Full Spectrum Recovery

The Goal of Abstinence:

While Full Spectrum therapists maintain a nonjudgmental approach regarding a client's marijuana use and their current readiness to change, we also support the primary goal of this treatment as abstinence from marijuana use.  Full Spectrum Recovery therapists encourage clients to try abstinence or to work toward abstinence.

Because adolescent clients, more specifically, generally vary in their motivation or readiness to stop marijuana use completely, our clinicians are trained to work with clients' varying degrees of commitment as they move through the processes of change.  Less motivated clients are helped to recognize the negative consequences of use and to identify their ambivalence, thereby creating an opportunity to consider change.  With highly motivated clients, the therapist will help them to verbalize, clarify and strengthen their own motivation to change.  We are always alert to underlying feelings of ambivalence and will quickly address these issues so they will not undermine the client's progress.

We will also encourage the cessation of other substance use in addition to abstaining from marijuana use.  We consider this necessary in order to maximize the client’s ability to learn about themselves while substance-free and to prevent substitution of other drugs for marijuana.  We find this to be the most ethical and helpful stance to take with teen clients.  This stance decreases the possibility that marijuana use will lead to a “gateway” phenomenon, i.e., the use of other drugs. Many feel that if abstinence is ever broken, the change attempt has been a total failure.  We recognize that the path to change is rarely a straight one, and that slips are a normal part of the difficult process of change.  Slips are seen as opportunities to learn.  Guilt and self-blame are ineffective as change processes. We honor the human experience and help our clients to learn from their choices.