Stages of Change

Many addicts are unwilling to give up their addiction. Their goal is to continue their addiction moderately and get it under control, without letting it control them. For many, this is an unachievable goal and often wishful thinking. For many addicts, recovery requires complete and lifetime abstinence. But for others, moderation and control may be an appropriate and realistic goal.

Before you begin to make changes in your life, I would like to introduce you to a useful theory -- called the Stages of Change Model, or SCM -- about the mind/body stages we go through when we do change. The SCM model has been applied to a broad range of behaviors including weight loss, injury prevention, and overcoming alcohol and drug problems.

Success at modifying or eliminating a behavior is best approached by studying those who have managed it on their own and emulating their accomplishments. That was the reasoning of researchers James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente who did just that, not with alcoholism specifically, but with all types of change.

Stages-of-change research has been used to develop dozens of behavior change programs, including HIV prevention, to help people live longer, healthier lives.

We believe that self-discovery and self-directed change are important. We know the research evidence: small choices that we make, every day, have a great influence on how healthy we are in mind, body, and spirit.

In this article, we review the Transtheoretical Model of Change, also known as the Stages of Change model, and discuss its application to the family practice setting.

Relapse is viewed as a normal part of the change process, as opposed to a complete failure. This does not mean that relapse is desirable or even invariably expected. It simply means that change is difficult, and it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to modify a habit perfectly with out any slips.