I don't believe that individual therapy in itself, particularly with a therapist who is not in recovery from addiction themselves, is very effective at providing a client with what is needed to achieve an enduring recovery as opposed to simply stopping their drug or behaviour of choice through learning coping strategies . Therapy is however an immensely useful adjunct to other more focused well established 12 Step Programme work in Fellowships it might come as a surprise to many that the Fellowship AA,NA etc recovery programmes employ many techniques we would otherwise understand as CBT . Therapy can also address issues that are identified only when a person gets into recovery, that may otherwise destabilise them back into addictive patterns again. Addicts are no different to the rest of the population in this respect - except for one significant issue; that there is also abundant evidence that an addict's emotional development frequently slows down at the age at which active addiction starts.
I know this is not the view of many therapists working with addiction. But I argue that therapists aren't comfortable with the notion that for this sort of client, a free fellowship programme provides a better chance of recovery for most than paid for therapy. My reasons are that:
- Active addicts hold a core belief that we are special, that no-one understands us, that if only other people had our lives they too would drink, drug, act out at whatever. We needed to learn that we're not special at all, apart from having wonky genes, whether epigenetically or through straight forward gene transmission. Even then in the light of what we now know about neuroplasticity, we can create new healthy neural pathways that support a transformed life in recovery. Fellowship groups are great levellers in this respect, whereas one to one therapy unlike group therapy tends to unconsciously reinforce the belief of uniqueness, that we are different to other clients.
- Most counsellors set out with objectives to either find the cause of a presenting issue and then resolve it, or work with clients in developing coping strategies and better management techniques to minimise the issue. Identifying the cause is an unsolved puzzle despite the best efforts of years of research funds, and merely offering coping or management strategies often does not remove the obsession to drink, use drugs or act out and leaves an addict in a 'dry drunk state'.
