profile
At Seaside Palm Beach, treatment is tailored to fit the well-heeled client
Overcoming
Addiction
The decision to face the demon of addiction is one of the hardest to make. Blayre Farkas, program director and therapist at Seaside Palm Beach, a new luxury wellness retreat, knows this all too well. Blayre, the daughter of Jonathan and Kimberly
Farkas (now Smith), grew up in a prominent New York family, lived on Park
Avenue, and attended one of the city’s most elite private schools.
But her seemingly perfect world started to unravel before high school, when
she began to suffer from severe substance abuse problems and an eating disorder. After attending several different schools, treatment centers and rehab,
Blayre came to the ultimate decision: turn her life around or die. So Blayre
attended graduate school and began her career as a therapist at Seaside.
Now, as the program director at Seaside Palm Beach, Blayre is redefining
what it means to get treatment for addiction. “I wanted to do something with
my hardship experience to help others,” Blayre says, “I think it’s very important,
it is what you do with adversity that makes it meaningful.”
With Seaside, Founder/CEO Dr. Donald Mullaney had the vision to create a
treatment program tailored specifically to this affluent population and then
brought in Blayre who, because of her background, was able to come up
with pitch-perfect ideas for the program. At Seaside, Blayre has developed a
completely new and unique approach to treating the addiction disorders of
high-net worth individuals whose needs she feels are not being properly
addressed at existing institutions. “Privilege is no guard,” she says. “I realized
that a lot of places were lacking. So I put my input and creative ideas into the
program at Seaside.”
Seaside combines the best of the West Coast’s alternative wellness
activities with the East Coast’s traditional psychiatric medical research. This
two-pronged approach simultaneously treats the mind, body and soul. “Why
should people have to choose?” Blayre asks. “Here, they can have the best
of both worlds.”
At Seaside, the best includes equine therapy, traditional Chinese medicine,
acupuncture, chiropractic services, tai chi, spiritual guidance, yoga and
24-hour access to a therapist, among many other activity options. And, with
usually no more than eight guests at a time, Seaside offers unparalleled
personalized treatment.
One of the bedrock beliefs of Seaside is that addiction should be treated
in a way that is realistic and practical for its clientele. To that end, Blayre has
helped develop a program unique to Seaside called Living Recovery, which
is tailored to clients who have a successful and affluent lifestyle.
The Living Recovery program does not sequester Seaside’s clients from the
outside world. Unlike other treatment facilities, Seaside’s clients are allowed
access to their cell phones and computers.
Blayre believes that by doing this, clients receive a far more realistic
experience during their stay. “We treat our clients with dignity and respect,” she
says. “We allow them to experience their lives sober, rather than removing
them completely from reality.” ✦
