St. Louis, January 2021 – Tom’s story is a familiar one.

“I was frustrated and down and didn’t know which way to go.” Tom said about his decision to get help for his drinking. “I was a really confused. I was train wreck.”

“Going out into social settings, my brain would just go a mile a minute,” Tom said.  “I would need to go and get straight to the bar. Definitely self-medicating.”

Tom is not alone. Many people self-medicate to manage or cope with issues like ADD. Reliance on alcohol can have a snowball effect. For some it turns into an addiction.  

“It’s amazing. It’s kind of a gradual slide to get there,” Tom said. “but all of a sudden you are there.”

For Tom, trying to calm his mind with alcohol was made worse when he fell – while sober – and fractured his leg. He was hospitalized. Following his release from the hospital, his drinking accelerated. When his drinking was starting to fracture his family life, he made the decision to call the outpatient medical treatment practice INSynergy for help.

But, when Tom called, he did what many do when they make that first call for help. Tom hung up when they answered.

“I’m trying to call the phone number and my hand is shaking,” Tom said. “I want to call and I dialed up. Twice they answered and I hung up.”

“That is very common,” said Rick Flanagan, a counselor with INSynergy said. “There is a large amount of fear in change, for addiction, for almost anything. Change is difficult for people.”

Finally, on the third try, Tom stayed on the line.

“I think the third time was a charm,” Tom said of his call for help. “I actually stayed on the line and that is the best thing I did. I actually ended up going there that very afternoon.”

It’s a decision that Tom says saved his life. It was the call that would not only lead Tom to an enjoyable life of recovery, he would discover what drove his decision to self-medicate with alcohol in the first place – an undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.

As a medical practice that takes a personalized approach with each patient, the INSynergy team was able to tailor treatment to help Tom.

“We treated Tom with a medication,” Dr. Arturo Taca, Medical Director of INSynergy said. “and that was the time his eyes kind of lit up and said that’s what I had.”

After years of battling, Tom finally had answers.

“It made so much sense. It was incredible.” Tom said. “It was like the brightest lightbulb had just gone on over my head and as I was treated for it, the desire to have anything to drink or anything to bring my speedy brain down to a normal speed vanished.”

According to Dr. Taca, INSynergy integrates advances in neurology, psychiatry, sleep medicine and more to treat patients to give them better results that the one size fits all approach of other treatment programs. It is a medical approach to treatment. It is about not just treating the addiction, but the root cause, as well.

Another critical component of Tom’s recovery was talk therapy. Not just for him, but his wife, as well.

 “It helped her look at it in a different way,” Flanagan said. “The whole family gets healthy together.”

“It is a little scary maybe,” Tom added, “but that quickly changes and then you just feel empowered. I feel there is nothing I can’t do. No exaggeration. It saved my life.”

--Paul Schankman, Angel James & Ron Watermon (SVN) reporting for INSynergy