Addiction Management

Withdrawal Management Services, Grand River Hospital, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada:

Our community outreach giving workshops in diaphragmatic breathing started in 2008 with two of our volunteers helping the patients of Withdrawal Management Section at the Grand River Hospital to managing substance addiction. Workshops were offered once a week. The feedback we received encouraged us to offer them twice a week the following year adding two more volunteers to the team.

Our volunteer team comprises of two professors of biology retired from the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College, a retired medical doctor, and a social worker from retired a leading area hospital helping mental health patients manage stress. The social worker tells us that our workshops are more effective than any she used during her working career. According to the medical doctor, “If I knew about the efficacy of deep breathing, I would have used it in my practice.”

The average number of patients in our workshops at the hospital is about 10. The patients are admitted to withdrawal management on visits not longer than a week at a time; some of them may come for subsequent visit(s). We get to see them mostly for one workshop or two and in a few cases more than two workshops on different visits.

The feedback we receive has consistently been positive:

  1. Joe (a pseudonym) was in one of the groups of the withdrawal management patients in our workshops. His story highlights the possibilities. “I was convinced it could help me get out of the grip of alcohol I was in for 25 years. I seriously started to build my practice to 20 minute duration twice a day. It took me eight months to become totally dry,” Joe informed us. “Not only that, I also kicked my habit of smoking three packs a day. My blood pressure came down from 200 to 135.” Joe volunteered for a number of years to enrich our workshops with his personal story of how he benefitted from them.

    The video below tells the story of Joe. It illustrates how deep breathing can change our capacity to self manage our habits and additions.

  2. Feedback from managers of withdrawal management at the hospital:
    • “We were very pleased with your workshop and they are as good as it gets.”
    • Another coordinator last year told us that they were re‐evaluating all aspects of the withdrawal management program based on staff input and patient evaluation. He told us that our workshops would not be changed because everyone was pleased with them.
  3. Feedback directly from the patients:
    • About three months ago, a man came up to us in the hospital parking lot. We were leaving after our workshop and he was going in, but not as a client. He said that he had been a client 3 years ago and he was using mindful breathing most days and that it was an important tool in keeping him sober.
    • We often have clients who have been there before. Sometimes they have gone back to their addiction and sometimes they just need support to stay sober. Several have told us that our breathing workshops have been very helpful to them, but for different reasons they stopped. They indicate that they want to resume the practice. We hear this at least once/month.
    • Many patients have made positive comments about the practice of deep‐breathing for the purpose of alleviating personal anxiety or stress.
    • One patient showed us his hives on his arm before the session and complained that he was not given any medication for it. After the deep‐breathing exercise in the workshop, he came up to us and showed his arm and said that he did not have hives anymore.
    • Several new patients have said that they had heard about the sessions and were keen on attending it and have attended the sessions also as out‐patients.
    • “I have used deep‐breathing when I had a panic‐attack and it helped me”
    • “I can only say good things about it as I have tried it and it worked”
    • “I have heard it works so I must try it sometime”
    • “I have used it to fall asleep”
    • “I did not believe in it but the science (EMWAVE) proved it!”
    • “I had a headache before the session and now it is gone”
    • “I have found it relaxing”

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