Las Vegas Recovery Center’s

Twelve-Week Discover Recovery

Inpatient Program

Phase I (Weeks 1 - 5)
Explore and Discover
Purpose

Your journey into recovery begins with Phase I of our twelve-week Discover Recovery Inpatient Program
at Las Vegas Recovery Center (LVRC). The primary purpose of this phase is to provide a structured,
healthy living environment that gives you and your family the time and the space to begin to build
a foundation of recovery. In Phase I you will gain an understanding of all aspects of addiction as a
disease, develop an awareness of your particular patterns of unhealthy thinking and acting, and identify
manifestations of addiction besides the abuse of substances. Our multidimensional approach will orient
you and your family to recovery as a lifestyle that includes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
functioning. Whether being here is your idea or someone else’s, the inpatient experience at LVRC is an
extraordinary opportunity to jump-start your learning, growing, and healing.

PHILOSOPHY

Addiction is a family disease; therefore, both addicts and their family members require treatment and
recovery for long-term successful outcomes. During Phase I, contact between you and your family will
be kept to a minimum. This limits external distractions and allows both you and your family to focus on
your respective issues and needs. It is important for you and your family to understand the reasoning for
this so you can be prepared for and resist the natural temptation to want to have contact and to take the
focus off the challenging work of treatment. We will work with your family to identify and strengthen
leverage that can be used to help you complete treatment and experience maximum positive results.
LVRC places a high priority on family involvement in the treatment process through our weekly family
support meetings, individual family sessions, and monthly Family Renewal Program. We also strongly
encourage participation in twelve-step recovery programs for family members of addicts.

PROGRAM FOCUS

In Phase I you will explore the effects of addiction in specific areas of your life in a detailed manner by
completing the first three steps of recovery. The core principles of these include:

• Becoming aware of and accepting powerlessness over addiction

• Recognizing the need to change self-defeating, destructive, and repetitive thoughts and behaviors.

• Making a decision to stay clean and participate in recovery as an ongoing lifelong process.
 PHASE I GOALS
• Understand the disease of addiction, its mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual
dimensions, and its potential manifestations in your life.

• Write daily in the guided journal, My First Year in Recovery.

• Attend the full “Explore and Discover” lecture series and group tract, including
process groups, and complete all writing assignments.

• Attend all other assigned groups, including outside meetings, and complete specified
writing assignments.

• Find and begin to utilize a temporary twelve-step sponsor.

• Read the Introduction and Chapters 1 - 3 in the basic text of Narcotics Anonymous (NA).

• Complete Step Working Guides One, Two, and Three and process each one with your
primary counselor before proceeding to the next step.

• Create a list of your significant relationships and divide them into two categories:
those that will help support your recovery and those that are likely to hinder it.

For Family Members

• Actively participate in twelve-step meetings and attend Family Renewal Weekend,

family support groups, family sessions, and other recommended workshops.

• Develop a plan to identify, utilize, maintain, and strengthen the leverage available to
set and enforce boundaries to support the recovery process.

ASSESSMENT FOCUS

In order to develop a clear understanding of your situation and your needs, LVRC will take you through a
comprehensive assessment process that involves examining many different areas of your life. In addition
to evaluating your substance use history and current use, this assessment focuses on the following nine
areas to help develop your individualized treatment and discharge/aftercare plan. The assessment will also
identify factors that potentially help or hinder your ability to stay clean and continue your recovery process.

1. Family/Significant Others
• Quantity and quality of relationships with family members/significant others.
• Degree to which these relationships help or hinder your recovery process.
• Knowledge of addiction and family recovery.
 • Plan for effective establishment, maintenance, and strengthening of family leverage.
• Use of family support group, Family Renewal Program, workshops, lectures, and
twelve-step resources.

2. Social
• Quantity and quality of your social relationships.
• Degree to which social relationships help or hinder your recovery process.
• Strategies for strengthening your “helping” relationships and reconsidering, modifying, or
ending your “hindering” relationships.
• Strategies for establishing new supportive relationships.

3. Work
• Employment status, history, and skills.
• Transitional issues regarding returning to work.
• If applicable, the quality of your relationships with your employer and other coworkers.
• Financial status and viability.

4. Health
• Current state of health.
• Health issues needing attention or treatment, e.g., medical conditions, exercise, nutrition.

5. Emotional
• Emotional state and degree of balance.
• Style of emotional expression.
• Areas of greatest emotional discomfort and their connections to your substance use.
• Ability to identify and cope with feelings and emotions.

6. Mental/Thoughts
• Mental health status and history, including treatment and medications.
• Cognitive/thinking style and degree of balance.
• Type and degree of hindering thoughts and thinking patterns.
• Capacity for using reading and writing resources, including recovery literature.

7. Spiritual
• Spiritual beliefs and practices.
• Current state of acceptance regarding the disease of addiction, including powerlessness
and willingness to seek support.
• Capacity to use the spiritual aspects of recovery, e.g., meditations and prayer.

8. Legal
• Pending legal issues that need to be addressed prior to discharge.
• Need for LVRC contact with probation, parole, judges, attorneys, etc.
• Need for documentation of your completion of treatment/discharge plan.

9. Recovery Orientation/Experience
• Degree of your understanding of the recovery process.
• Previous recovery and related experience.
• Extent to which your motivation for treatment and recovery is internal vs. external.
• Degree of your demonstrated honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness.

Phase I GROUPS, LECTURES, AND ASSIGNMENTS

Based on your ongoing individualized assessment, your counselor will give you assignments that encourage
you to look at many different areas, including those covered by the Helping and Hindering Factors in
Recovery series. During Phase I you will:

• Attend twenty lectures and complete the written assignments for each, as well as attend
the accompanying process groups.

• Be provided with the guided journal, My First Year in Recovery, that you will make daily
entries in and process in group.

• Be assigned any of the scheduled lectures and process groups (even if you have already
attended them) by your counselor in order to individualize your treatment further and
emphasize particular therapeutic issues.

Lectures and Corresponding Process Groups

WEEK TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

Introduction to
Disease of Manifestations of
ONE What is Treatment? Twelve-Step
Addiction Addiction
Fellowships

Thoughts, Feelings, More Will be Recovery, Not

TWO Stages of Change
and Emotions Revealed Relapse

Anxiety and Denial and Self-

THREE Grief and Loss Shame and Guilt
Depression Deception

Addiction: A Family Communication and

FOUR Resentments Anger Management
Disease Boundaries

Values, Beliefs, and

FIVE Step One Step Two Step Three
Spirituality
Writing Assignments

Assignments will correlate with your specific needs and status on a continuum known as the “stages of
change.” They are designed to help you progress from one stage of change to the next, and include but
are not limited to:

1. Completing Step Working Guides One, Two, and Three and processing each with staff
before moving on to the next step.

2. Composing a “loss list” of personal qualities, values, relationships, and material resources
that you have lost or risk losing as a result of active addiction.

3. Writing a commitment statement specific to taking the action(s) needed for your to live
in recovery as opposed to active addiction. This assignment will be as unstructured as
possible to allow maximum opportunity for you to use your own assets, style, strengths,
and resources to construct a commitment that has the greatest meaning for you at this
stage of treatment and recovery.

4. Writing a vision statement regarding what life will look and be like for you in recovery—
starting at the end of treatment through your first year clean. This assignment will also
be as unstructured as possible to fit individual assets, needs, and abilities. For example,
this could be accomplished via a single written narrative using journaling. How the
assignment is to be completed and what form it will take will be flexibly negotiated by a
collaborative process between you and your primary counselor.

5. Developing a life resource list that includes all the recovery-supportive qualities, strengths,
people, and materials or other resources you have in your life, as well as potential
resources that you have not yet drawn on. For example, if you have loving, supportive
family members that you have become estranged from in active addiction, these
relationships can be listed as actual or potential resources, depending on your view of the
relationships at present. If you previously had a career that you enjoyed and excelled at,
your career skills and experience can be listed as a potential resource. This assignment has
the additional value of helping you see that some of the losses you may have experienced
as a consequence of addiction can be reversed through your efforts in recovery.

Reading Assignments

Phase I reading assignments include the following from Narcotics Anonymous, Sixth Edition:

• Introduction
• Chapter One: Who Is an Addict?
• Chapter Two: What Is the Narcotic Anonymous Program?
• Chapter Three: Why Are We Here?
• Chapter IV: How It Works (Steps One, Two, and Three)

Discharge and Aftercare Planning

Living Situation

If you will be discharged after Phase I, all details of the arrangements for the living situation to which you
are returning will be finalized, and/or referrals to other levels of care will be coordinated with your direct
participation. This will include a discussion with your family/significant others to reinforce established
leverage, clarify and solidify expecations and boundaries, and develop a plan to implement leverage and
apply specific consequences in the event that you choose not to follow through with the agreed upon
recovery plan.

Recovery Plan

In preparation for discharge, it is essential to have a detailed and comprehensive recovery plan in place
that has been developed with input from you, your family/significant others, and LVRC clinical staff.
This recovery plan will address mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual issues, along with aftercare
programming, and will involve NA and/or other twelve-step meetings, sponsorship, and literature.
Your recovery plan will also include referral to the LVRC Alumni Association. Referrals and other
arrangements for follow-up care will be finalized prior to your discharge. The more responsibility you
take in assisting in the planning for your follow-up care and connecting with an Intensive Outpatient
Program (IOP) or other services, the better. In the event that your next level of care will be the IOP at
Central Recovery Las Vegas or Henderson, we will help you make a smooth and seamless transition to
that program.