We teach our managers the importance of treating clients with respect. This subject came up again the other day when a manager was talking about his surprise when he learned of a former client's arrest history. It seems that the man had spent about 30 years in prison for various offenses. And his prison record showed that while incarcerated he been in trouble for fighting and other bad behavior.

"Now that I know this guy's history," said our employee, "I'm going to start treating him better."

The supervisor who heard this comment had a talk with me later in my office.

"I'm glad that.... told me that," he said. "It reminds me that we need to emphasize respect for all of our clients."

One thing we must do in a non-professional, peer counseling situation is to carefully monitor how our managers treat clients. While it might seem to be common sense that we treat everyone with respect one of the things we've learned in our organization is that for many of our addict/managers this is their first time having responsibility. Many of them don't understand what it is to have even a little power. And some of them, when they get it, think that power means that they are superior to others. They often express this first taste of power by being rude or controlling with clients.

Whenever we encounter this behavior we immediately start paying attention to the manager. On the first occasion we counsel him or her about their behavior. If the manager is unwilling to change we assign them to a job where they're not supervising others.

Our philosophy has always been that we treat all of our clients well. Our mission is to help recovering substance abusers rebuild their lives. We do all we can to help them feel good about themselves. We try to exemplify the benefits of recovery by being good examples.

If we're going to help the newcomer then we need to be living examples of what it means to live in recovery.