Substance Abuse Therapy Positive and Negative Outcomes

Introduction

Although a great majority of those individuals who are involved in substance abuse believe that they have what it takes to manage and monitor their substance consumption, very few of them manage to strike this delicate balance of maintaining a healthy inclination to substance use in the long run. This primarily follows from the biological fact that extensive substance use bears a substantial alteration of ones cognitive functions that persist even when one puts a halt to substance use (NIDA, 2011, p. 1). In this view, therefore, quite often than not most substance users are entrapped by the addictive snare of substance abuse, a state difficult to reverse. In a nutshell, this highlights the indispensable role played by substance abuse therapists, in providing rehabilitative measures to curb this drug abuse scourge.

Unexpected Client Disposition and Therapists Response to these Mishaps

Nonetheless, it is not always easy for a substance abuse therapist to effect the necessary intervention measures, given that such critical and unexpected events as self-denial, truancy, and depression may suppress the client from cooperating with the therapist. Firstly, Self-denial makes one reserved in his/her despair of drug addiction; it binds ones cognitive perception such that one would hardly admit that drug abuse is a challenge one would have to deal with. As such, it saps and weakens the initial intrinsic drive of willingness to overcome this vice of substance abuse, thus, it becomes very difficult for the therapist to institute any remedial measures in this event of reduced personal client initiative (Smith, 2010, p. 1). As in the case scenario of a client who is accompanied by his/her family members in the intervention session, such failure of acknowledgment may trigger a tense environment where the family members may have an accusing figure towards the client, ultimately, this would adversely hamper a conducive environment in which progressive and sustainable intervention measures can be instituted. The most effective intervention measure to this interruption is to carry preliminary counseling advising the family members on the threshold level of conduct required of them during the intervention session, and above all, facilitate an open forum optimizing client participation.

The prescription of necessary medications and behavioral therapies may take a while for any tangible fruit of the intervention to be evident, it is thus a custom that most drug patients get bored with the routine clinical examination, and if they do not develop a new outlook to life, they mostly have an irresistible yearning for the same drugs they had withdrawn from to fill up the vacuum in their lives. Persistent client truancy from clinical checkups, therefore, describes the second unexpected interruption to effecting therapy (Mark, 2008, p. 1). To curb this disruption of persistent truancy to therapy proper counseling should be done to the client, to avert the tendency of the client resigning to failure.

Citing the global statistics- a substantial number (29%) of an individual with mental challenges are also victims of drug abuse. Depression resulting from mental instability is the third unexpected occurrence that may hamper the effectiveness of therapy. The intervention measure for mental disruptions is to resolve both substance abuse as well as mental challenge at once within the course of therapy.

Positive and Negative outcomes of Substance abuse Therapy

It is arguable that the positive outcomes of substance abuse therapy outweigh the negative ones. This follows from the fact that, whereas clients spent a lot of money to procure drug therapy, the accompanying fruits of a rested self-control, boosted self-esteem, an enhanced positive outlook, and the restoration of bodily stamina realized through substance abuse therapy cannot be underestimated (The Family Compass, 2006, p. 1).