Treatment Model

Rimrock Foundation has developed one of the most effective, nationally-recognized treatment programs available today. Our model is based on the theory and work of Robert McAuliffe, Ph.D. and Mary Boesen McAuliffe, Ph.D., clinical pioneers based in Minneapolis, Minnesota who authored a two-volume work, The Essentials of Chemical Dependency. The McAuliffes recognized and identified a distinct sickness which develops in people who have a relationship with any type of mood altering chemical or behavior. The pathology represents a common core of psychologically-based attitudes that are found to be present in any person suffering from an addiction. From this theoretical base, Rimrock Foundation pioneered the Advanced Integrated Model of Addiction Treatment (AIMAT). This model focuses education and therapy on the always-present psychological core of the addiction experience:

psychological dependency — an irrational belief in and reliance on mood-altering chemicals or experiences for the purpose of achieving welcomed changes in moods and feeling states.

mental obsession — an intense, uncontrollable preoccupation with the anticipated changes in moods and feeling states that will occur with the drug or activity.

emotional compulsion — an intense, emotional impulsiveness to obtain the immediate gratification produced by a chemical or activity.

The AIMAT model does not view addiction necessarily as a symptom of an underlying emotional disorder. It does, however, recognize that your emotional and behavioral coping skills have resulted from your experience of life, and, if harmful, they must also be addressed during treatment if abstinence-based recovery is to be a realistic goal. The treatment objectives in this model are:

1. To help you identify your psychological dependency, mental obsession, emotional compulsion, and the defeating relationship resulting from your addiction.
2. To expose you to your defeating beliefs so you may examine them, and come to understand how they “drive” your illness and prevent you from receiving the rewards of life.
3. To challenge your defeating beliefs by providing opportunities for you to try new responses and behaviors.
4. To help you integrate new knowledge, skills, and beliefs into a plan for approaching the important life tasks of work, love, and belonging.

In this model, patients with different addictions as well as multiple addictions can be treated effectively within the same program. This occurs because you learn you have had a common psychological experience and you now have a common set of definitions to express these experiences and a common language with which to relate to each other and deal with your experiences in therapy. You quickly come to recognize both your own and others’ addictions, readily sympathize and identify with the others, and offer feedback and mutual support.