The twelve-step programme

Rehabilitation at our centre is built on a professional psychotherapeutic process that uses elements of the twelve-step programme. The word “elements” is not a hedge here — it describes precisely what happens.

Where the twelve steps came from

This is the oldest and most widely used system of recovery from addiction in the world, built not on medication but on changing the way a person relates to themselves. It appeared long before the World Health Organization officially recognised alcoholism and drug addiction as illnesses in 1956, and it remains the foundation of most serious rehabilitation programmes today.

Its central idea matches our own view of the illness: addiction cannot be defeated by willpower, because willpower is precisely what the illness has damaged. What can be learned is a way of living that keeps the illness halted, one day at a time.

What this means in practice

The first thing, and the hardest, is admitting it. As long as a person believes they are in control of their use, no work is possible: whatever you say will be reworked by denial into the argument “my case is different”. That is why the first part of the programme is given over to an honest look at their own history.

The second is work on the consequences. The person draws up a real list of what has been destroyed: relationships, work, money, health, trust. This is not a punishment and not an exercise in shame — it is a way of seeing the full scale of it for the first time, with nothing softened.

The third is recovery itself. This is where a new way of living takes shape: how to respond to stress, how to ask for help, how not to be left alone with the thought of using. This is what we call a programme of personal growth, and without it abstinence does not hold.

Why elements, rather than the programme in its pure form

The classic twelve steps are the programme of self-help fellowships, where there are no professionals and people help one another. Our centre works differently. A psychologist works with the person in treatment, and there is assessment, detox, an individual course of treatment and medical monitoring of their condition.

So we take from the twelve steps what years of practice have proved, and build it into a professional psychotherapeutic process. Each side strengthens the other: the specialist supplies the method, while the group work supplies what no specialist can — the example of someone who has been through the same thing and come back to a normal life.

Former patients of the centre take part in the programme. For someone who has only just arrived, that counts for more than anything we can say.