Thoughts on an Airplane Flight

A week ago I was flying back from a week’s vacation in Minnesota. As usual on long flights, I browsed through the inflight magazines and was surprised by the number of ads for “executive dating services.”

Still, reading the ads, I noticed certain similarities to how we serve you. First was the notion of the time constraints busy and successful people face. Whether you’re looking to begin a romantic engagement with a suitable person, or to end your current relationship with alcohol, efficiency matters.

In our work there is an additional factor – you can’t afford to disappear for 30, 60, or 90 days without automatically ratting yourself out. But a week? With afternoons free to keep caught up? From a resort or other southern California location? Sounds like a working vacation to us – as it will to anyone else.

Next the ads stressed that their process winnows out unsuitable prospects. We do that in terms of protecting you from “programs” that don’t work and never have. I even reminded myself about that again on this trip by visiting the infamous Minnesota program that began the rehab con game.

Third, the ads are, seemingly at least, geared to financially well off professionals in their 30s and 40s. We too have a target group – educated, mature, competent women and men between, usually, the ages of 40 and 70.

Reading the ads I could see how their outreach and ours had many factors in common – primarily offering specific services to a select clientele whose needs are not being addressed in any of the traditional offerings.

All that without even delving into the “dating web sites chalk full of predators and pretenders?” just like 95% of all of the programs out there.

Private, confidential, cost effective, safe, research based, professional, affordable, and effective.

Why not let us help you to lose that “relationship” that’s ruining your peace of mind, if not your life, and make room for real relationships?

Misconceptions That Can Do You In

Recently I spent a fair amount of time talking with a Canadian woman who was considering working with us and also, at her request, one of her close friends. While the woman, who had been reading our newsletters for a long time, was well acquainted with the research, her friend wasn’t.

The problem? As you can guess, her friend still thought there was a connection between effectiveness and length of treatment. Of course that’s another industry myth since there is no correlation between length and outcomes.

If anything, the opposite is true.

That’s correct, by the way. In general, out-patient is more effective than residential, research based is far, far more effective than 12 Step, professionals provides better outcomes, and choices, than less educated para-professionals, and so on.

Of course if you want the best outcomes, the most options, and the least smoke and mirrors you’ll want an approach that combines the best of the typical options in a professional and private, as well as affordable, mosaic.

That’s the hybrid approach we have developed and which was described in our September 20th Newsletter article “Fish or Fowl? Apples or Oranges?”

In addition to the structure we provide, there are also the “tools.” These are delineated in Ending Alcohol Abuse: What Works.

And when you go home, we hang in there with you for at least another 12 weeks because your problem either gets resolved in your everyday life or it doesn’t get fixed.

So that’s where, at your request, we speak to friends and family members to start deprograming them from the cultural brainwashing we’ve all been subjected to and which presents one of the biggest threats to your success.

Really – don’t drink the alcohol, but don’t “drink the Kool Air” either.