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Clients will test boundaries just to see what will happen when they do. If you’re prepared for such tests, and can avoid some predictable errors in response, you’ll find that the course of treatment runs smoother.

Seeking evidence, and applying practices based on evidence to your clinical interventions, can help making decisions that increase the chances of a desired outcome

Call it a bribe, call it an incentive, call it a clever idea… Giving a reluctant client a reason to comply can help treatment along.

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.

Motivation springs from external as well as internal sources. Our internal desire for change is rarely enough to get us all the way through to our stated goals.

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.

Medication may help, and we shouldn’t automatically rule it out because it’s “taking pills.” Some pills are okay, if we take them under supervision and according to directions.

Current research suggests that an optimal treatment episode is in the neighborhood of three months. That doesn’t mean it must be all in residence.

Put yourself in the reader’s place. Most big awards come after review committees of five to ten folks have sorted through a pile of proposals using a rather elaborate ratings tool.

I like to say that most of the conflicts are a tempest in a teapot — the problem being that you are in the teapot along with the tempest.