What I Need Is..

I would never go to the doctor and ask him to treat my broken leg and then tell him how to do it. Nor would I tell any other professional that I employed how to do his job. Probably the only thing I would talk to him about is the end result. For example, "can you get rid of this cold?" Or, "can you repair my car? It's making a funny noise."

And I use the analogies above because it seems almost unique in the addiction field that clients come to us for help – then tell us the kind of help they need. For example, they will say they don't like a certain therapeutic group. Or they don't like the way a certain counselor does their job. Or they think the program should have a different schedule. It's never the same thing with each client; they each have own ideas about particular aspects of the program that they don't agree with.

And my loving question for them is always pretty much the same: if you know what you need to recover then what are you doing here?

After all, our staff has a combined experience of more than 100 years dealing with addicts in a treatment setting. Probably somewhere in those years of experience they can find the answer to most any issue if only the client is cooperative.

Probably one of the better indicators of a client’s prospects for successful recovery is the willingness to participate in the program as we designed it

Send comments to schwary@msn.com