“What if addiction treatment programs gave out prizes to patients just for showing up to treatment? Some might call this a waste of money, or bribery, or counter-productive to addressing the underlying issues of addiction. Others say it actually helps patients succeed. Brandywine Counseling is studying this very question as part of the Advancing Recovery project.~ BCI Blog”
The good people over at Brandywine Counseling in Delaware have started a very interesting program that rewards continued attendance to treatment with small prizes.
Does bribing help in a recovery effort?
Read more below the fold…
Better known as BCI, Brandywine Counseling Inc is Delaware’s largest provider of outpatient addiction services and has a staff of 130 that includes certified alcohol and drug counselors, registered and licensed practical nurses, psychologists, and physicians. They have six different locations and are a full member of the United Way.
Since February of this year, BCI has offered small prizes as incentives for people to continue with their scheduled counseling sessions. For each successful attendance they are given a chance to draw from a fishbowl stocked with chances to win anything from a purely motivational certificate to a $75 gift certificate.
Is it working? Well, from the chart above they posted on their website I would say it was early but results send to be trending positive. It’s my opinion that any effort, whether coerced or not, to expose someone suffering from an addiction to an environment where options are available is worth a try.
I am sure there are many out there that are like myself when I was in the throes of my addiction; that feel there is absolutely no hope. I thought my addiction would kill me and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it except speed up the process. So maybe a little bribery couldn’t hurt, let these people see an environment where hope and recovery are in the realm of the possible. I doubt very seriously that a small prize would have been much of an incentive for me to become sober, but it sure wouldn’t have hurt for me to have seen more palatable options than a rock bottom death.
Summary: An incentive program might lure some of those who may have never had the opportunity to be exposed to a healthy environment where recovery is an option. While doubtful such small incentives would work when other incentives such as incarceration, humiliation, and threat of death have failed, just the change of environment might be the spark that later leads to positive thoughts of recovery.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Icerocket
of my concept that almost any move toward recovery should be considered positive whether it be court ordered or voluntary and regardless of the program. Of course positive and successful are very far from synonymous in this case.
but nothing is going to work until they hurt bad enough to want it. No gift certificate for "rock bottom" is there?
Hi, just wanted to say thanks for spreading the word about our incentives program. We know that other treatment providers and the recovering community will be interested to see what happens. More updates soon to come!
I have bribed my husband to attend meetings with such varied rewards as Taco Bell and oral sex. Whatever works...
that just might have a chance at working!
I used to work in the rehab racket throughout the 90's and into early 2000's. We used an incentive program for a bit way back in 1993 and it had fabulous results. It really doesn't not matter why or what keep an addict coming back. What matter is that they DO keep coming back -- and somewhere along the things, many of them hear something that makes for change in their lives.
Thanks for this important post.
Post new comment