Bradley Hilltopics Online: Facing Addictions, Winter 2008 • Volume 14, Issue 1
by Karen Crowley Metzinger MA ’97
Imagine wrapping yourself in cellophane from head to toe
in an attempt to kill the bugs that are crawling all over
your body. Picture yourself so desperate to end the itching
and scratching that you almost suffocate yourself by covering
your nose and mouth with the cellophane wrap, as well.
Bob Poznanovich ’78, now president and CEO of Addiction
Intervention Resources (AIR), a national addiction crisis
consulting company headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota,
can imagine this scene all too well.
In fact, his vivid description of the wrapping process painted
a scenario of the intensity of “cocaine bugs” that
felt all too real for him and everyone listening. It all
began 20 years earlier in Chicago during the disco days when
cocaine was a glamour drug.
“For me, it was the time,” said Poznanovich. “It
was the early 1980s; it was Studio 54. It wasn’t for
the fun or the high. I wanted to be with the rich and famous,
to become a part of another class of people. I was in my
30s, and I had a future ahead of me as an executive at Zenith
Data Systems. I had money and power in Chicago. The appeal
of the lifestyle and the grandiosity sucked me in. I never
smoked cocaine; I only snorted it. It was my way of rationalizing
my use of the drug. Addicts smoked cocaine, not me.”
According to Poznanovich, addiction has three phases: addicts
first rationalize that they have control over when they start
using and when they stop; second, addicts have control over
when they start, but no control over stopping; third, addicts
have no more control over when they start or when they stop.
The statistics offered by Poznanovich are staggering. One
in eight people has an addiction to something; 13 million
people need immediate treatment; and roughly one in 10 people
you know is addicted to drugs or alcohol. He said people
are told, ‘Don’t do drugs,’ but many don’t
know where to go or what to do when they need help recovering
from an addiction.
Believing his cocaine habit was purely recreational, Poznanovich “kept
it under control” for 10 years. He said he managed
his addiction by setting up personal rules. For example,
his first rule was that he would never buy cocaine for himself.
His second rule was that he would only snort every other
Saturday night. Ultimately, he failed to follow his self-imposed
rules, eventually losing his job in a corporate downsizing,
losing his fiancée, and finally succumbing to a $1,000-a-day
cocaine binge for 2 1/2 years.
“I was a zombie,” he admitted. “I didn’t
want to feel, didn’t want to be a part of society.
I did not want to die, but I knew that was an out. I was
using an ounce a day. Life was pretty much over. For an hour
or two I could pull it together, but for the final two months,
I never got off the couch. I would urinate into cans. I would
binge on pizza occasionally, but I would also go without
water for days.”
After spending a half million dollars on his addiction,
Poznanovich knew his money was going to run out. He overheard
his mother
talking to her friends about his drug problem, and it upset
him because he was still concerned about his reputation.
Even one of his drug dealers told him to take a good look
at himself.
“I looked at myself physically. I had sores. I looked
terrible. My life was getting crazy as I tried to keep my
house of cards under control. And then my mom, who was terminally
ill, confronted me. In 1995, she called Hazelden, a treatment
center in Center City, Minnesota, where I was admitted.”
Life at Bradley
Poznanovich grew up with little on the south side of
Chicago, and believed if he had gone to junior college and stayed
in his neighborhood, he would have ended up working at
the steel mill like everybody else. “Bradley University
gave me a chance,” he said. He escaped from his neighborhood,
attended Bradley, and joined Sigma Chi, where he immediately
found mentors who became his lifeline through college.
In fact, one fraternity brother and fellow business major,
John “Chip” Dempsey ’78, still finds it
hard to believe that Poznanovich, the former Bradley student
body vice president, president of
Omicron Delta Kappa honor society, and the 1978 Greek Man
of the Year, became an addict. Dempsey is now vice president
of business development and a steroid abuse authority at
AIR.
“
From my history with Bob, knowing him from the beginning
of college, it was unrealistic to assume Bob had become an
addict; it just wasn’t his thing. If you took a snapshot
at graduation of people who would eventually need treatment,
it certainly would not have included Bob. To think it would
happen to him is so out of character,” said Dempsey. “I
wish I would have known then what I know now. I worked as
a sales manager for Bob at Zenith. I thought I was doing
what a good friend should do in the situation. I would try
to talk to him, and he would push back. I would sometimes
do his work. I was more worried about keeping him as a friend
rather than helping him. Basically, I didn’t know how
to help him. Then, Bob dropped off the face of the earth.”
Poznanovich found help at Hazelden. Nevertheless, in 2001,
already in recovery for six years from his cocaine addiction,
he gained 130 pounds and once again entered treatment, this
time to battle food addiction. “The food addiction
is more difficult to continue working on than the cocaine
addiction because we all need to eat; abstinence is not an
option,” Poznanovich said with a smile. He lost the
weight in six months and has maintained the weight loss for
five years.
Building a business
During the years following his
successful treatment, he and his business partner, Andrew Wainwright,
an Oxford graduate
and Hazelden client recovering from heroin addiction,
built AIR into a national company offering families and companies
the tools needed to confront and help individuals with
addictions. AIR focuses on referring addicts for treatments
ranging from substance abuse to gambling to overeating.
“Think of AIR as an addiction general contractor,” explained
Poznanovich. “We help families and organizations that
are in crisis as a result of an addiction, develop an action
plan to get the addict to accept help. Help is typically
defined as inpatient treatment. Our company is the before
and after treatment. We help them find an appropriate treatment
center that meets their needs, clinically and financially,
and we develop an intervention plan that motivates the person
to accept help. After treatment we help addicts move into
recovery with our Recovery Assurance Program, a transition
back into the workplace or home. Addicts recover at a high
rate if they are monitored and continue to do what they are
told.”
Co-authoring a book, It’s not okay to be a Cannibal:
How to Keep Addiction from Eating your Family has helped
Pozanovich make sense of his story. The book encourages those
with addictions in their family or workplace to understand
they can make a difference and can stop the “cannibal.” He
said it’s wrong to fight the war on drugs a million
miles away when Americans are creating meth in their own
backyards. “We’re not going to stop the supply
side, but we can stop the demand side,” added Poznanovich. “No
one wants to fight house to house, but that’s how we
must fight it: one individual, one home, one office at a
time.”
Poznanovich contends that addicts are surrounded by two
major myths: You can’t help addicts until they hit
rock bottom, and treatment doesn’t work unless the
addict is willing to admit a problem
exists. “Neither is true, and in fact, it’s cruel
to think that way. There is no other disease in the world
where someone has to get worse before he or she can get better,” he
noted.
“What is bottom?” Poznanovich questioned. “Addicts
may never find a bottom. They bounce from bottom to bottom,
taking those who love them for the ride along the way. There
is no true bottom except the ultimate bottom, which is six
feet under.”
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