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Even if such arguments have stymied you for decades, it’s quite possible, with a little coaching, to deal with them effectively in future.

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.

We can’t control the alcoholic/ addict, but we’re not powerless. Some things we can do (and stop doing) to help them listen to something besides the addiction…

So the professional’s real value to an intervention is as a guide. One who can offer something the family really does need: a degree of informed objectivity.

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.

Some will be the sort of folks who insist on using the latest and greatest. Others will represent large purchasers, searching for something that might work on patients who haven’t responded to other methods.

The previous director is suddenly… nowhere to be found.

It requires a certain personality type – patient, reassuring, unpressuring – to engender trust and establish this sort of relationship in a business context.

A government or insurance buyer needs to make certain that a provider offers a particular service and meets particular standards of performance. They won’t necessarily require you to exceed those standards, or provide extras. They understand that we get what we pay for.

Addiction treatment is never just a business. It’s a public trust. Our goal must be to fulfill that trust by providing the very best service we can to the people who need it. That doesn’t mean we can’t do very well from a business perspective.