How to Talk so Someone With Addiction Will Listen (clinicians)

Rapid severe weight loss combined with heavy drinking is a formula for lasting difficulties.

We want to make sure the alcoholic person learns the right lesson from experience.

Some members are talkative enough, but others participate minimally and a couple are openly hostile and challenging.

My outpatients get discouraged very easily. They may actually be doing pretty well for somebody new to recovery, but they don’t seem to realize it.

Use examples. It’s hard for someone with alcoholism to grasp the idea that he or she can’t go back to drinking at some future point – after a year of abstinence, for instance. But the old saw that a pickle can’t go back to being a cucumber – that people seem to understand.

The family had good representation from important people in the alcoholic’s life, and there was professional help, but that’s not leverage.

I recall one professor airily informing his class that recovering counselors had an ‘agenda’.

I wasn’t trained in how to incorporate material about faith and God into counseling. Most of my graduate school education was on traditional social work practice.

The goal of treatment is to maximize chances for a successful outcome. But ultimately, to drink or not to drink remains the alcoholic’s choice.