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Does therapy work if I'm drinking too much?

Dr. Jay Rosen, Clinical Psychologist, answers common questions about PTSD.

Transcript

I recently worked with a Veteran who, we determined together

that his use of alcohol was a short-term strategy

that was sort of continuously putting him into precarious

situations and something he was really struggling with,

and he had to stop drinking in order to make treatment

for PTSD a success, and that was very tough for him.

I have a lot of respect because drinking did work,

to a certain extent, for him.

However, he was having encounters with the law and

blacking out when he was drinking

and chose to reduce his use of alcohol -- he actually didn't

even eliminate it, he just reduced it so it wasn't

at such a problematic level -- so he could engage in therapy.

And that was very tough for him, very hard for him.

I have another, somebody else I'm working with,

he also struggles with childcare.

His wife works full-time, and they split child care duties,

and so making time for treatment was really difficult

for that gentleman, and it required him to sort of

harness other resources, so he had to convince his

mother-in-law to spend an evening a week with his daughter

so that he could make time to get into treatment.

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