S32-03 - Changing Paradigms in the Treatment of Addiction - the Orpheus Project

Abstract

Major problems in treating patients suffering from addictions derive from the fact that the diagnostic category dependence syndrome covers a highly inhomogeneous patient group. Therefore uniform therapeutic approaches inflexibly following treatment guidelines have not fulfilled prognostic expectations. This was the starting point for developing a new modular resource-oriented treatment program in the Anton Proksch Institute Vienna.

Changing paradigms in the treatment of addiction, the Orpheus Programme offers a host of different modules designed to help patients to discover their own aims, objectives, values, and resources. The main task of the Orpheus modules is an increasing autonomous and joyful life. Abstinence represents no longer the only final goal of therapy, but is an important step to offer space and possibilities for the patients’ new life. When life becomes once again beautiful and filled with joy and meaning, addictive substances lose their seductive power: The more beautiful and attractive the patient's life, the less the drugs attractiveness. As illustrated by Orpheus, who defeated the sirens (as a symbol for addictive agents) by making the better, louder, and more attractive music, it becomes the patients’ main task to make a better “music of life”; the Orpheus modules are not training programs telling the patients how the better life looks like (as in former moral therapy); they intend to provide places, spaces and atmospheres encouraging and promoting the patients to make possible the possible.