The Transtheoretical Model

According to the transtheoretical model, people tend to move through different stages on the road to recovery. The beginning of the journey is the precontemplation stage, which exists prior to awareness of a drug problem. The lack 

People in precontemplation learn to comply quickly if forced to do so by the circumstances of treatment. Many of my clients have told me they learned to talk the talk, so to speak, in order to get through a previous treatment that had been coerced. Precontemplators often learn to become dishonest because they are not allowed by the circumstances to be sincere in coerced treatment. An alternative is to make treatment a safe place for a person in precontemplation to express doubts about a drug problem, and to discuss the joys of drug use as well as the 

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Adopting a social learning approach in the context of the transtheoretical model of change not only provides an understanding of addiction behaviour which accounts for the observed phenomena, it also informs and directs responses to produce a wide variety of interventions which are able to meet the demands of the whole spectrum of drug problems rather than the very select few currently catered for. 

Relapse does not just suddenly happen without warning or without reason. Research into the processes of relapse has identified a rather predictable chain of events that lead up to it (see Figure 7.1). Moreover, the fact that a client slips into old behavior once does not mean all is lost. On the contrary, a slip offers a tremendous opportunity for both client and therapist or counselor to improve upon the recovery plan. A slip identifies a weakness in the recovery plan and offers an indication of how to improve it. Remembering the transtheoretical stages of change model (see Chapter 3), a relapse is viewed as part of the change cycle and as a fairly common occurrence when a person learns how to overcome a drug problem. So there is no need to panic if a relapse occurs. 

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