Sault College

Chemical Dependency and Substance Use and Abuse Assignments

Abstinence Assignment

Due Friday, June 14.

Weighting: 20% of final grade

For this assignment, you are to abstain from a 'substance' that you are dependent on, physically or emotionally for 14 days. This could be the glass of wine at the end of the work day, coffee, cigarettes, food, or process addictions like social media, gambling, exercise, anything that you engage in daily or more than daily and assess the impact it and its absence has on your life.

The goal of the assignment is to encourage struggle and engagement in having awareness, if only brief, of what a client may go through. This is to help reduce any stigma you have may internally, or externally. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to develop a better understanding of those experiencing addiction and to develop and to practice self-reflective skills that will assist you in your careers in the future.

During this assignment you will (a) keep an abstinence log of your experiences, and (b) write a reflection paper which will serve as the conclusion to the 14-day exercise. This assignment will have the following components:

A. Abstinence Log

These logs will describe your thoughts and feelings about giving up your 'addiction', especially focusing on times you 'lapse' or experience urges and cravings. It is especially important to indicate times when it was both difficult and easy to abstain, as well as those specific circumstances during which you 'slipped' i.e. Birthdays, weekends, holidays etc. For two weeks, you will write daily entries, submitting them at the end with your reflection paper.

B. Reflection Paper

This is a minimum 3-page paper describing the abstinence experience, did you 'succeed' or 'fail', what influenced you, and what was the process like for you. I would also like you to research treatment for your substance/process addiction and conclude with appropriate treatment methodologies and local resources.

Questions to answer when writing your reflection:

  1. What stage of readiness would you identify yourself at on the Stages of Change theory of behaviour change, and do you feel that this had any bearing on your success/non-success in abstaining?
  2. What were your triggers for use?
  3. Did you feel any withdrawal symptoms? Describe them.
  4. Did you relapse? How did you feel about that? Were you able to get back on track or did you give up?
  5. Did you tell others what you were doing? Were friends and family supportive?
  6. Were there any barriers to your success?
  7. What coping strategies did you use to help you succeed? Were they helpful?
  8. Did you find yourself replacing your targeted behaviour with a new behaviour? Was this a healthy or unhealthy substitution?
  9. Was this easy or difficult for you? Why do you think that was?
  10. Did you learn anything new about yourself or others around you during this project?

Ensure that your assignment follows proper APA style guidelines including: title page with running head, double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and a reference page if you use any references. (No additional research is necessary for this paper, but should you decide to use any, you must reference your sources)