About Catherine Trestrail

Catherine Trestrail MSW, ACSW
4949 Sunnyside Ave N #200
Seattle, WA 98103
www.APositiveAlternative.com

Catherine Trestrail MSW, ACSW is the founder and director of A Positive Alternative: Women’s Recovery Center & Men’s Recovery Program. This program is a state certified Outpatient Addiction Treatment Facility located in Seattle, Washington which started in 1990, and is one of a limited number of non-12-step-based treatment programs in the country.

Catherine’s undergraduate and graduate degrees in Social Work were both at the University of Washington, completed in 1984 and 1987 respectively. Her early therapeutic experience encompassed work in…

• a Community Alcohol and Drug Treatment Cente

• a Community Mental Health Center

• Psychiatric Clinic for Students at the University of Washington (a blend between cognitive therapy and psychodynamic based therapy),

• Group Health’s ADAPT program for Alcohol and drugs.

Her work within the more traditional models of treatment led her to attempt to innovate within some of these larger systems – with many successes, but ultimately led to her decision to form her own treatment agency.

In the ongoing design and implementation of her program she has sought to identify and use treatment methods most likely to be helpful to individuals who choose not to use 12-step or AA. In addition to her depth of clinical experience, she has reviewed and drawn upon hundreds of successful treatment protocols developed in research universities In Europe, Canada and the US. Her program is a structured, skills and insight based approach to recovery, where the focus is on building upon client strengths in a practical, hopeful, and compassionate manner.

Besides her belief that AA is One Choice not THE Choice for recovery from addiction, Catherine has been an advocate for a number of ideas about recovery that were initially very unpopular and controversial in the treatment field:

• The use of Motivational Enhancement vs. confrontation in treatment.

• Directly addressing depression and anxiety early in recovery with medical or naturopathic methods vs. waiting the standard 90 days or year.

• Helping clients to develop Natural Support Networks where they become known as “permanent non-drinkers/users”, without necessarily having to take on the label of “alcoholic” or “addict”.

• Holds the standard that therapists and counselors working in the field of addiction need extensive training and experience in Both Mental Health and Addiction. Otherwise, many counselors have little to offer in their knowledge base besides 12-step.

• A belief in the superiority of gender specific treatment for both men and women, because men and women have different patterns of drinking and using, different ways of talking about their emotions and dealing with early recovery issues.

For over 20 years Catherine has advocated gender specific treatment. While almost all research since the early 70’s shows a clear advantage for gender specific treatment for women, A Positive Alternative’s Men’s Program has shown equally excellent results. Our program philosophy is that many of the key issues that are related to relapse involve intimate relationships. Skills training and problem solving in communication and conflict resolution are incorporated with sobriety skills from the start. We believe that both men and women are less inhibited and less distracted when addressing relationship issues in groups of their own gender.

In March of 2003, Catherine and her staff at A Positive Alternative created “Professional Network for Addiction Treatment Options”, and hosts this monthly informal gathering of helping professionals of all varieties (psychologists, MD’s, counselors, researchers, Naturopaths, etc) for the purpose of discussing non-12 step approaches to treatment and self-help that could be useful to our mutual clients. It has been an ongoing success, with information sharing, handouts of interesting articles, suggestions of web sites and programs. Most of all it’s been a safe place to openly discuss alternatives to 12-step without the risk of being accused of “AA-bashing” that so often is a deterrent to the open exchange of ideas.

Catherine is a frequent speaker on the topics of Gender-Specific recovery and Non-12 step recovery. She’s presented at the Washington State Psychology Conference, the Washington State Women’s Substance Abuse Coalition, the Annual Northwest Conference on Addictions & Behavioral Health, as well as many other local college and University settings. She is currently writing a book on “Enhancing Resolve” based on her 6 week workshops “Resolve Enhancement Intensive” for people who continued to struggle with relapse.

Catherine is a whole-hearted supporter of LifeRing! A Positive Alternative Sponsors the room rental for a weekly meeting in their building in Seattle. Recovery by Choice is a treasure full of useful worksheets and ideas that we frequently recommend or use with our clients.

The topic of this years LifeRing Congress “Giving Something Back” couldn’t be more important. While being a Convenor takes a big commitment of time and energy, ultimately you are saving peoples lives – people who could not or would not use AA will live in ever greater numbers if there are just more meetings, more convenors.