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WIT's Substance Abuse Services
WIT provides a safe and supportive environment for women to identify and confront substance abuse issues and to address barriers to attaining and maintaining sobriety and personal safety.

Our services include crisis intervention and short-term empowerment counseling and education to help women increase self-esteem and personal awareness about practical issues which are key to a woman’s recovery: personal safety, child care and parenting, employment and job training, health care and nutrition, and reproductive health and safe sex practices.

WIT’s referral service is a link to agencies providing extensive treatment services for women,and WIT’s aftercare service assists women discharged from treatment programs to follow through with relapse prevention plans.

Telephone counseling is available and Intake Appointments can be scheduled by calling, weekdays between the hours of 9am and 5pm: 215-751-1111


Substance Abuse and Domestic Violence: A Deadly Connection

  • Violent partners often sabotage a woman’s treatment by: stalking her at her program; threatening physical harm unless she leaves the program; bullying or manipulating her to “use” as a sign of her “love” for her abuser.


  • A woman who manages to continue in treatment but experiences another round of intimate partner violence may be pressured to use alcohol or other drugs as part of the “making up” phase with her abuser


  • Threats of physical harm, withholding of financial support, or abuse directed toward children, pets or other loved ones can lead women to resort to using substances to buffer their distress.


  • Some abusers are more violent when sober or abstinent, so substance abusing battered women may be seen as “enabling” when they are actually trying to be safe by encouraging drinking or drug use.


  • For substance-abusing battered women, recovery involves getting to a point where they can recognize and take advantage of their options and alternatives before they can replace their substance use with positive coping strategies.
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WIT's Home Page, About Women In Transition, About Domestic Violence, WIT's Services, WIT's Lesbian Services, WIT's Substance Abuse Services, WIT in the Community, The Clothesline Project, Ways to Support WIT, How to Volunteer at WIT, Links to Resources
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