"Treatment programs should provide assessment for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and counseling to help patients modify or change behaviors that place themselves or others at risk of infection."

Counseling can help patients avoid high-risk behavior. Counseling also can help people who are already to infected manage their illness.

Too often, addiction and alcoholism treatment providers place so much emphasis on remaining abstinent and following a treatment plan that some basic notions - like physical health management including disease screening - tend to fall by the wayside.

Although Sober Champion prefers to operate with our clients outside the standard treatment environment, we maintain close relationships with health care professionals all over the USA and Europe. No illness is too small to throw a wrinkle into a reasoned and vigilant recovery program.

Diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV often go undiagnosed, especially among well-heeled clients; there is, in fact, an alarmingly high rate of denial among this special population.

The truth is that excessive use and drugs and alcohol can lead to situations where exposure to serious infectuous diseases takes place regularly.

One of our jobs is to create an environment where the overall health of our clients is taken into consideration. This means not only abstinence from drugs, but a thorough health screening as well -- including testing for the presence of a variety of diseases and disorders.

Addiction is a life-threatening illness. But the ways in which lives are threatened grows when you consider the way addicts and alcoholics fail to take care of their bodies while they are using. Unfortunately, this lack of self-care usually extends into recovery from addiction. Most people are so happy to be free of the monster that they fail to give themselves a holistic break.

Abstinence from alcohol and drugs is a good start, but it's really the tip of the iceberg.