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I read an article today about a young Russian immigrant who was introduced to heroin when she was 12. She was addicted for several years and didn’t stop using heroin until a friend overdosed and died. I guess that was the degree of impact she needed to finally decide enough is enough – obviously, what happened to her friend could just as easily have happened to her. Although the article didn’t mention whether or not she had done drug detox, it did say she had gone through rehab several times.

One of the reasons she never got through drug rehab successfully is that the people in the rehab programs she did didn’t speak her language – literally: she spoke Russian, they spoke English. The language barrier would have made it all but impossible.

Communication is a basic in drug detox and drug rehab. If you can’t talk to someone, it’s difficult for them to help you through the drug detox process and, when drug rehab starts, you can’t get down to the reasons the person is taking drugs in the first place. You also can’t give them the tools they need to handle their problems. In fact, you can’t even find out what their problems are.

The other barrier she would have experienced stems from the fact that she came from an environment, the former Soviet Union, where you just don’t say what’s on your mind – especially if you want to say something negative. It just wasn’t safe. So, even if she did speak English, the drug detox and rehab counselor would have had to have pretty sophisticated communication skills to make her feel safe enough to talk about her problems.

A successful drug treatment program is based in large part on communication. If you want to ensure you or someone you care about gets through a drug detox program and drug rehab successfully, make sure that the counselors have the communication skills necessary to get the addict to open up and to make them feel safe enough to discuss their problems.

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