Getting Creative With Addiction Recovery

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Challenges:

Encourage incacerated participants in Substance Abuse Treatment for Criminal Offenders (SATCO) Program groups to communicate about their feelings, thoughts and addictions honestly while preserving their individual boundaries in a jail setting.

Encourage program participants to:

1. Assess and internalize the consequences of their addictions.
2. Internalize and participate in their own recovery.
3. Develop positive recovery habits/actions to counter the pull of deeply ingrained addictive thinking and behavior.

The jail environment discourages honest group sharing in two ways:

1. The rewards of "good time," "avoiding punishment," "earning liberties" and "not making waves" encourages participants to con, telling counselors and others in authority what they need to hear.

2. Inmates cannot appear "weak" in front of other inmates. Talking openly and honestly about feelings is severely restricted by peer pressure. Additionaly, peer pressure and the "us vs them" mentality further curtails honest participation.

Solutions:

Created and implemented innovative cognitive-behavioral-based curriculum (shown below).

Developed and used group brainstorming techniques and exercises culled my training and experience as an ad agency creative director. The exercises preserved individual boundaries and facilitated honest sharing in a covert way.

Developed drawing and worksheet exercises that encouraged participation, honest expression and still preserved the inmates' needs to preserve their "respect" in groups.

Stay OUT OF JAIL, FREE CARD

Used my Photoshop skills and a lamination machine to create a personalized, wallet-sized card for participants to carry with them. The back of the card was a personal list of actions they could take to get out of harm's way and not take that first drink or drug. It was their list. I did not censor it.