When I got my education in addiction counseling they tried to teach me a lot of things. Like the entire history of recovery; the origin of AA and such things that were not only uninteresting but that, even then, I suspected had absolutely no value in helping another individual. In over eight years of this work I have never met anyone in crisis that could be helped if they knew that AA began as a group called the Washingtonians in nineteen-whatever. Another major portion of what they teach in school is statistics. What percentage of teenagers try alcohol and LSD by the time they’re seniors, what number of white people to black people use drugs, that there are fewer Asian American alcoholics because their bodies don’t process the alcohol enzyme well. Interesting factoids, alarming and distressing in many ways possibly, but useful? No. Not at all.
I have never once been able to help a family or a person in trouble by quoting them facts and percentages. I know some simple things about addiction that make all those stats useless: addiction affects anybody and everybody, anywhere, anytime. It wrecks lives, always has and always will. What more do you need to know on that end? Who cares where they come from or how many people “like them” are going through it too?
Life Experience: The state of California gives something like three to four hours to pass the exam to become an addiction counselor. I aced it in 20 minutes. But it took most of my life, from 13 to 35, to truly know and understand addiction and sobriety. Began using at 13, got clean at 28, got full/true sobriety by 35. What they taught me in school was enough to get certified professionally, but it’s what I’ve been through in life that I use each and every day to help people through this disorder. Every addict and family is different. They need a very unique program, customized for them, and not a generic plan that is applied to everyone… go to meetings… get a sponsor… drug test… stay clean… get a job…blahblahblah. This is the same rhetoric you hear everywhere you go. It doesn’t have to be that way. As counselors we can do more; try harder, think beyond the education we were given and use our life-experiences (if we have them) and get the job done! Don’t settle for statistics and clichés. Addicts are smarter than that.
Scott Spackey is a State Certified Addiction Counselor, Life-Coach, Hypnotherapist, and Interventionist. For more information, please call 661-299-1966, email: Scott@Life-Mind.com and visit www.LIFE-MIND.com for even more articles.