Jimmy Pullman, Recovery Associates

By: Lakeview Health Staff
Published: August 6, 2014

In this podcast, Jimmy Pullman discusses outpatient care and how different modalities can be used in that kind of setting. He describes the types of care and the different modalities used at Recovery Associates, an outpatient care facility in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Podcast Transcript


Gina Thorne: Hello, everyone, this is Gina Thorne and welcome to the Lakeview podcast series. I’m here today with Jimmy Pullman with Recovery Associates in West Palm Beach, Florida, and it’s really great to have you here. Jimmy Pullman: Thanks for having us, Gina. Gina: Well, I’m looking forward to talking with you a little bit about what Recovery Associates does, but first let me ask you–tell me about your background and how you got into the field of addiction treatment? Jimmy: I got into the field of recovery by being in recovery. I went through a treatment program; it was a 30-day program. I left there, said I never wanted to go back and I ended up going back to be an employee. And after working through a series of high corporate, South Florida modality, I moved to the outpatient level of care, so now I’m over at Recovery Associates. Been there about four years now. Gina: That’s great, so that you have the personal experience, it really helps contribute to the work you guys do with your patients. That’s great. Jimmy: Absolutely. Gina: So, describe Recovery Associates for us. Jimmy: OK, Recovery Associates is an outpatient level of care program. It’s broken into tracks. We’re designated into a traditional track, which is a basic cognitive behavioral therapy group situation. Secondly, we have a, expressive therapy track, which is broken down for clients who are done with the modality of group therapy, and we use words as primary deflection in our recovery. We’ll tell people that we’re just doing good so we don’t have to talk about it anymore. What we do is, instead of articulating how you feel, you have to pick up a color, what color best expresses the way you feel right now? Maybe a texture, maybe a pattern, something like that, to help pull back the layers, the easy to hide behind. Some parents are like ‘my kid’s not too artsy or not too creative.’ Well, anybody that’s been able to manipulate a system for a long time and feed a drug habit is very creative. And we just want to put down a baseline that can be used to better themselves. And finally there’s the Christian modality. There are some people who have a knowing God and insightful God and God by name, so we take the basis that they have in that and go forward in that. And now some of the new things we’re incorporating is we just broke open in about the last three months is an LGBT track, which is to really help people from that aspect of things, to feel the camaraderie and that strength and that lateral building system. I think, in a nutshell, that’s kind of what Recovery Associates is. Gina: It’s a good one. You obviously do a lot as far as hitting a lot of different niche populations, which is really great. So, this is your first time here at Lakeview Health. Jimmy: Yes. Gina: So, not a whole lot of experience working with us in the past, what’s your first impression of us? Jimmy: Super organized. Efficient. And, Recovery Associates prides itself on being the people that care about the clients. So that’s like the first thing. We always walk around and see and we saw it in Lakeview. We don’t really align ourselves with anyone where we don’t feel that client care is a primary focus of the corporate structure of it. And we notice that early on with Lakeview. We notice it from the case managers, from their enjoyment of working with the clients, and also enjoyment of the therapists and stuff like that. So Lakeview is in it for the right reasons. That’s what I see. Gina: Well, we certainly feel that way about Recovery Associates. You all have a wonderful diverse program and you can tell that you care about your clients and your patients. If someone who’s listening today needed to get in touch with you to learn more about Recovery Associates, how would they do that? Jimmy: Always check out the website. It’s www.recoveryassociates.com. If you can remember Recovery Associates, you can go to the website. If some people don’t have access to wifi or computer capabilities, you want to think about the 800 number so you can always get in touch. And it’s 888-393-0388. And there’s always my number and it’s like the Batphone and it’s 561-628-2592 for any local needs. Gina: Wonderful. Well, it was great to meet you, Jimmy, thank you for taking the time to come and visit with us at Lakeview. For those of you that are interested in learning more about Lakeview Health, we invite you to visit us online at lakeviewhealth.com. If you need to speak to someone right away, feel free to call us at [Direct]. Thank you.