Skip to main content

Addiction and Recovery

By September 1, 2014Addiction, Recovery, Treatment

As we try to understand addiction and recovery, it has become increasingly clear that most people do not recover by following the most frequently prescribed methods. The private, for profit treatment industry is primarily based on abstinence from drugs of abuse and compliance with insight oriented therapy and 12 step recovery groups. This method is most often prescribed because it is thought to be the best that we have for treating addiction and no other methods have been shown to be more effective. However, relatively few treated individuals maintain complete abstinence and aftercare compliance with “the program” This leads to the perception of a very low positive outcome rate for addiction treatment as a whole.

Outcome research with privately treated addiction patients is notoriously difficult. Most available data comes from the follow up patients that we can easily see over time. One small set of follow up patients we call “compliant”. These are the patients that we see in post treatment after care groups and therapy and who appear to be involved in 12 step community support. The other small set that we can easily see is the “non-compliant group”. These are the patients who present in need of additional treatment following “relapse” and who almost universally report that they were non-complaint with the treatment plan. Unfortunately, both of the groups are relatively small as a percentage of the total population who have received addiction treatment. When each of these groups (“compliant” and “non-compliant”) are combined they represent, at best less than twenty percent (20%) and probably less that fifteen percent (15%) of this population. We have then used this low percentage data to reach a compliance based solution called “it works if you work it”. The implication is that we have a plan that will work if you are compliant and you will not get better of you are not.

The problem is that both of these groups may be outliers in this model.  They may not represent the addiction treated population as a whole. In fact, they probably do not.

Pam Moore

Author Pam Moore

Pam received her Master’s of Social Work from the University of Alabama in 1993. She has worked both as a manager and a principal therapist at The Moore Institute. Her major interests are in addiction disorders, co-dependency, trauma, and mood disorders. Pam works with individuals couples and families. She is an intuitive, interactive solution-focused therapist. She integrates complementary methodologies and techniques so she can offer a highly personalized approach to each of her clients with compassion and understanding. She works with clients to help them build on their strengths. Pam developed The Method which is featured in her book Show Me The Way while working through her own personal struggles. She received so much help from The Method she offered it to her clients with great success. Pam also authored 3 books titled Unhook and live Free, Show Me The Way, and a meditative journal titled Inward to the Kingdom, a Six Week Journey. She is Vice President of the Addiction Research Foundation, as well as the President of The Moore Institute.

More posts by Pam Moore