INTRO
Mackay Manor is a residential recovery home in Renfrew, Onatrio, for men who have alcohol and drug related problems. We began treating tobacco the same as all other addictions last year.
Hello from Renfrew,
The purpose of this website is to help those in the addictions field in Ontario who are struggling with the issue of tobacco and how to deal with it.
Maybe you have already begun to implement tobacco addiction measures.
Maybe you are already taking advantage of free resources available to help you.
Maybe you simply see tobacco use as the proverbial elephant in the room within the addictions industry and want to do something but don’t know where to start.
Whatever the case, we hope you find the information on this website helpful to you and your organization.
Our journey:
Mackay Manor is part of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), and, similarly to other LHIN Addiction Services facilities, derives the vast majority of its operating budget from LHIN funds.
In about 2004, working as Executive Director of the Manor, I quit smoking myself, in part because I felt a degree of shame in being a representative of recovery and being responsible for helping people heal from
their addictions while being addicted (to smoking) myself. I thought quitting would be impossible: my brother used to say that “Tom was born with a smoke in his mouth”. To my amazement however, I quit, using the patch and other NRT to gradually decrease my nicotine dependence.
After quitting smoking myself, the team and I began introducing tobacco healing measures into Mackay Manor. I would have preferred to treat and ban tobacco at the Manor immediately, but there was resistance within the organization: several team members smoked, and held the common belief that by removing smoking, we would be depriving those in recovery with their principle coping mechanism and thus relapse rates would increase. There was also a concern that if we banned tobacco that no one would want to come to the Manor for treatment (this belief is also fairly commonplace within the industry).
It has only been very gradually, over the period of six or more years, that we introduced smoking sanctions, treatment, and ultimately (last year) treated tobacco like any other addiction.
Since we began treating tobacco like all other addictions, the Manor has seen relapse rates go down and the overall health of our clients go up. There have been other positive by-products of this decision too. It used to be that before morning chores the men would wake up by five, have half a pack of smokes and a pot of coffee and be just buzzing during morning sessions. Now, coffee consumption is down by half, and there is a calmness within the house which allows for increased healing. We find there is more of a focus on overall wellness (as oppose to just coping).
Our battle with tobacco addiction has also helped us to become more integrated into the community. Mackay Manor has been around a long time as a sobriety house, but besides specific efforts such as golf or softball tournaments, we have not truly been engaged with our neighbours. Through offering workshops and the STOP program (free Nicotine
Replacement Therapy), we have noticed a change: we have been able to integrate ourselves more into the community. People come to us for help specifically for their tobacco addiction, and through that exposure they see a shared humanity with our clients and their own struggles. We are looking forward to seeing this relationship with our town and county grow!
I will leave you with a few points that I believe are very important to consider as you contemplate the decision to begin the fight against tobacco addiction:
1. It can be a long, uphill battle, but it is worth it.
Our own fight began in 2004 and it wasn’t until last year that we were where we believed we needed to be.
Even now we are constantly adjusting our process and parameters.
The important thing is that we can say that we are now truly helping our clients become free from their
addictions: their health is increased, their chance of relapse to other substances is decreased, their finances
are improved and inner healing and depth of recovery is heightened.
2. There are resources to help you.
We didn’t know what we were doing at first, but we were able to use existing resources to help us achieve
our goals. These resources still exist and if anything are constantly improving. We have included some of
them throughout the rest of the website. You are not alone in this battle!
3. The writing is on the wall: you will have to do this at some point….why not now?
If it wasn’t apparent before, medical science continues to clarify that tobacco is an addiction, and that it is
the deadliest addiction out there. In the USA, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) has
added a whole chapter on tobacco use disorder into their criteria to help define best practices for the
addiction industry in the USA.
We are predicting that at some point in the near future, tobacco addiction treatment will be required in our
industry within the context of treating other addictions. Many of you will wait until additional funding is
pushed to you for this purpose, but we say, for the good of your clients, why not start now?
I wish you good luck on your journey.
Yours in recovery,
Tom Carroll
Executive Director
Mackay Manor
The purpose of this website is to help those in the addictions field in Ontario who are struggling with the issue of tobacco and how to deal with it.
Maybe you have already begun to implement tobacco addiction measures.
Maybe you are already taking advantage of free resources available to help you.
Maybe you simply see tobacco use as the proverbial elephant in the room within the addictions industry and want to do something but don’t know where to start.
Whatever the case, we hope you find the information on this website helpful to you and your organization.
Our journey:
Mackay Manor is part of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), and, similarly to other LHIN Addiction Services facilities, derives the vast majority of its operating budget from LHIN funds.
In about 2004, working as Executive Director of the Manor, I quit smoking myself, in part because I felt a degree of shame in being a representative of recovery and being responsible for helping people heal from
their addictions while being addicted (to smoking) myself. I thought quitting would be impossible: my brother used to say that “Tom was born with a smoke in his mouth”. To my amazement however, I quit, using the patch and other NRT to gradually decrease my nicotine dependence.
After quitting smoking myself, the team and I began introducing tobacco healing measures into Mackay Manor. I would have preferred to treat and ban tobacco at the Manor immediately, but there was resistance within the organization: several team members smoked, and held the common belief that by removing smoking, we would be depriving those in recovery with their principle coping mechanism and thus relapse rates would increase. There was also a concern that if we banned tobacco that no one would want to come to the Manor for treatment (this belief is also fairly commonplace within the industry).
It has only been very gradually, over the period of six or more years, that we introduced smoking sanctions, treatment, and ultimately (last year) treated tobacco like any other addiction.
Since we began treating tobacco like all other addictions, the Manor has seen relapse rates go down and the overall health of our clients go up. There have been other positive by-products of this decision too. It used to be that before morning chores the men would wake up by five, have half a pack of smokes and a pot of coffee and be just buzzing during morning sessions. Now, coffee consumption is down by half, and there is a calmness within the house which allows for increased healing. We find there is more of a focus on overall wellness (as oppose to just coping).
Our battle with tobacco addiction has also helped us to become more integrated into the community. Mackay Manor has been around a long time as a sobriety house, but besides specific efforts such as golf or softball tournaments, we have not truly been engaged with our neighbours. Through offering workshops and the STOP program (free Nicotine
Replacement Therapy), we have noticed a change: we have been able to integrate ourselves more into the community. People come to us for help specifically for their tobacco addiction, and through that exposure they see a shared humanity with our clients and their own struggles. We are looking forward to seeing this relationship with our town and county grow!
I will leave you with a few points that I believe are very important to consider as you contemplate the decision to begin the fight against tobacco addiction:
1. It can be a long, uphill battle, but it is worth it.
Our own fight began in 2004 and it wasn’t until last year that we were where we believed we needed to be.
Even now we are constantly adjusting our process and parameters.
The important thing is that we can say that we are now truly helping our clients become free from their
addictions: their health is increased, their chance of relapse to other substances is decreased, their finances
are improved and inner healing and depth of recovery is heightened.
2. There are resources to help you.
We didn’t know what we were doing at first, but we were able to use existing resources to help us achieve
our goals. These resources still exist and if anything are constantly improving. We have included some of
them throughout the rest of the website. You are not alone in this battle!
3. The writing is on the wall: you will have to do this at some point….why not now?
If it wasn’t apparent before, medical science continues to clarify that tobacco is an addiction, and that it is
the deadliest addiction out there. In the USA, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) has
added a whole chapter on tobacco use disorder into their criteria to help define best practices for the
addiction industry in the USA.
We are predicting that at some point in the near future, tobacco addiction treatment will be required in our
industry within the context of treating other addictions. Many of you will wait until additional funding is
pushed to you for this purpose, but we say, for the good of your clients, why not start now?
I wish you good luck on your journey.
Yours in recovery,
Tom Carroll
Executive Director
Mackay Manor