Georgi  Educational & Counseling Services

A New Model for Treating Addictive Disease

With over 70 years of collective experience, Jeff and Becky created an integrated system that transformed an entire state’s understanding and treatment of addictive disease. Through collaboration with the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and other Drug Abuse Services (DAODAS), they created and implemented a major staff development initiative that improved clinical practice, increased job satisfaction, and obtained better patient outcomes. The DAODAS Initiative provided a uniform Clinical Practice among Addiction Counselors ensuring consistency in addiction counselors’ clinical practice and providing a climate of peer-drive clinician

support in service of patient care. By teaching the biological, psychological, sociological and spiritual definition of addictive disease (BPSSEM) in combination with a group intervention, Modified Interpersonal Group Psychotherapy (MIGP), Becky and Jeff were able to train, teach and coach clinicians through cultivating communities of practice to hone their new skills.

If you or your treatment agency want to be inspired by the possibility of change and the potency that understanding brings to the challenges of substance misuse and addiction, we would welcome the opportunity to share time with you and provide a consultation for staff development and training.

On behalf of Former Governor Nikki Haley and as the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Services (DAODAS) Director, I would like to thank Jeff Georgi and Becky Georgi for implementing the most important staff development initiatives offered to our agencies. As a direct result, DAODAS accomplished its goals of providing a unified understanding of the disease of addiction and consistent clinical practice in the treatment of substance use disorders. Clinicians across the state and patients and their families benefit daily from the quality improvements associated with this consistency.

Bob Toomey, Retired Director, DAODAS