Biography
Throughout her extensive career, Nancy has created a reputation for successfully rehabilitating even the most difficult cases of addiction. Within only a few moments of meeting her, it becomes clear that years of hands-on experience have perfected her methods in the most effective ways possible.
Nancy began her career at one of the original addiction treatment centers, Care-Unit Outpatient Services, where she rendered immediate assistance over the phone to addicted suicidal callers. Nancy then assisted in the creation of in-patient treatment as Primary Therapist for Rainbow Recovery Centers, a chain of inpatient recovery homes located throughout Southern California. There, she treated some of the toughest cases in the substance abuse realm, including court-mandated felons, gang members, and repeat offenders who were continually remaindered into the legal system. In this environment, Nancy received many confessions on crimes from addicts who, becoming sober for the first time, admitted to the sins they committed while under the influence 'Äì including several murders.
After completing 3000 hours of individualized care in substance dependency, Nancy became a licensed marriage and family therapist. Creating a busy private practice specializing in addiction, she continued to implement the successful tools she gathered from her previous experience. In addition to addiction work, Nancy also bought in a plethora of experience from Re-Socialization Skills, Inc., where she treated patients with acute psychiatric, brain damage, and learning disabilities. She also worked with Inner-Calm support services, a private consulting service she created shortly thereafter that provided care to a similar patient base. In addition, Nancy served on staff as a psychotherapist at Passages, a well-known inpatient recovery center in Malibu, California.
Realizing that many addicts required even deeper therapy, Nancy later founded the Insight Institute Center for Psychoanalytic and Behavioral Growth, a healing place that addressed painful unresolved core issues and trauma underlining addictive behaviors. She also became a practiced lecturer, having addressed varying audiences from the Learning Disabled Association and the Ortin Dyslexic Society, to teens and parents throughout the Ventura and Los Angeles Districts on the topic, "Alcohol and drugs are not the problem," which was delivered annually for a number of years.
Nancy donates her time every year to provide free group sessions to teens entitled "me" groups at both the public and private sectors.
Following her operation of a successful private practice treating people with drug and alcohol addictions, Nancy was granted the opportunity to co-found Stone Eagle Retreat, a center specializing in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependency. Located in Malibu, California, Stone Eagle Retreat is the first rehabilitation facility to combine a mind, body and spirit approach along with the the
Prometa® Treatment Program, a state of the art medical treatment protocol that effectively treats drug and alcohol dependencies.
The youngest of six children from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Nancy became acquainted early with personal emotional pain, when she lost her mother at the tender age of four to ulcerative colitis. Her father remarried, and the family moved to Southern California where Nancy found a new home onstage as well, winning beauty pageants and dance competitions all the way through her high school years.
Subsequent to becoming a popular fitness model for various magazines, Nancy traveled abroad, eventually coming back to the United States to pursue a degree in Sociology at California State University Northridge (CSUN), with specialization in counseling. After teaching high school at a prominent Los Angeles private institution, Nancy went back to CSUN to earn her Masters of Science in Counseling, receiving honorary Academic Distinction. Nancy was the first to achieve licensure in her graduating class.
Nancy lives and works with her husband of twenty years, Doug Szakacsy, who is the Director of Health and Wellness at Stone Eagle Retreat. The couple have two children, a teenage daughter who is an honor student, and a son who is a division 1 quarterback playing in the Pac Ten.
