Regional Alcohol and Drug Program

The purpose of this Program, in operation since 1996, is to co-operate and exchange experience with specialists and organisations from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the field of fighting addictions. We provide a variety of forms of training specialists in the field of prevention and treatment of alcohol and drug addiction, as well as of educating families of the addicted.

A crucial field of regional co-operation involves the transfer of our experience gained in managing the Atlantis alcohol addict treatment program, which – thanks to our initiative and assistance – for the past 11 years has been run with great success in Polish prisons. Over the past years, we have also been sharing our experience in setting up therapy programs for perpetrators of crime of violence, both in and out of inmate communities.

In 2003, educational work forming part of the Program involved 16 seminars and workshops for specialists in addiction therapy and prevention. Such seminars were held in Bulgaria, Georgia, Latvia, Russian Federation, in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, and Tadzhykistan. Three seminars were organised in Poland: for withdrawal treatment therapists, for penitentiary institution employees (on the treatment of addicted inmates), and for representatives of the state administration and local authorities (on methods of reducing damage caused by alcohol abuse).

We organised our first symposium for representatives of the addiction treatment community from western and eastern countries focusing on the Minnesota Model, increasingly popular in Poland; this method is used in case of the vast majority of adults addicted to alcohol or drugs. The Model involves an assumption that alcohol and drug addictions are diseases that can be stopped with total abstinence. The therapy is group work based, and includes the patients’ immediate next of kin. The treatment team comprises doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, withdrawing therapists, and spiritual guides. The Model is based on a crucial element of partnership between professionals and the Alcoholics Anonymous or Drug Addicts Anonymous community (Al-Anon for families), the main role of whom involves support for people approaching the end of treatment, and requiring daily help in learning how to live the everyday life without intoxicants. The symposium closed with a joint resolution on the establishing of an association of specialists applying the Minnesota Model in treating addictions.

As part of the Program, 24 psychologists, therapists, and doctors from countries within the region attended internships at addiction treatment centres (i.e. MONAR, the Addiction Therapy Centre of the Psychiatric Institute and Psychiatric Hospital in Tworki, the addiction treatment outpatient clinic in Toruń, as well as with a number of Atlantis programs in prisons).

We continued to publish our ArkA magazine on addictions in Russian (two issues annually), and in Bulgarian (one issue annually). We supported the publication of four books on addiction treatment (in Georgia and Bulgaria). We published the Russian translation of On Crimes and Punishments by Wiktor Osiatyński used during seminars on domestic violence.

Together with the Legal Education Program we organized a panel debate on corrective justice with the participation of James Consedine, a specialist from New Zealand.

Throughout 2003, we provided partner organisations in the region with a total amount of USD 62,794.25. The vast majority of funds were used to cover travel costs of foreign specialists coming to Poland to attend our training sessions or practical treatment internships.

The Program was funded by the Open Society Institute (PLN 711,308.60)