Substance Abuse

Intro to Substance Abuse

Refection Paper 1

When I first signed up for school I decided to go with being a chemical dependency counselor. The reason for this is because I have been on the other side of the desk. I have gone thru the addiction, withdrawals, and mental roller coaster that comes with the experience. Now that I am on the road to sobriety I wanted to be able to help others like myself. They say the best way to be able to help a person is to be in their shoes. Just in the first eight chapters I have been able to learn more about what my counselors, clinicians, and doctors have been asking me and why. Even with the discussions it has helped to see how people have not been thru what I have think about this and their feelings on it all.

Chapter one helped to really break down and understand the first meeting to me. When I first walked into my evaluation I thought, “great, these are a ton of questions and how much should I really tell about my problem.” All I really wanted to know was when I would be able to start my dosing to not be sick. It seemed like this meeting would never end. Just thinking back on that made me realize how strong of a hold my addiction had on me. After talking about a motivational interview with the class I can understand why it is so important. You never really see a simple question like where did you grow up as an important question but once you think about it a little more you see how a city or certain location has such a detrimental impact.

Learning about a therapeutic alliance was an eye opener for me. Yes, there are the obvious things that meeting any person you may talk about but one thing that stuck in my head was impression. I think I mentioned this in my discussion as well but impressions you give of yourself are also a large door opener or closer. If a client sees you as just another person sizing, you up then they are less likely to tell you the truth or if they do it is very vague. That is another reason why I...