Vangseter as a treatment facility

Since 1986 Vangseter has been Norway's most renowned rehabilitation clinic. We have treated more than 5,000 clients from all cultures and stratas of society. In June 2006 Vangseter was officially recognized as a specialist health clinic, consisting of our traditional Twelve Step therapists as well as a team of health professionals to deal with double diagnosises.

Vangseter offers a specialist treatment of substance addiction, based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hence, the clinic views alcohol and pill addiction, as well as other forms of drug addiction, as a disease which the addict can not control, but which he or she can learn to live with one day at a time through abstinence. To make it easier for the addict to recognize his or her life situation, the Twelve Step therapists at Vangseter are former addicts or co-dependents.

Our initial treatment programme takes four weeks, with group therapy as our basis. Also, Vangseter can offer the client a gradual reduction of medicament consumption before and during the treatment process, long-term treatment, transference to our half way house close to the town of Hamar and after-care self-help groups through parts of Norway. In our basic treatment programme, the third week is cornered for family treatment. Hence, the co-dependents get to meet other people in the same situation, as well as learning to acknowledge their own situation and start working on it.

Vangseter is a specialist health clinic, which means that we can deal with psychological disorders as well as the substance addiction. In other words, we can treat double diagnosises. We have a doctor, a psychiatrist and specialist nurses. Since the summer of 2006, Vangseter has had a continual intake of clients from the public health system in need of specialist treatment.

For more than twenty years, Vangseter has worked to increase the public recognition of the Twelve Step programme. Through the feeling of fellowship and dignity at the Vangseter clinic, the therapists are trying to help the client and his or her relatives in establishing a process of development with the goal of staying abstinent. Since Vangseter's intake is continual, all the clients will be in different phases of their convalescence. In that way, the newly arrived will see that it is not futile, while those who have been in the programme for some time are reminded of their former life. The essential principles in Vangseter's treatment programme, are security and care for the client and his or her treatment process.

Most of our clients represent the average man or woman. The ones who run their daily life behind a seemingly happy surface, but who have developed a dysfunctional life for themselves and their families through substance addiction. None of our clients are put in the treatment programme with like-minded people only. From the first day the client has to relate to a broadly defined group of people, with clients coming from all cultures and stratas of society. However, the recognition of the common denominator creates a feeling of security and a certain demystification of substance addiction. This recognition and feeling of security is an important aspect of Vangseter's integrity. Combined with our will to develop and expand our offers, it is one of the main reasons that Vangseter is respected and officially recognized as a treatment facility today.

Vangseter is a rehabilitation clinic in continual development and renewal, but with a firm basis in the Minnesota clinics and the Twelve Step programme.