Academically Focused Substance Use Disorder Treatment

December 4, 2015

Andrew Burki the CEO and Founder of Life of Purpose, the only substance use disorder treatment facility in the nation located on a college campus joins eHealth Radio and the Addiction Prevention and Health News Channels.

Listen to interview with host Eric Michaels & guest Andrew Burki discuss the following:

Tell me a little bit about how you got into the addiction and treatment line of work?
Can you tell me about Life of Purpose and the type of treatment programs you offer?
I heard that Life of Purpose recently joined the MAP Recovery Network. Can you tell me about the network and how it benefits what Life of Purpose is doing?
What can we do to bring more attention to this chronic disease?
What advice would you give someone who is suffering from this disease or a family member trying to find help for their loved one?.

Duration: 25:08

Andrew Burki, MSW, founded Life of Purpose Treatment in Boca Raton, Florida in 2012 after enduring his own journey of addiction, failed treatment, and, since 2001, recovery. Andrew spent his late adolescence at a number of addiction treatment facilities, which encompassed various approaches to recovery from chemical dependency. Consequently, his substance abuse derailed his high school education.

Having highly-educated parents who studied at Harvard and MIT respectively, the interruption of Andrew’s education was a source of tremendous shame and distress for him and served as a barrier to ongoing recovery. After treatment episodes at multiple institutions, he arrived at a highly-regarded extended care facility in Boca Raton, Florida in 2001, a facility that provided him the clinical care necessary to produce a successful outcome.

Unfortunately, it was also there that his parents, then weary of their son’s many failed attempts to recover, were advised by a therapist not to support his college attendance until he was continuously clean and sober for five years, a commonly-held recommendation in the addiction treatment industry. Just shy of five years, however, Andrew’s parents encouraged him to return to school where he studied psychology and went on to receive a Master’s degree in Social Work from Florida Atlantic University.

Since that time, Andrew has spent his professional and academic career developing the Life of Purpose model, based on the philosophy that young people, need a reason to want to stay clean and sober. Higher education, more than any other environmental factor, helps produce this desire in that it fundamentally changes the way people in early recovery perceive themselves.

Andrew also serves on the Board of Directors for both The Delray Beach Drug Task Force and The Crossroads Club.