A privately-run mental health counselling service is about to spread its wings and offer an addictions treatment program aimed at people seeking help while also holding down jobs and maintaining families.
Brazzoni and Associates will be offering an intensive out-patient program starting this Monday.
The idea is to change a person's ways on a permanent basis.
"The ultimate goal isn't just sobriety or reducing significant use of substance, it's addressing the underlying mood altering behaviour," clinical manager Laurie Zoppi said.
The program is run in partnership with Edgewood Health Network, which also operates outpatient centres in three other B.C. cities as well as in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Seattle.
It lasts 12 weeks and offers nine hours of counselling per week spread out over five sessions.
Two of the sessions are educational and focus on learning how addiction takes hold and developing coping strategies to avoid falling back into the old ways and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Those sessions are held in a group format, as are two "group process" sessions per week where patients share how their weeks have been going and how they have integrated what they have learned into their lives.
There are similarities with what's offered through Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Smart Recovery and patients in those groups are encouraged to continue with them.
On top of the group sessions, which last two hours each, each patient gets an hour of one-on-one counseling each week.
Patients must also agree to one urine analysis or "accountability test" per week.
"We can't have people actively detoxing while they're doing it," Zoppi warned. "If they're not capable of having at least a few consecutive days of sobriety, then this is not a program for them."
Northern Health offers a similar program but it requires an all-day commitment for eight weeks.
"In Prince George, we don't really have much geared to the working populations," Zoppi said.
Cost of the EHN program is $5,000 which may seem like a lot of money at first glance but can still be less than what some patients spend on drugs or alcohol or the cost of giving up time at work to attend a treatment program, Zoppi noted.
The tab is often been covered by an employer or through insurance.
Completing the program is only the first step. A year-long aftercare program is also provided at a cost of $2,100.
"A lot of people who come out of treatment all their problems are going to disappear and they're going to be happy," Zoppis said. "As a matter of fact, that first year of sobriety is really, really difficult because they realize that oh, it's not just about being abstinent."
The intensive outpatient program will be offered on a continual intake basis.
For more information, call 250-614-2261 or visit www.edgewood.ca.
