The “ON CONCEPT” Substance use intervention
I devised this concept many years ago to support service users in addressing their relationship with substances. Hope this is of use.
ADDICTION. When a drug user becomes a slave to their poison. When a drug user chooses to make their willpower unemployed.
CONTRADICTION. When a drug user keeps stating they are going to challenge their relationship with drugs and stop using, yet never do. This then leaves room for the addiction to say to the contradiction, ” stop fighting me, you have been doing it for many years and you always end up using. Stop fighting against me, and join me. You know you want to. ” This is how the Addiction gets its muscles and gets stronger.
PREDICTION. If a user says they are going to do something with their addiction and they carry this out, it then lays a foundation to challenge the Addiction and inform it that it has been lying to them all these years. The individual can they say to the addiction, “I didn’t use today and I’m OK”. If they continue using the prediction they can guarantee it will lead to deterioration
JUSTIFICATION. It is not possible to use a drug without creating some form of a justification
REASON. After years of using they will start to call the justification a reason and the addiction says to the user, “of course you’re using, you have a valid reason”, and they have now made the using legitimate.
DETERIORATION. if they keep on using in this way they will experience a level of deterioration whether it be physical, financial, mental, etc
The above is what keeps a client in their substance use. The list below is what they need to focus on if they want to address their substance use
DETERMINATION. They will need this to overcome the obstacles they will face, and in order to do this, they will have to dip into their natural resources.
INFORMATION
To gather as much information as possible in order to counteract the information received from their drug of choice, as much of this information is untrue.
TRANSFORMATION
To use the information gathered from above in order to initiate the changes needed to overcome their substance use.
MOTIVATION. The word “motive” is derived from this word. If they remember the original motive of why they decided to stop using Substances, it can give them an incentive not to lapse.
ACTION
The client needs to remember that if you remove the ‘I’ from Action, you have “act on, and unless the client acts on what they need to do and not what they want to do, they will carry on using.
It is named the “ON CONCEPT” because everything ends in ON. But more importantly, if a service user doesn’t understand the dynamics of their relationship with substances, their using will go ON and ON and ON.
Christopher Robin
Founder & Managing Director
Enigma Drug & Alcohol Consultancy Ltd
