I have spent the past three days in prison—literally.  Fortunately, I was there to work not serve time.  Earlier this year I was asked to be part of an innovative pilot program by Options Recovery’s Tom Gorham.  Mr. Gorham is also the President Elect of CAADAC (California Association of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselors) tasked to deliver a 270 hour alcohol/drug counselor training program.  This project is committed to helping a group of 51 inmates at Solano State Prison in Vacaville California to become certified addiction counselors through CAADAC.

Many people in prison today—it could be as many as 60-80 percent—are in prison due to alcohol or other drug related legal problems.  One of the main reasons recidivism is so high is also alcohol and other drug related.  Even people who get into recovery behind the bars are at high risk for relapse upon release do to the stressful change of environment and other obstacles placed in their way.

The group I’m working with is in a special unit that the men fondly call the “House of Solace.”  It is being spearheaded by Sol Irving.  I’m going to send a copy of this blog to Mr. Irving and see if he would be willing to write a posting for me to put up in the next few days.  My hope is that he will explain the history and reasoning that is behind this project and how he sees it impacting the institution.

I wrote last month that I spent several days teaching these men the Denial Management Counseling process and now this week we completed a 20 hour Relapse Prevention Counseling process.  We had several groups visit us during this training including the director and several members of the California Prison Board of Parole Hearings as well as State Substance Abuse Professional Regional Managers.

I am once again awed by the dedication and hard work these 51 individuals exhibited during our three days together.  One important part of the Relapse Prevention Counseling process is to go through a 17 point High Risk Situation List that highlights the common high risk situations that have led people to relapse.  Unfortunately, this list does not really apply to a prison environment but not to worry as these men developed their own list.

The men are already in groups of 4-6 per table and I gave each table two of the original high risk situations to modify to make them prison-environment-specific.  The last table was tasked to develop three new high risk situations that were prison-specific.  They did an awesome job.  They can be proud to take this new instrument and start using it during their practicum with other inmates that need addiction services at the prison.  These men will be true instruments of change.

Many of these men are serving life-sentences and will never be released but now they will have purpose and help others who are going back out.  They will be responsible for significantly reducing the recidivism rate by helping their peers get and stay clean and sober.  One of the biggest reasons for parole failure and re-offending is alcohol and other drug related, so this could have major impact if it starts spreading to other prison populations.

The staff is already starting to plan for a second group and my hope is that this program will be re-created in many other settings as soon as possible.  In addition, they are planning to bring Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings back into the prison and this group of men will be instrumental in helping make these meetings successful.  I also suggested that they have Al-Anon meetings for this group of men as they will be working with alcoholics and addicts and will need to have this type of support to help keep them emotionally sober.

In additon to Relapse Prevention and Denial Management, I’m teaching these men about the Gorski-CENAPS® Developmental Model of Recovery. I also include a motivational and hamr reduction approach in the begining with the goal being total abstinence. You can learn more about my views on harm reduction in my article Harm Reduction versus Abstinence for Addiction Recovery that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

We have two Addiction-Free Pain Management®Trainings scheduled this Spring — one in Sacramento California in May and the one at Valley Forge Medical Center and Hospital in June. It’s not to late for people to sign up and in fact by mentioning this Blog I will make sure you get a $20 discount for either training. To get this discount you must call Ellen at (916) 575-9961 and ask her for the discount. Also, for these and other upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are living with chronic pain, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively, please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.