Addiction Clinicians

If your inpatient provider determines eligibility using ASAM patient placement criteria, don’t forget to describe the patient’s need in those terms. Makes your case a little stronger by making their job a little easier.

Wasn’t it Archimedes who promised that given a lever long enough and a place to stand, he would move the world? In using leverage, think of credibility as the place you stand.

Understanding how leverage works in the context of addiction treatment can give you the tools to identify your client’s agenda, and help them over the “rough spots” that inevitably occur when you work with offenders.

You’re aware that music therapy is used in mental health settings. Playing music is great, but for most of us, it’s enough just to listen and be affected.

Countertransference issues can be a genuine hazard in our field. If allowed to continue, it can lead to some pretty spectacular incidents.

Mom is determined to stop her son from taking drugs. With that kind of willpower, she’s bound to succeed…. isn’t she?

Some of what patients hear is gossip and folklore, something for which the addict community is famous. But there is a wide variation in quality among OTPs.

Counselors and therapists are — and I’m generalizing shamelessly here, so forgive me — warm, empathetic, even sympathetic by nature.

First, they don’t understand why they’re in treatment, or how it could possibly benefit them. Second, they’re ticked off about having been coerced.

“But what if…?” Coming to terms with the reality of lifelong abstinence is one of the difficult tasks of early recovery.