matt Fox (an addictions counselor in the US) worked together to find a treatment. Around 2008 they were finally successful in developing a treatment that worked. Surprising them both, it turned out that their new approach worked on almost all addictions - that is, all except smoking. Although it didn't always stop an addict's use of a drug, their approach would eliminate all cravings and withdrawal symptoms. And ancillary techniques would often help the remaining use problems. (We wrote about this in our May 25, 2009 newsletter.)
So how did this treatment work? By addressing the key component to addictions - something we call 'body associations', the same mechanism that makes Pavlov's dog salivate when a bell is rung. (If you are interested in the fascinating underlying subcellular biology, we refer you to this Institute webpage.)
Improving the technique
However, although this early treatment worked, it was still time consuming and cumbersome. Over the next few years, Dr. McFetridge continued to think about how to simplify it, as he wanted something so easy that addicts could easily do it for themselves. Finally, in 2012, during a therapist training he was conducting in Ashland Oregon, he had an idea based on his understanding of subcellular psychobiology. In just a few hours, he created and tested an entirely new way to eliminate body associations. This simple technique was completely new - in fact, it would be impossible to understand how or why it even worked if you didn't know subcellular psychobiology - and it worked like a charm!
This new technique solved the problem of making this treatment very fast and easy. Since then, the Institute has trained many therapists in this new technique.
Then what happened?
So why haven't you heard about this breakthrough? Well, Dr. McFetridge was still reluctant to publish because this new treatment rarely worked on smoking. This indicated to him that there was either something wrong with his basic underlying theory, or there was something uniquely different about smoking. Three more years went by while he continued to work on this problem. Finally, in the fall of 2015, a student who smoked was willing to be a test subject to his latest idea - and it worked! It turned out that smoking has a completely different underlying biology than other addictions, and needs a very different treatment. And in fact, it turns out that there are a number of more prosaic addictions that have this same underlying biological mechanism.
Now that we've solved the smoking addiction mystery, we are finally ready to publish a textbook on the underlying subcellular biology and our methods for treating various addictions. Let's hope we get to it this year!
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Russian and Polish book translations
Our deepest thanks to Konstantin Dowlatow of Moscow, Russia! He generously paid to have all Dr. McFetridge's books translated into Russian, and we are making them available as a free download from our bookstore webpage, hopefully this week. Thanks, Konstantin!
Our Subcellular Psychobiology Diagnosis Handbook should also be soon available in Polish. Thanks especially to Kasia Dodd, Piotr Kawecki, Piotr Niedzieska, Arek Glowacki and others who volunteered to make this project happen.
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The latest Institute blogs
What, exactly, do we mean when we talk about our discoveries as a new field of biology? Why is it important? What makes it different? To help answer these questions, Dr. McFetridge wrote some short blogs:
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Upcoming Trainings: Addressing both therapists and biologists
For over 16 years, our various courses were designed primarily for practicing therapists or interested laypeople. With the November of 2014 publication of the Subcellular Psychobiology Diagnosis Handbook, the Institute has expanded our training into research material for professional biologists and scientists. We're looking forward to other organizations and researchers incorporating our discoveries into their efforts to find cures for various diseases.
We're having a lot of fun doing our month-long trainings for therapists, as well as shorter classes. We teach all over the world in countries like Canada, US, Germany, Denmark, and Poland - but when circumstances permit, we also teach in more interesting places - Hawaii, the Canary Islands, Mauritius, the Gulf Islands. If you have already been trained, you might want to see if there is any need for assistants.
For more on our courses, visit our new school website.
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People News: Our CEO, Frank Downey retires
This year, our beloved CEO Frank Downey retires after 17 event-filled years running the Institute. Frank, who reached his 82th birthday this year is happily passing the reins to Shayne McKenzie of Australia. Shayne, who trained with the Institute in 2007, will will now have the fun of riding herd over the dozen or so research and clinic staff, and the 40 or so peak states certified therapists. Best of luck, Shayne!
Frank writes:
To all PeakStates members;
It has been a pleasure getting to know many of you and watching your progress through the challenges you have faced in the development of PeakStates.
In many of the challenges you have encountered, it appears you did not accomplish the desired goals, however, as I have often told Grant, you have eliminated that approach and now you can modify the method or get on to another solution to the problem.
I am very encouraged by Shayne McKenzie's stepping forward to take over as your new CEO. I know the work you are carrying out will be of great benefit to mankind in the future.
All the best,
Frank Downey
Shayne, our new CEO, writes:
I am honoured to take on this leadership role for the Institute. The work that we do is a natural expression of my life purpose - to make a positive difference to humanity. In an information session led by Nemi (the first time that I heard about Peak States work) and in the first training session I received that Grant, Nemi and Samsara ran in Lillian Rock, Australia, I was impressed at how the models explained so many psychological and spiritual states that I was curious to understand and at how quickly the healing techniques could heal past traumas. Then as a certified therapist, I was very impressed at the results that all of my clients (as well as family and friends) achieved through the healing work that I facilitated for them.
Now in our current weekly calls with the research and clinic staff, I have been blown away by the dedication of our staff and their unwavering commitment to develop healing processes that will create transformational change for humanity. My hope is that our research efforts continue to make great progress and that we will have new treatment processes for our certified therapists on a regular basis to support you all in making a great difference to your clients. For those in our community that I haven't met yet, I hope to connect with you one day soon. If not in person then certainly via Skype (healthyconsciousness) or email (shayne@peakstates.com). Thank you all for the extraordinary human beings that you are.
Shayne McKenzie, CEO
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