Alcohol and drug rehabs have no miracle cures. Even the most experienced and gifted couselor has no magic bullets. Addiction and changing it is a choice. Many clients and their sponsors ask about possible outcomes. What are the success rates with your program? How often to people leave before finishing rehab? How long does the average person stay clean? These questions may give someone an idea of the “odds” of success, depending on how each rehab defines success. The problem with this is people are not a “probability”. They are individuals. Individuals have one absolutely amazing power. It is a magic bullet, or it can be a deadly bullet. It is the power of choice. Nobody can make someone “choose” the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter how much you care for someone or love them, you cannot “love” them to sobriety.

The most frustrating thing about working with addicition is that choice can either destroy the best laid plans, or rescue the worst. Even the worst rehab in the world has success stories. The client chose to walk through the door of sobriety and fight for it all costs. Unfortunately even the best rehab in the world has failures. If someone doesn’t want to change, or has linked change to something worse than death, in their own mind we can’t fix them. We can only keep open doors, supply information, and wait for a better decision. There is no point getting angry and destroying relationships. Choice is the one thing no rehab can supply.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 10:05 am 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.