Recovery counseling is based on a new paradigm for alcohol and drug counseling. Before I explain this new concept, let’s discuss the model that has dominated the field for over eighty years. The paradigm that has dominated the field views people suffering from alcoholism and other drug addictions as one self. This model is based on the notion that people who are alcoholics or addicts have been infected by some biological disease-causing process. A version of this idea is voiced in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous where Dr. Silkworth describes alcoholism as “an allergy of the body coupled by an obsession in the mind†(1970).
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