Staff featured in this video (in order of appearance):
- Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon, Founder and Service Director
- Richard Coltart, Outpatient Programme Unit Head
Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon
I founded the Start2Stop outpatient Evening Programme which is the programme designed for functioning, binge-pattern addicts and alcoholics who are probably living at home and have jobs. It’s a 14-week programme and is an ideal way to getting well and getting recovery while living at home and going to work.
Richard Coltart
It does lend itself well to people who have to continue working or who have family lives in which they need to be engaged. We get people from all quarters, quite a lot of primary residents, a primary treatment residents will come onto the IOP to follow up from whatever program they’ve had.
The IOP is really good at helping people discern the why behind their addictive behaviour. In primary treatment, you’re coming into this space where prior to that life was probably pretty unmanageable. There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of consequences. There’s a lot of fallout, both with work, with family, with friends. And you sort of get to the end of those 30 days, say, if you’ve been in primary treatment and you might have had a detox. But essentially, it’s a stabilising period where symptomatically we’re just sort of calming things down.
But actually where the IOP then steps in beautifully is it starts to question the why. Well, why did you drink like that? Or why did you take drugs like that? Or why did you feel the need to act out like that? Because there’s always a driver.
There is a lot of work for clients to do in terms of their own input, life stories, written exercises, a lot of group work, one-to-one work. It’s quite involved. In our experience, the more people put in, the more they get out. Some of the recovery stories, and I include mine in that, having come through the IOP and the Evening Programme as a client, a testament to the fact that it really does work if you put in the time.
It does inevitably require a degree of motivation. I wouldn’t say it’s a program that’s designed for those who are particularly ambivalent around getting well or who feel particularly resistant. There needs to be a motivation to get well, motivation for change.
But it’s very interesting to see how that motivation changes over the course of the programme. When people sort of stumble through the door, the chances are that there are other motivating factors at play. That might be the threat of a marriage ending. That could be an employment issue. That could be friends disappearing. That could be, money draining from a bank account. There’s normally a sort of a hand in the back that gets someone to the door.
In terms of people, once they’re here and if they engage well, that motivation shifts. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. The motivation actually shifts towards doing it for themselves rather than doing it for others and understanding that they’re worth looking after.
In terms of transformations of people coming through the programme, I mean, just in my personal experience, some of them have been huge. People have arrived here with marriages gone, with no work, no friendships, booted out of home. And, 14 weeks later, 100 days later, we’ve got marriages that are back on track, people thriving at work, people looking after themselves, people with whole new friendship groups, as well as, rekindling old friendships. It is a life-saving programme and it’s a life-saving exercise. But it’s more than just the physical life. It’s actually bringing a life back together.
If you would like to find out more about our Evening Programme for Addictions and how Start 2 Stop can help then please get in touch here.