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Its very frustrating when people involved in phone counselling don't know much about the system they work within. If you are told to call the local ATODS centre for help, it raises hopes beyond reasonable expectations in belief that accessing support will be easy. Unfortunately it is not easy, and instilling a false belief that it will be raises hopes only to have them expertly dashed in a typical functionary manner by someone else. Without the knowledge that it will be difficult, the very act of trying to access help will serve to make you feel frustrated and worse for the attempt.
This begins when calling ATODS (on the advice of an ADIS phone counsellor) to ask if you can see someone, whereupon you are told "it doesn't work like that." You must tell some random person who doesn't function under a confidentiality agreement "what your problem is" and wait (up to 48 hours) for someone to return your call for a phone interview to determine what (if any) assistance they can provide you. It was made clear to me that the worse the 'problem', the less time it would take before contact would be returned. Besides this being completely unethical as this is not a system of triage, one supposes that for the next 48 hours you either bite your nails to the quick, or do drugs to cope with the stress of help being close to inaccessible.
The worse part about this is that having been through this wringer before, after the initial frustration I remembered the assistance provided is quite minimal (its hard to understand how I managed to forget this). Counselling is probably the most proven effective path to wellness in coping with drug dependency but counsellors are at a disadvantage because drug addicts lie. Presenting to a counselling session as a self-confirmed drug addict it must be assumed you will lie about your mental state, the nature and level of your addiction/dependency, and still treat you accordingly and with compassion. This is incredibly difficult.
An hour later (or earlier especially if your initial contact is early Monday morning) when you get a call from a nurse for an assessment you'll feel pretty silly for going through the above emotional rollercoaster. But its amazing how even such a small bad contact with someone answering the phone at an ATODS centre can colour the whole experience. It seems that if the person answering phones on the front desk of a centre is negative then you get completely turned off even asking for help, the emotional response being that its pointless because this person is saying your chances of recieving help (if at all) are minimal at best. Why do they do that? Ideally there would be a program in place to educate people into reaffirming that it is good to ask for help, that help is at hand, and that treatment can be effective.
Obviously we are not Panglossian enough in our outlook to wellness, or maybe people who function within the ATODS system feel they exist in this, the worst of all possible worlds?
This begins when calling ATODS (on the advice of an ADIS phone counsellor) to ask if you can see someone, whereupon you are told "it doesn't work like that." You must tell some random person who doesn't function under a confidentiality agreement "what your problem is" and wait (up to 48 hours) for someone to return your call for a phone interview to determine what (if any) assistance they can provide you. It was made clear to me that the worse the 'problem', the less time it would take before contact would be returned. Besides this being completely unethical as this is not a system of triage, one supposes that for the next 48 hours you either bite your nails to the quick, or do drugs to cope with the stress of help being close to inaccessible.
The worse part about this is that having been through this wringer before, after the initial frustration I remembered the assistance provided is quite minimal (its hard to understand how I managed to forget this). Counselling is probably the most proven effective path to wellness in coping with drug dependency but counsellors are at a disadvantage because drug addicts lie. Presenting to a counselling session as a self-confirmed drug addict it must be assumed you will lie about your mental state, the nature and level of your addiction/dependency, and still treat you accordingly and with compassion. This is incredibly difficult.
An hour later (or earlier especially if your initial contact is early Monday morning) when you get a call from a nurse for an assessment you'll feel pretty silly for going through the above emotional rollercoaster. But its amazing how even such a small bad contact with someone answering the phone at an ATODS centre can colour the whole experience. It seems that if the person answering phones on the front desk of a centre is negative then you get completely turned off even asking for help, the emotional response being that its pointless because this person is saying your chances of recieving help (if at all) are minimal at best. Why do they do that? Ideally there would be a program in place to educate people into reaffirming that it is good to ask for help, that help is at hand, and that treatment can be effective.
Obviously we are not Panglossian enough in our outlook to wellness, or maybe people who function within the ATODS system feel they exist in this, the worst of all possible worlds?
