Call 888-647-0579 to speak with an alcohol or drug abuse counselor.

Who Answers?

Professional ex-s´

I have found really interesting article in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography from 1991. The author, J. David Brown, is Assistant professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University who had struggled for 13 years with substance abuse problems, then he went to rehab and after then, he started to be a counselor himself. He uses the introspective methods and the qualitative interviews to describe the identity transformation of drug users into professionals – drug counselors. According to him, the identity of “professional ex” is formed even before the professional trainings – he calls this process “preprofessional socialization”. As he points out: “One of the most pervasive characteristics of preprofessional socialization is its ability to transform the stigmatized identities of substance abusers into identities that have adopted a calling to a professional counseling career” (p. 159).

He cites really amazing statistics in his article:

**72% of the people working in more than 10.000 treatment centers in U.S. has experienced substance abuse problems (according a research of Sobell and Sobell, 1988)
there was only 13% recidivism rate within ex-prisoner who were hired to work as a prison-counselors

**Also, he notes that all the ex-users he was interviewing were working in treatment programs that were based on 12-step approach and most of them evaluated the knowledge of disease concept of addiction as significant for being effective substance abuse counselor.

From my point of view, Brown describes quite special group of people who had transformed their “fixed” identity of drug addict (ill) into another “fixed” identity of drug counselor (professional ex). People who I was doing interviews with, have not created so “fixed” identities. Their identities seem to be more flexible, more fluent. But even within them there were two people who started to work as professionals after they stopped using drugs.

One of them, Milos, was a methamphetamine dealer and consumer for three years. Then, one day, he went with his friend to the “meth cook” place and he met his sister in law. She said: “why don´t you come to see your daughter?”
“Where is she?” he replied.
“In our place… Her mother left her here and went to Germany with her new friend.”
It was the turning point for him. He went to his sister in law place and when he met his daughter, she gave him a big hug starting to shoout: “Daddy, daddy!” He started to cry. He deleted all the friends´ phone numbers immediately and was for few weeks only with his daughter. Then, for two years, he worked in different positions doing mainly in constructions field but he all the time he was attracted by the drug issues somehow. So he applied for a job as an outreach worker in drop-in center. He was hired and after several weeks the number of clients increased from 30 to 120.

“…the people started to perceive me as one of them, I did not use any professional language, I used slang words, and they accepted me and started to bring their friends too. The worst feelings were when the people whom I used to hang around with and whom I used to sell drugs appeared there. But at the end, it helped. Like me, they also did not want to talk about the past, however, they were bringing other people bacause they knew me.”

“…so they can see on their own eyes that it is possible to stop. Also, we get lots of help from people who stopped using and they visit us from time to time. The others, who are still using, can see that they have good clothes, they are smoking good cigarettes, telling the stories as they were skiing in the mountains at the weekends and they are just impressed… they say… that guy was totally down and look, where he is now…”
__________
source: http://pavelwiredin.blogspot.com/

More Treatment & Detox Articles

Support Groups for Families of Addicts

It can be heartbreaking for a family to see a member suffering form drug or alcohol addiction. Many cannot understand how their loved one has turned to drugs or alcohol, and often feel guilty. It can be tremendously confusing, and extremely stressful for families to watch their loves one’s life being controlled by drugs or….

Kirklees Alcohol Advisory Service helping 3,000 alcoholics every year

Up To 10,000 people in Kirklees could have some form of issue with alcohol. The Kirklees Alcohol Advisory Service (KAAS) said they are approached by around 3,000 people a year seeking help for alcohol dependency. But chairman Norman Macleod believes there are many thousands more who, while not alcoholics, are not in control of their….

Low vitamin D heightens breast-cancer mortality rate

Disease twice as likely to spread in women deficient in the nutrient, study finds Women diagnosed with breast cancer are nearly twice as likely to have the disease spread to other parts of their bodies and are 73 per cent more likely to die from it if they have low levels of vitamin D, according….

How does narcotics anonymous work?

“Narcotics anonymous” is a non-profit organization, whose members recover from their addiction meeting regularly to share their experiences of recovery with others. In general, the senior members of this organization individually help the new members. Anyone with a desire to give up his or her addiction is free to join this organization. The funds are….

Benefits clampdown on heroin and crack users

Nearly 267,000 heroin and crack users are on benefits and will be required to own up to their drug problems and take treatment – or lose their money, James Purnell the work and pensions secretary, will say today. He will also announce measures that may take as many as 200,000 families out of child poverty…..