Today we would like to share with you a video from our annual ATCPCC 2013, Addiction Treatment Centers and Professional Consortium. Here in our guest lecture video series is New Directions For Women’s Ottis Johnson who shares about his experience with Family Groups at New Directions For Women. We have a transcript of the lecture for you to follow:
Hello. I am Ottis Johnson and I’m a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor and I have the opportunity to do some family groups at New Directions for Women. I think this is the most powerful segment of recovery because once the addicted person leaves treatment, she has to or he has to go back to that family. That family is the nurturing, supporting environment that this person’s going to need to thrive in. If we haven’t treated the family, then they are going to continue the same dysfunctional behavior that was going on before the addict comes into treatment, so there’s little or no chance of the person returning to their family and continue to stay sober.
What’s so exciting, when the family members come in and they understand how the disease has affected them and how they have chose to react to it. And they discover a health way now to respond to how addition has affected them, even though they haven’t been using. They’re shocked to realize they have the same emotional problems, the same psychological problems, the same physical problems many times and the same financial problems even though they weren’t drinking and using. And in their struggle to deal with it, they’ve done some real inappropriate things.
But through the training they get at New Directions for Women, they’re able to go back home, create a healthy, supportive environment for the addict to return to. Then the whole family gets well. As they say in recovery, addiction is a family disease and we must treat the whole family.
