"Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug addiction."

The notion that a person suffering from addiction or alcoholism (or both diseases) can be or should be treated for just that disease is an old way of thinking that has been disproved for many years... Unfortunately, too many treatment providers (not including Sober Coaches and Sober Companions from Sober Champion) still believe they can address a person's multiple needs by focusing exclusively on their substance abuse patterns.

This way of viewing treatment is, in our opinion, Stone Aged. Too often, persons suffering from addiction also suffer from a variety of other disorders. Some of these are organic brain dysfunction; some are environmental traumas; and often, there is an admixture between the two.

To focus exclusively on addiction treatment, whether using a Sober Companion or not, will not effectively get the client to address all the issues that might instigate a relapse. While relapse is is no way a requirement, it can be an indication that some element in treatment is missing.

Relapse should lead an experience professional Sober Coach or Sober Companion to seek out those areas in the client which might not yet have been addressed.

The NIDA research backs up our view. Persons whose entire history are taken into account, who have devoted, professional treatment providers, and who are, themselves, armed with adequate information and artillery, are much less likely to relapse.

So how does a newly recovering person gain this crucial perspective? We feel the best way is by spending substantial time with Sober Champion personnel who are trained to identify and address the client's multiple needs.

Most importantly, we feel this: Every single client we treat has multiple needs. We always look for a wide variety, and we never attempt to simple "treat the addiction".