Clinician’s Corner – Adam Mindel
Clinician’s Corner
Dec. 18, 2018
The Executive Corner is a new weekly feature of the Addiction/Recovery eBulletin. We send our participants forty questions and ask them to choose twenty they would like to answer. It includes a short profile and a link to their website. We hope you enjoy it.
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PROFILE
Adam Mindel is co-founder of Recover Integrity an Extended Care Program for men in Santa Monica and Brentwood. Adam has been a pillar in the Los Angeles recovery community for the last 15 years. For over a decade, Adam triaged the day to day clinical program of one of the nation’s largest non-profits specializing in addiction. Adam is highly sought out nationwide by programs and families as an interventionist, and working with family systems struggling with the disease of addiction . Adam works closely with our clients and their families, creating a safe space for recovery. Adam and Yeshaia worked side by side for 10 years before co-founding Recover Integrity together.
Adam specializes in family dynamics, family coaching and case management as well as one-on-one work with clients. Adam’s focus on containment and meeting clients where “they’re at” is a key to his ability to connect to clients at their core.
Learn more about Adam at:
www.interventionla.com
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Q. If you are in recovery, what was your DOC and when did you discontinue its use?
A. Alcohol and Cocaine, my sobriety date is 8/27/2003
Q. Do you believe leaders are made or born?
A. Both, there a few of us that are fortunate enough to come into the world with incredible gifts of charisma, intelligence, etc. The rest of come to leadership through hard work, determination, and leading by example (courage, decency, patience, kindness, integrity). We live into being leaders
Q. Which film have you watched the most?
A. Braveheart, the quintessential movie of being heroic and living and dying well as a man
Q. Who is your favorite celebrity in recovery?
A. Leonard Buschel REEL Recovery Film festival
Q. If you ever retire, would you prefer to live by the ocean, lake, river, or mountaintop, or penthouse?
A. Heaven is near the Ocean in Northern County San Diego Solana Beach, Encinitas. Road Cycling mornings on the coast, Beach in the afternoon, Fist Tacos at Fish 101in the evening
Q. How do you measure success?
A. By my ability to live my values, love of friends and family, and being a passionate agent of change in individual’s and family’s lives
Q. If you had an extra million dollars, which charity would you donate it to?
A. Any charity providing housing to the homeless, homelessness is our shame as a nation, sadly, LA is ground zero for homelessness in this country, last count 60k homeless in LA County alone
Q. Who was your biggest influence throughout your life?
A. My sponsor the late great Chaime Kompel, and my incredible loving brother Scott Mindel who gave me forgiveness in my recovery long before I made amends, I am clear that I would not be where I am in life if it were not for both of them
Q. What is your current hobby?
A. I have become an avid Road Cyclist. Cycling much like recovery is heroic; it is about grit, tenacity, and determination, the willingness to keep going even when we are exhausted…If nothing else I’m amazed that as a 52-year-old broken down athlete I can get my “Tuchus” up a hill on a bike
Q. What prominent female figure would you most like to date?
A. NO doubt my Wonder Woman is Gal Gadot
Q. What is your FAVORITE TV/cable/digital series?
A. There is Game of Thrones, and then everything else on TV. I will no doubt mourn after the end of this last season
Q. What is your FAVORITE Broadway musical/play?
A. Les Miserables hands down. courage, heroism, love, redemption
Q. Who is your FAVORITE Psychologist or what school of thought as related to psychology?
A. Just completed “Treating The Alcoholic” by Stephanie Brown, A Developmental Model of Recovery
Q. What is your FAVORITE Cuisine?
A. Italian, forgettabout it!
Q. What is your FAVORITE Restaurant?
A. Sea Salt Poke on Sawtelle, Tell Maurice I sent you
Q. Do you think the U.S. should adopt the Portuguese Decriminalization Model?
A. Yes, Let’s have a war on drugs not people. Criminalization of addiction is the modern day “Jim Crow Law”, we need to move on from criminalization to prevention and treatment.
Q. Do you take work home with you?
A. I do and often. I am blessed to have a career as an addiction professional for nearly 15 years, I have become a resource for individual and families in crisis which is often not 9-5 work. Over the years, I have developed a set of boundaries that works for me.
Q. What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
A. “Discernment is the better part of valor”
Q. What do you think of the phrase “people are only as sick as their secrets”?
A. Agreed, we all need a spiritual therapeutic friend to talk truth with, if you don’t have a spiritual friend make one
Q. Who would your favorite mentor be, dead or alive?
A. My Favorite mentor was Chamie Kompel my late great sponsor, NO greater power of example in recovery. He dedicated his life to helping any alcoholic seeking sobriety, he sponsored and inspired thousands of people by reading the big book with them, amazingly he was dyslexic and could not read. Amazing how power, spirit, and dedication can move through us.