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sertiveness training, parenting, relationship skills and self image.
Laurie Brown, clinical coordinator of the program, believes that this approach is effective and necessary because all of these areas negatively affect women who have been abusing alcohol or other drugs. Lack of skills in these areas, as well as the physical disease of addiction itself, combine to keep women substance abusers from leading satisfying and fully productive lives.
“Women have long been ignored as a population critically in need of treatment,” said Ms. Brown. “While there are at least as many women who abuse alcohol and other drugs as there are men, until recently women have been basically neglected in terms of what kinds of treatment are most suitable and available for them.”
“Substance abuse and addiction, particularly in women, are often thought of as an urban problem,” she continued. “People picture the alcoholic and drug abusing woman as a poverty stricken uneducated female of the inner city. In fact, addiction occurs in the same proportion among educated and uneducated rural and city women.”
Ms. Brown says that Alternatives has made every effort to remove the barriers which might interfere with any woman getting treatment. “The usual obstacles that woman may have to getting professional help, such as cost, babysitting, privacy and transportation, have been addressed in our program.”
Ms. Brown is impressed with the fact that this planning district was one of those chosen to initiate such a program. She is enthusiastic about the cooperation she is receiving from doctors, personnel managers, the clergy and others, who she says “are in a position to be of help to women in the community who have substance abuse problems.”
She has also been requested to speak to community groups in the five-county area and plans to hold monthly information seminars at the program site in Culpeper for all interested persons. To register or obtain additional confidential information about Alternatives, call 825-2137 or 825-4343.
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