For a drug and alcohol rehab program to be effective, it must use all styles of learning.  Education sessions need to have spoken as well as visual components to them.  Unfortunately one of the most cost effective methods of learning, may be one of the least effective in a drug and alcohol rehab center.  What I'm talking about is reading.  The number of good books out there is amazing.  Quality books designed to help anyone with almost any problem exist.  The difficulty lies in actually getting someone to read it and use it.

Reading seems to be a dying art in the world today.  Even on the internet, the power of audio and especially video is taking over.  The written word is being pushed to the back of the line.  The sad fact in drug and alcohol rehab though is the clients who actually do the reading have such a higher success rate. 

This means we have to get more creative in our approach to the problem.  With addiction often affecting attention span and the ability to focus, books might be much more useful for those studying drug and alcohol abuse then those trying to move past it.  Maybe all the imformation might be better presented in small groups and lectures with the material presented and worked on at the same time.  Having clients go through powerpoint slides with audio might be an alternative to reading.  The most powerful book in the world is useless if left unopened.

It is easy to call people lazy and unmotivated.  Who knows, it might even be true.  That doesn't change the fact we can do a better job.  We can design drug and alcohol programs assuming clients won't read and do the exercises on there own.  Failure at a drug and alcohol rehab program seems to be a steep price for not reading.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm and is filed under 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.