Working with Drug Users?

Question
How do you work with drug users?

Answer
I take very few drug addiction cases any more unless the person is willing to first go through treatment at a center designed to help them get off the stuff. Without that, you end up with a client you can't count on - either in getting to their appointments, or in being off the stuff for 48 hours before seeing you. Once the person has been through treatment, then, our sessions have a chance of being effective. I tell such potential clients that I'm hard-nosed, and will cease all treatment if they miss an appointment or cancel at the last minute, or if I catch them lying to me. I also insist upon payment PRIOR to any appointment. I have found that getting someone to stop taking drugs isn't enough. The real challenge is for them to re-define themselves. They have known themselves, sometimes for years, only as someone who tries to get enough money for drugs, who takes the drugs, and then tries to get more money for more drugs - on infinitum. Without the drugs, they don't know what to do with themselves; and they no longer know "who" they really are. They also have to deal with creating a whole new set of relationships. Once treatment starts, it seems like drug dealers come out of the woodwork to try to get them back on to the stuff. So you have to deal with their recovery of self, as well as getting into a totally different energy and environment that rejects drug use as a way of dealing with insecurities and other psychological and social issues. (By the way, just sending someone to another city or town probably won't be adequate, since they always seem to know how to seek how drug dealers.) The person, also, has to be willing to go to the source of the addictiveness, and to have the past released from its hold over the person. This is certainly something I would do, myself, with any user. Because of this necessity, the first session I have with a client is an intensive interview/intake on their background from childhood. My first job is to deal with the source of the addictiveness. I have created a couple of scripts that are designed to get to the causal imprints and change them. Then we have to get them to stop the drug habit. (I have scripts I've created that do both. Also, I have several scripts that are focused upon releasing the past. Then there are other scripts, and techniques, of course, for dealing with self-esteem and any other problems the client might have. I think serious narcotic drug usage is one of the hardest problems to deal with. Prescription drug use is more easily released. Also, I feel that the best-qualified person to work with it is, at minimum, a counselor who uses hypnotic methods, rather than one who is only a hypnotherapist. Maximally, it would be great if the counselor were also trained in chemical dependency.