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Preventing Harm in the Name of Help
The history of medicine demonstrates repeatedly that unevaluated treatment, no matter how compassionately administered, is frequently useless and wasteful and sometimes dangerous or harmful. The lesson we have learned is that what is plausible may be false and what is done sincerely may be usele ...
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Working with Traumatized and Addicted Adolescents
A very careful approach is necessary when working with traumatized adolescents, particularly those who are suffering from addictive disorders. This challenge — to treat both the trauma and addiction — has led one child welfare agency to create a model of trauma-informed care for addi ...
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Integrated Addiction and Mental Health Treatment Using 12-Step Approach
As addiction and mental health counselors, we have questioned which to treat first: the addiction or the mental health diagnosis. And in the middle of this quandary has been the quiet resistance of both fields to completely embrace each other. We give platitudes to one another but underlying is ...
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Nurturer, Deserter or Enemy: Mother-Daughter Relationships and Substance Abuse
There are many published books that focus on the mother-daughter relationship — the website Amazon.com lists 6,093. In addition, there are even more films that deal with the subject. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) lists 13,319 films that focus on this important relationship, with t ...
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Behavioral Management: De-escalating PCP-Intoxicated Clients in Acute Settings
Emergency departments, psychiatric emergency services and psychiatric units now include addiction counselors on their treatment teams, so addiction counselors are more likely to be dealing with clients who are heavily intoxicated on phencyclidine. These clients are more confused, more agitated a ...
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God is Not Codependent
In my previous article, Say Yes to Your Spirit, I suggested that those who were in recovery might need to develop a new approach to prayer and meditation. It followed my line of thought that an aspect of codependency affects our relationship with God or Higher Power. In that article, I said, &l ...
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Effective Treatment Planning for Substance Abuse and Related Disorders
The importance of a good needs assessment cannot be overstated in the treatment of substance use disorders. When the needs assessment effectively synthesizes the client’s self-report with additional sources and sound clinical judgment on a wide array of client issues, the assessment more a ...
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Recovery Capital: A Primer for Addiction Professionals
The history of addiction treatment in America contains within it a history of key ideas that have transformed service philosophies and practices. In the early history of modern treatment, for example, chemical dependency emerged as a core idea that helped integrate what were then two separate fi ...
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Daddy's Little Girl: Fatherlessness and Adolescent Substance Abuse
As a little girl, I was diagnosed with polio. Doctors predicted I would never walk again. My mother said, ‘Not only will you walk, you will run!’ I believed my mother!” — Wilma Rudolph, 1960 Olympic Gold Medalist in the 100-yard dash A great deal has been written about ...
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Working with Asians
First, I am a Caucasian, born and raised in New York City. So, it is a bit audacious for me to be writing about working with Asians. However, for the past 30 years I have worked in many Asian countries, assisting them in the development of 12-Step programs and addiction treatment. So, that&rsquo ...
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Orthopedic Hazards for Counselors
It was business as usual as I began my daily walk home from my sixth grade class at Pershing Elementary School. Business as usual, that is, until something out of the ordinary caught my attention. Two fellow classmates, Lynn and Laura, whipped their jackets off and each proceeded to perform a co ...
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Say Yes to Your Spirit
Years ago I was impacted by Dr Conway Hunter, who said, “Leo, you need to think outside of the box. Spirituality is not something that we explain, it’s something we experience.” Years later I was attending a conference and I heard John Bradshaw say, “Poetry is felt thought ...
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Recovery is Just an Island Away
Many people feel like they need to get away to recover from a devastating addiction. Perhaps that is why some people elect to literally get out of the country for their rehabilitation, whether it means coming over to the United States, or going abroad to a discreet little island off the shores o ...
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The Culture of Recovery in America
For the past nine years, the articles in this column of Counselor have sought to educate addiction professionals about the rich history of addiction treatment and recovery in America and to highlight emerging trends that are of historical import. We have often noted history’s propensity to ...
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Addressing Sexual Issues in Addictions Treatment
Counselors know that some of their clients exchange sex for drugs; need drugs or alcohol to have sex; need the disinhibition resulting from drug use to engage in sex; and believe that drugs provide enhanced sexual performance. Despite having this knowledge, there is increasing evidence that ...
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Substance Abuse Treatment for Offenders
Editors Note: This article was adapted from a series of articles that ran in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (JSAT), in accordance with a partnership agreement between Counselor Magazine and JSAT to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice in the addiction treatment field. ...
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Addiction: Why Are Some of us More Vulnerable than Others?
Although neuroscientists have made major contributions over the past several decades in elucidating the brain mechanisms and underlying neurotransmitter systems involved with addictive drugs, there has been insufficient attention paid to possible psychological mechanisms and vulnerabilities that ...
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The Perfect Storm - Assessing for Sex Addiction
A common observation in sex addiction treatment groups by patients is, “I wish my earlier therapists had known about sex addiction.” This complaint usually is about lost time, money spent and deteriorating circumstances. When the losses are great, such as a divorce that is now see ...
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Can Adolescents Benefit from Recovery Coaches?
In addiction recovery there is something magical about 90 days. Research reveals that 90 days is the minimum recommended service dosage for those receiving chemical dependence treatment, and the great majority of chemically dependent clients who relapse do so within the first 90 days after leavi ...
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Addiction as a Chronic Disorder
Modern medicine has recognized that chronic diseases cannot and should not be treated and managed like acute disorders. Acute disorders such as bacterial infections, broken bones and even emotional trauma from shock or injury, can typically be traced to a clearly identifiable source (e.g ...
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