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success depends on accepting complexity

November 2008 - Editorial, by Bruno Ferrari, Executive Director

Control systems cannot limit the essence of the programs and activities that we offer to people suffering from addiction, nor can they define all of the elements of any program that needs to be designed to match the specific idiosyncrasies of an individual.

I want to react to a speech, that was given by Chantale Perron at the CRAN’s conference the 22 to 24 of last October in Montreal. Chantale is a peer mentor for Meta d’âme, a peer-to-peer organization. The speech was about her experience with addiction and was titled “From Addiction to Self-help”.

Her testimony offered several keys to learning how to work with addicted persons. Chantale reminded us that we can achieve better results by considering the many methods and resources each person may have been utilizing on his/her path to an autonomous life, rather than measuring the results of isolated interventions that we, or our organizations, are able to provide.

In addition, she called for us to understand how much complexity we must face in determining how to work with people living with, or at risk of developing, addictive behaviors. We understand that any method comes with a tendency to simplify. However, drawing up procedures to guide the intervention should not take us away from our responsibility, as counselors (social workers, managers, public health directors, etc.) to recognize that systems exist only to help us organize our work, not to limit it.

As a matter of fact, addicted persons, apart from suffering from dependency, understand why we appear in their lives, and they respond to all of the same characteristics of life as does any non-addicted person, including having qualities and preferences, dreams and specific needs, responding better to certain environments, having feelings, perhaps families, etc. - just as we do. No system can simplify a relationship that has to be established between two complex individuals when we undertake to support a person in attempting to better the condition of his/her life.

Beyond this consideration, I can understand that social and health expenses have to be organized in such a way as to guarantee the responsible and transparent administration of public funds, and to respond to other organizational matters. But these control systems cannot limit the essence of the programs and activities that we offer to people suffering from addiction, nor can they define all of the elements of any program that needs to be designed to match the specific idiosyncrasies of an individual. Watch out for over-simplification!!!

Chantale shows us, and I absolutely endorse the idea, that all good practices start by practicing common sense. We have to give to our work, each and every day, the fundamental sense that brought us to our decision to be involved, somehow, in helping vulnerable people.

I want to thank Chantale for highlighting the individualities of drug users, and for explaining how much they need, as we do, to develop a hope for a better future by experiencing success, huge success maybe, but, perhaps more importantly, small successes which, added to one another, are usually part of the complex path to rehabilitation and autonomy. 

Thank you for your interest. 
Bruno

bruno.ferrari@dianova.ca