COSTA MESA : Alcohol-Treatment Team to Visit Latvia
Four alcoholism-treatment specialists from Orange County will leave Saturday on a two-week trip to Latvia to conduct a seminar on substance abuse for Soviet doctors.
The trip is designed to explain to Soviet physicians the latest American treatment programs for female alcoholics and is one of an increasing number of exchange programs between medical experts of the two countries.
“The alcohol problem (in the Soviet Union) is much larger than the one we have here,” said Karen Stockman, a director of New Directions for Women, a nonprofit, residential treatment program in Costa Mesa. “What they’re doing (in treatment) now isn’t working.”
Stockman, along with Kay Brown, executive director of New Directions, and Costa Mesa therapists Rita McCabe and Tom Gullett will make the trip to Riga, the capital of the Republic of Latvia.
The seminar will stress family involvement in alcohol treatment and attempts to erase the stigma often associated with substance abuse.
“Much of this is a new concept to them,” Stockman said. The Soviets treat alcoholism “in a more punitive sort of way than we do.”
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