Addiction Clinicians

Not so much ‘I share your pain’ as ‘I want to show you I understand what you mean.’

Others enter counseling with no intention of changing at all. Their goal is simply to placate some authority.

Where AA influences alcoholics toward sobriety through its peer culture, the gang down at the local pub is likely to encourage them to drink through its version of a peer culture.

Not everyone attaches the same meaning to a particular term. This problem pops up a lot in counseling, treatment, and similar settings.

There’s plenty of evidence that treatment for depression works, and that people with co-occurring disorders can and do get a whole lot better.

If we want to see any progress, we’ll have to figure out a way to break this apparent impasse.

At its root, treatment is primarily a work relationship– with goals that need to be accomplished, and outcomes that must be kept in mind.

Ambivalence isn’t just a matter of figuring out what we want to do. It’s very much about the ability to make good decisions and feel confident about them.

Really resistant clients are already planning to continue using alcohol or drugs throughout treatment, possibly in secret.

Even when the patient has concluded that continued substance use is no longer the best option, he or she still harbors a number of important doubts about the ability to change.