Reverse Honesty Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Friday, November 30, 2012

(Click to go to original)

I interviewed a young person in treatment yesterday. This person, lets call her Doris, had failed in a halfway house but she was still clean. She broke the rules of the halfway house too many times; e.g., getting on Facebook, lying about certain things and when she found out that she was on her way to Shuman (Violation of Probation to fail at halfway house) she thought about running. She didn't run. She was mad.  She got a little nasty with people; however, she was still there the next day when her therapist came to ride her to Shuman...then something unexpected happened.


She called a rehab. Even though she was clean they found a way to admit her. Because of her admission to rehab, she avoided Shuman. Now she is approaching discharge and she seems to be committed more than ever to her recovery.

I expressed surprise that she had gotten herself into inpatient and she disclosed that she had fibbed. She now tells me that she told the intake person that she had a small relapse by misusing her prescribed medication to get high.

She seemed a little ashamed, but at the same time she seemed proud of herself. Sort of like a guilty pleasure. On the one hand she says that it is now difficult not to disclose this lie, because she finds herself being so honest this time around about everything else. I think that's why she told me. She wants to be honest. On the other hand, she points out that she "lied so that I could get into treatment, I didn't lie to avoid getting treatment." Of course, she lied also so that she would not go to Shuman but I couldn't help thinking that she was much better off in treatment than she would have been in Shuman.

Was it lying? Yes, but can we also call it reverse honesty? This young lady went on to tell me that at the point that she failed in the halfway house, her disease of addiction had the better of her. Her behaviors in the rehab reeked of relapse, albeit a behavioral relapse. She was fully in a relapse mode but unless she told the intake person that she had actually relapsed, she couldn't have gotten admitted. So, she told the truth about having relapsed but technically she lied about misusing the pills.

Note: If you are an Intake Person at a rehab and you think you know who this person is, let me point out the obvious: maybe she told the truth about the misuse of prescription meds and for some reason she feels that it is necessary to lie to me! We may never know.

I believe that there are times when people manipulate themselves into a higher level of care. Halfway house to inpatient. One thing that Doris said that really stuck with me: "I really needed to be here."