[splitimage]

Hi everyone,

I volunteer on a telephone support line at my psych hospital. The volunteers coordinator is currently doing training for the volunteers. The training is pretty comprehensive - it's 36 hours over 6 weeks.

Next Tues. they're being trained on addictions. The coordinator has asked me if I'd be willing to come in and speak to them on 2 topics - my experiences with addiction, and how best to support someone who calls the telephone line about an addiction issue.

I said sure. I have 1 hr to talk to them.

I thought I'd share with them my drinking history, how I progressed from social drinker to serious alcoholic. Break some stereotypes about addicts by talking annonymously, of course, about all the successful people I met in my various rehabs who became addicted to different drugs. I thought I'd share what I lost to addiction, the fact that I've been in rehab 4 times, and what I'm doing now to stay sober, and tell them a little about the different recovery self help groups that are available in my city - most of our callers our local.

I'm also going to share how I typically handle the 3 types of addiction calls we get - someone who thinks they may have a problem, someone who has relapsed, and someone who needs help getting through a craving. To be honest we don't get many addiction calls, I'd say less than 5% of our calls are specifically about addiction, we're mainly a mental health line.

The audience will be predominantly university undergrads in their 20's who are studying either social work or psychology who are hoping to get practical experience to help them get into master's programs.

I'm open to suggestions as to what you'd like people to understand about addiction. Any and all ideas are welcome.

Splitimage

[Open Eyes]

Wow Splitimage, good for you, thats great.

I think that maybe when you talk to someone who may think they have a problem there may be family members that are showing the reactions to their problem. I have a friend that may have even called a hot line and she was more of a challenge than I could help, I did try. I know that she has been in rehab a couple of times and last I knew, she was still active.

This friend is a mother and I always bring that up and so she gives in an tries. I have brought her to meetings and sat and talked in my car and on the phone for hours with her.

I think that you may have a better idea of what it takes to convince or help someone take that step you are in now. I think that what you are doing is really good as you are reinforcing that yes, you need to keep going and staying sober. And yes it is hard but it is the only way to have a good life.

I wonder, do you get calls from families that are trying to deal with an alcoholic?

What are the main areas of mental health concerns that you get?

Good Luck Splitimage
Open Eyes

[madisgram]

well spoken, splitimage. can't think of anything i'd add.

[notz]

It's a disease, I didn't ask to be a drunk. Also, based on MY family history, I have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism.

You've got it covered, splitimage, you always cover all the bases...cool.

[BPDlasthouse]

I'd be interested to know how the talk went!!

[Christina86]

Oooh! Students! Like me! Except I have personal experience with addiction... hmmmmmmmm...

- It's not a "choice", you can't just "stop".
- Relapse prevention - maybe talking about different ways people have gotten sober or stayed sober (or you could talk about managing addictions, which is the harm reduction model that some places use)
- The effects of addiction - personally, professionally, and for the wider society
- Finding ways to get help
- The fact that many people with addictions also have cooccuring mental health issues (so you can't treat one without treating the other)

Trying to remember my Addictions class for my social service worker program... taught by a mental health nurse which was a lot of fun.

I assume you're talking only about alcohol addiction?

[splitimage]

Thanks everyone. Now that I'm back on-line I thought i'd post an update, on how it went. I followed a 2 hour presentation by a social worker who works in addiction services at the hospital. She did a really good job I thought of covering the basics of addiction, that it's a disease and nobody chooses to become an addict. She also covered off the different types of addictive substances and how harmful they are to society.

I mainly focussed on how I came from a family of heavy drinkers so to me heavy drinking was "normal" and how i'd progressed from regular binge driker in college to daily drinker, without it interfering in my life, to the point where I knew my drinking was a problem - 2002- but my unwillingness to do anything about it (a combination of shame and denial) to my first disasterous attempt at treatment, rapid relapse, and subsequent job loss. I talked about concurrent disorders and for me recovery had meant treating both my addiction and mental health, and my struggles with relapse, and multiple trips through rehab.

I then gave them an overview of the different self help groups in the city - I'd prepared a handout, listing contact info for all the groups, and did tell them I attended AA and Women for Sobriety and found both helpful.

Finally I gave an overview of how I handle the different types of addiction calls we get stressing that they're a minority of calls, but I did spend some time talking about what I consider to be the toughest calls which are calls by someone who has a family member with an addiction problem who won't get help. They always want to know how they can force someone to get treatment, which I have to explain that they can't do - and offer them some support groups for family members. I really truly hate those calls.

It was really well received I thought, I had a couple of people come up and thank me, one guy whispered to me that he was a friend of Bill W, and the coordinator was really happy with how it went.

I was really nervous but I'm glad I did it.

--splitimage

[mgran]

Well done. There is a huge prejudice against many kinds of mental illness, and that can make things very difficult... but it's especially hard, I think, with addiction, since people tend to think the addict has done it to themselves. The problem is that people carry that negative stereotyping inside themselves, so the moment they start to experience addictive problems, instead of recognising the problem they do anything they can to avoid the fear. So they deny the problem, and carry on drinking/whatever, and the situation gets worse and worse.

By standing up and presenting a human face to the problem you might have done a lot to help people break past these stereotypes. As always, I'm proud of you.

[whitneyman]

To help you under stand the relationship between mental health and alcoholism and addiction. My mentor taught me that 80 to 85% of people with Mental Illness also have a addiction problem weather it be drug's, alcohol,sex, Gambling and other addiction's. And I think once you under stand this relationship it will even help you with your service on the hot line.

[Christina86]

Congrats splitimage! Good job