The other great waste of time and energy is to treat addicts and alcoholics for their underlying psychological problems while they are still using drugs or drinking. It is like trying to play chess with somebody when they are under an anaesthetic.

True, addicts and alcoholics display quite remarkable emotional and behavioural disorders, but many of these are the result of, not the cause of, their drug-using or drinking. If drugs or drink are stopped, many of these problems fall away.

‘I went to see lots of psychiatrists while I was using heroin,’ remembers Carol, a

twenty-nine-year-old addict who is three years into recovery. ‘It didn’t work. They would usually tell me to stop taking heroin and put me on tranquillisers. I was also put in a lot of nursing homes, but there was no follow-up treatment afterwards. I just went out and started using again. I didn’t know what else to do.

‘Once I was put in a behaviour-modification centre. It was all done on rewards and punishments. I had to learn how to behave and be good. I left that place and after two months I went back on heroin.’

Addicts and alcoholics sometimes do need therapy for their emotional disorders, but they need it after they have stopped using drugs and drink. That is the time that some of them need professional help, in order to learn how to live a new and happy life.

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Many professionals spend a great deal of their time and energy trying to help addicts or alcoholics in the hope that if their outward circumstances are improved they may do something about their drugs or drinking.

Quite often addicts or alcoholics put up a very good case for that help. They say, and indeed they honestly believe it to be true, that they would be more likely to stop drugs if they were in a new environment. Or they maintain that they only drink because their outward circumstances are so desperate.

‘When you take drugs, you turn nice. You start talking nice. Most addicts are very nice people and they can manipulate very well. It’s only when they haven’t got the drug that they can turn nasty.

‘I had a probation officer who was very good, but I just manipulated him by not telling the truth, by not telling him how much I was taking.’

Alibis and excuses are a way of life for addicts and alcoholics. They are not only conning those around them, they are also desperately conning themselves. The truth is that helping them with their outward circumstances before they stop using drugs or drinking is a waste of energy.   Changing the environment does not change the person if that person is chemically dependent.

We did not believe this when we first came into contact with addicts, even though we were told it. ‘In particular,’ writes Jim Ditzler, ‘I wasted a lot of time and energy when I was working in a vocational rehabilitation centre in the USA. I was put in charge of career problems.

‘My superior in the office told me that it was no use helping addicts and alcoholics until they had stopped using drugs and stopped drinking. It was just a waste of my time. The time to help them was when they had been off the drugs and drink for some time.

‘I did not believe him. The alcoholics came to me and told me “What I need is a job. Then I will be able to get my drinking under control.” I would go to enormous lengths to help them, giving them tests, looking round for opportunities, and then at the last minute they wouldn’t show up.

‘I began to see that I was a complete fool who was just being sucked in by their hard-luck stories. I began to approach the problem in the opposite order. First I would find them treatment for their alcohol and addiction problems, and then help them find a job after they came out of treatment. In that order, it worked.’

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