There is no intervention that has been devised to date, that can stop an individual from using substances, because substance use is ultimately based on the choice of the individual.
This choice, and the service user’s realisation of that ‘choice’, is fundamental in making a decision to use, or not use drugs or alcohol.
This raised a fundamental question for the partners at Janus. What is the likelihood of a service user achieving their goals of having healthy relationships, a decent home, re-entering education, training and employment if he or she does not address their relationship with drugs and alcohol?
The partners recognised that one of the reasons that many service users might return to services and treatment many times over many years, is that they do not learn about this crucial and personal relationship, and so present in helplessness and a professed lack of control over their own behaviour.
The Resonance Factor model was created with this in mind. The central focus of the model is the exploration of the user’s relationship with their drug of choice. This includes revisiting the discovery of their drug of choice and the experience of the high – a pharmacological fact that tells us that drugs and alcohol affect each individual differently according to their own brain chemistry. This enables the service user to consider how they use drugs and alcohol to change the way they think, feel and behave, and who they become when they have used.
The Resonance Factor does not avoid the issues that may have prompted the service user to access treatment e.g. health problems, loss of relationships, children and family members or practical matters such as housing and employment. It does however, consider these issues to be pathways to and from the central issue that is, the pursuit of the high. This singular pursuit that is often maintained for many years, becomes the most important relationship for the drug or alcohol user, and is therefore the primary focus of the model.
The Resonance Factor model provides an effective tool-kit that enables the worker to raise awareness immediately about the service user’s relationship with their drug of choice.