A Day in the Life of the Charming Dale Conlon

A Day in the Life of the Charming Dale Conlon

A day in the life of the charming Dale Conlon, Senior Admissions Counsellor at the Clifton Clinic and the Thames Clinic, Alcohol and Drug rehabilitation and detox clinic’s.

My day starts with a caffeine hit. I usually have a black coffee before heading to work. Most days I get to the office around 7am. The day doesn’t officially start for a few hours, but I use the time to catch up on emails and paperwork. I will often have a meeting with the Managing Director in this time as well. None of us at TTP tend to sleep all that much, last night alone the MD and I were exchanging emails at 4.15am.

Handover is at 8.30. Where I and the rest of the day team meet with the night team to catch up on any issues or news from the night before, due to the nature of rehab it is important to keep abreast of any changes as soon as they happen.

I am based across the entire Trust The Process Group, which means I travel to each of our centres. Monday I might be at our centre in Preston, Wednesday Bradford, Thursday the Thames Clinic in Surrey. I go where I am needed.

Most days I have my first assessment at around 9am. This is when I sit down with a new admission to establish usage; at Trust the Process we handle a whole range of addictions from alcoholism to cocaine use to the recent and growing problem of addictions to over the counter medication. We also use this time to cover their medical history and any other issues that might be important to the rehab process. Dependent on how complex the case, assessments can take anywhere between 45 minutes to two hours. Due to the physiological effects of a detox, we have to be particularly careful when it comes to medication. People often ask me how we do we know that clients are telling the truth in these interviews. And it is true that people do sometimes lie, but just through experience I have gotten pretty good at spotting irregularities, particularly in a person's medicinal history. I know that a person wouldn't be prescribed a certain drug if they hadn’t been diagnosed with depression. We also do a risk assessment for each client, both for themselves, in terms of self harm or suicide, and for the members of staff.

I have been working for the Clifton Clinic and the Thames Clinic for three years now, after I ended up in addiction rehabilitation myself. Most of The Clifton Clinic and the Thames Clinic's counsellors have a personal experience of addiction. You have to have something that draws you into this line of work, for most of us it the drive to help people.

Lunch is usually a chicken salad at my desk, and a 15 minute catch-up with the football scores. I always opt for something cold, because no matter what I intend, by the time I am off the phone long enough to eat it would be cold either way. When my phone rings I have to answer it, my number is the first port of call for new clients. You don't know how much it has taken for that person to pick up the phone, and so if we miss it isn’t just a call we are missing but the chance to help someone in the grips of an addiction, who might very well have hit rock bottom. My being constantly on call can take a toll on those around me. I am used to the demands but it can be hard on social relationships, let’s put it this way, I am single.

Which is not to say all the calls I get are that vital, I once had a call from a woman asking me to clear her garden. Apparently she had Googled the words 'weed clearance'. You've got to have a sense of humour in this job.

My office day ends at around 4pm, when I tend to go to the gym. But as long as my phone is with me, my working day isn’t really ever over. It is not uncommon to find me on the phone on the cross-trainer.

There are other careers which are less demanding, where I could make more money. I've even tried them. But something always draws me back to rehabilitation counselling, I guess I am hooked on helping people.

The road not taken

If I hadn’t of been this I would have been...

A Music Producer. I'd say a Rock Star, but I can't sing.

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