St. Louis, MO – October 2021 – As a highly respected surgeon in St. Louis, Jerry knows how to help people in pain. Until it was his pain.

“Everyone in the world could see that something was going on with me,” said Jerry, an Orthopedic Surgeon.   Except me.”

“For 50 years I was a pleasant social drinker,” Jerry said. “Beer and wine, beer and wine, beer and wine.”

Jerry had a cascade of personal troubles, including the death of parent and turbulent divorce, that contributed to his drinking more. Jerry’s social drinking dulled his inhibition just enough to make it easy for him to start abusing marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines.

Jerry became alcohol and drug dependent.   He thought he had it all under control until something happened in early January 2019 that sounded the alarm.

“When it bleeds over to the point that you oversleep for work,” Jerry said. “That is when it went too far.”

Jerry’s mind was so unclear that morning that he ended up as a patient in the emergency room. A urine screen revealed Jerry’s drug abuse to the doctors who insisted that he go directly to INSynergy.

“You don’t have to be down and out,” Doctor Arturo Taca Jr., the Medical Director of INSynergy said. “You can be brilliant and struggle with addiction.” 

“I thought my life, my career, my family everything was over,” Jerry said.

Had Jerry not gotten the medical care he needed, his career as a physician may have been over.

The medical team at INSynergy discovered that Jerry was suffering from depression, which they treated with talk therapy.  INSynergy also provided him with injections of Vivitrol, the anti-craving medication.

The combination of psychotherapy with the other personalized medically-based treatment put Jerry solidly on the path toward sobriety.

“My self-esteem, my self-worth was a big zero,” Jerry said about himself when he arrived at INSynergy.

“Part of addiction is getting to a place where you can love yourself and that you can find peace within yourself,” says Ashley Halker, MHA, Director of Operations. “And I think that is really what he needed.”

“They treat you with respect,” Jerry said.  “And when you come in with that truckload of shame with your addiction you don’t have much respect for yourself.“

“They loved on me until I could love myself,” Jerry says about the care he received at INSynergy.

Because INSynergy is an out-patient treatment program, Jerry was able to continue seeing his patients while still receiving treatment for addiction.

Today, the guilt and shame he once felt have been replaced by contentment and happiness. Jerry says a new spirituality is guiding his recovery.

“I am so proud of my sobriety, that I kind of use it as my superpower,” Jerry says. “The journey is scary but there is nothing in life that hasn’t gotten better because of it… and God what a great journey it has been.”