Adolescent Addiction and the Disease Concept
As a chemical dependency counselor at Visions Adolescent Treatment Center one of my duties is to educate the Adolescents on the disease concept of addiction and alcoholism. As an southern Californian, with a mother who has been sober through Alcoholics Anonymous for the last eight years, I am very familiar and comfortable with the disease concept. I am not going to lie, when my mother first got sober I was an ornery 13 year old teen who believed that the disease concept was an excuse that alcoholics used to disregard their horrid behavior. I thought that alcoholics and drug addicts, not knowing that I was one, needed to buck up and take the blame for their behaviors. (I did not know at this point that the twelve steps were solely aimed at taking responsibility for our actions and making them right.) However, through the process of going to adolescent rehab at Visions Adolescent Treatment Center myself and getting sober I became very familiar with the disease concept and readily accepted it. When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them, with pride, that I am a chemical dependency counselor for adolescents. Many are intrigued to learn more about the recovering community and most people praise me for helping others. Not once have I received negative feedback or people giving me weird looks, as I originally expected. So you could imagine my surprise, when I found out through a gentleman who was touring our facility, that around the world many people are skeptical about the disease concept. When I say skeptical, I mean that the impression that I got was that is was widely discarded as hogwash, for lack of a better term. This gentleman explained to me that he taught a course in the U.K. on the disease concept. He described the way that his students reacted to it and the various ways that he had to go about getting the information to these people without the entire class balking at him. I was speechless. Sometimes, I for one, take for granted the recovering community that I have grown up in, in southern California.
Labels: Adolescent-Rehab, alcoholics-anonymous, chemical-dependency-counselor, Visions-Adolescent-Treatment-Centers
7 Comments:
I too used to think AA was a bunch of rubbish, for lack of a better term. I thought it was a crutch and used simply to get a bunch of troubled, faithless people, to God without by means of a church. I have heard stories of people who clean up solely by means of God, without meetings. Personally i think that this may work for some but not for many. AA consists of fellowship, accountability, and a dependance upon a higher power. It is a rare place where you can receive all three factors to aid your recovery. If you are happily sober without meetings, then cheers to you.
It stinks that so many people are uneducated on the disease concept but I find that when I explain it to people in depth they are much more receptive than when they are first approached with it.
i wish for some people close to me to embrace the disease concept one day, i keep hoping sooner than later.
the disease concept and addiction was pretty confusing to me at 16 yrs old. it's a lot easier to understand having been around the program for a little bit.
It's was hard for me to understand the disease concept even though my father, who was a doctor, explained it many years ago. Having been to AA meeting and around the disease, I am so very grateful for AA and some of the wonderful, positive results.
How can it not be a disease,who else drinks and uses like an addict.
the disease concept is hard to understand but once you do understand it it totally makes sense
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