MelindaFlowers

Hi Darklide,

My name is Melinda and I am in the early stages of sobering up off alcohol. My life had become completely unmanageable and I was slowly killing myself.

I am going to write my feelings in just a train-of-thought style. Here you go:

When I was a struggling teenager I went to a psychologist to work out issues with being gay. Even at 15, if the counselor had not been a lesbian I would not have trusted her any further than I could throw her. She would have absolutely no idea what she was talking about, what I was going through, except for what she had read in a textbook.

I think you could do it and maybe be good at it, but you would never understand the thoughts/motives/feelings or the madness that we addicts feel deep down, in our heads.

There is no logic to it. Sure there's lot of scientific studies and statistics, but I just feel like when someone is sitting there with a counselor for an hour, pouring out their deepest thoughts/feelings/urges/regrets/hopes it is very personal.

The word I am trying to get at here is credibility. Like I said, this is all written just as it comes to my sleep-deprived mind so I apologize if I am making weird generalizations.

I am new in my recovery, going it on my own so far. However, if and when I decide that I want to see an addiction specialist I would expect the first meeting to go something like this: The counselor would introduce themselves and give a brief overview of their history of addiction. If they didn't have any, I would not feel confident. I would feel like I had more to teach them and they did for me.

On all the intervention and addiction documentaries I have watched, the interventionist/therapist has always had a history with addiction. Often at the climax of the intervention when the addict walks out of the room the interventionist follows them out, usually for a cigarette, and tells their own war stories and how they got better. An alcoholic facing rehab won't listen to someone tell them the time of day unless they have experienced addiction .The employees in the treatment centers have almost always had a history with addiction.

If you had grown up in a house full of alcoholics that would give half the credibility score. If you did not and have never experienced addiction, the credibility score would be zero in the simple "I've been there" sense.

I am concerned that you will appear cutesy , trite , and presumptuous if you decide to go ahead with this.

Well there you have it.

I would recommend going into a completely different direction with your counseling career.