Treating Alcoholism: Helping Your Clients Find the Road to Recovery

338 Pages·2004·1.66 MB·English

by  Robert R. Perkinson

Treating
Alcoholism
Helping Your Clients Find
the Road to Recovery
R R. P
OBERT ERKINSON
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Treating Alcoholism

Treating
Alcoholism
Helping Your Clients Find
the Road to Recovery
R R. P
OBERT ERKINSON
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper. ➇
Copyright © 2004 by Robert R. Perkinson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Perkinson, Robert R.
Treating alcoholism : helping your clients find the road to recovery /
Robert R. Perkinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-65806-5 (cloth)
1. Alcoholism—Treatment. I. Title.
RC565.P375 2004
616.86′10651—dc22
2004007929
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Dr. Dan Anderson and
Lynn Carroll, the pioneers.

Preface
MANY OF your patients have alcohol problems, and you don’t
know it. You picked up this book because you have a great pas-
siontohelp people. You are a natural born healer. Other people
don’t understand why you do what you do. Occasionally, you bring back
someone from certain death. Maybe no one knows this besides you. But
you know and you love it. You have a great passion to heal. It’s what
makes you tick.
You can’t hope that someone else will help the alcoholic or that the per-
son will come to his or her senses and get the help he or she needs. It
would be easy if alcoholics would come into your office, admit the drink-
ing problem, and ask for help, but that very rarely happens. Instead, they
complain of everything except a substance abuse problem. They complain
of depression, anxiety, marital problems, sleep problems, stomach prob-
lems, headaches, occupational problems, legal problems—anything but a
drinking problem. To complicate matters, addiction can mimic many
physical and mental disorders.
So you do what you always do. You treat the chief complaint the best
you can, and the real disease is never addressed. Your patient could po-
tentially die if the alcoholism is not treated. Somewhere during the as-
sessment of the patient you get suspicious. Something about the person’s
mental state, signs, or symptoms tells you something. And there the per-
son sits staring at you in your office, car, hospital, or ambulance. Believe
me, you are that person’s only hope. He or she is trusting in your profes-
sional judgment.
In general, alcoholic patients will resist your efforts, lie, and become
angry with you for even suggesting they have an alcohol problem. You
suspect that alcoholism is the main problem, but you don’t know what to
do about it. If you let these patients go, you will feel bad about yourself,
but you don’t know what to do to make them better.
vii
viii PREFACE
This book teaches you exactly what you can do. Ninety percent of the
patientswho work the program described in this text stay sober. You can
help, and you and the patient can feel good about it. It doesn’t have to end
ina fight or a lost relationship. It can end with a person who owes you his
or her life. Alcoholics and drug addicts are suffering terribly. They are
alone and hurting. Some part of them knows they may be dying, but they
willnot tell anyone the truth for fear that their world will fall apart. They
are stuck in the darkness and are afraid to come out. Your job is to take
the light of the truth and lead them to victory. You can do it, no one but
you. You are the only one who sees the problem.
You were born for this challenge. It excites you. You love helping people
who are in pain. You have been in pain yourself, so you know what it is
like. A long time ago, you dedicated your life to helping others. You knew
it would be difficult and that it would take an extraordinary amount of
work, but you made up your mind to be a healer. This means you learned
tofight. You fought all the way through school when others gave up, you
fought the system when most gave in, and you fight still. At all hours of
the day and night you fight, and you will never give up because you were
born for this. It gives you joy.
Working with addicts is truly wonderful. I know this because I treat
100 alcoholics and drug addicts a day. I have been doing this for more
than30 years. Alcoholics and addicts are fun—they laugh, they love, and
they get well. In an atmosphere of love and trust, they blossom like
spring flowers. You will see them suffer the worst day of their lives and
walk with them to victory. They will never forget you. They will remem-
ber the exact words you said. They will pass these words on to others
until your words literally cover the earth. On the last day, they will walk
away with you as a loving member of their family. Welcome to the world
of addiction treatment.
ROBERTR. PERKINSON, PHD