Finding the right advice can be tough. How can you find people to trust? It’s tough after being a drug or alcohol rehab program and finally finding a group of people that you trust and understand you, to sort of start over as soon as you leave rehab and start looking for a new group of advisors. It’s best that during the last weeks at a rehab program that you start looking in advance.

Advisors You Can Trust

Seek referrals from other people who may have had assistance in the area of interest or a person or professional who is interested in the same area. Ask them these questions:

Does the advisor offer useful advice?

Is the person easy to reach?

Do you feel like an important client?

Does the advisor appear to be an expert in the field?

Do you trust the advisor?

Recommendations aren’t enough

From physicians to plumbers you need to feel comfortable with the person you hire.
Take the time to interview at least two candidates.
Ask about experience. Ideally, you’d like an advisor who has worked in the area you are seeking advice.
Find out if the advisor specializes in the services you need. Lawyers specialize, check if they have lots of experience in the area you need advice in. The same holds true for most professionals.
Service counts
If the candidate seems rushed or takes calls during your meeting, you should be concerned

Look for evidence of foresight

Ask each professional to talk about problems you might encounter and the ways they would help you address such difficulties
Test for communications skills
Find out how well the advisor can explain things to you. For example, you might ask a communications expert to describe their approach for conflict resolution
(http://www.allbusiness.com/articles/710-2057-1634.html)

These are just a few ideas that you can try to help you form the team of friends and advisors to help you continue on with your addiction treatment after you leave rehab. Tomorrow I’ll give you some more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Drug Addiction, Drug Rehab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.