You’ve Completed Your Assessment, Now What?
You’ve been told by your lawyer, the judge, or a friend who has had a DWI that you’re going to have to get an assessment and do “DWI classes.” You’ve gotten the first part done, now what? I’m glad you asked. Towards the end of your assessment your counselor told you how many hours of classes you must complete. If you have 20 hours, at New Beginnings that means you must do a total of 7 classes, 1 class a week. Your classes will all be educational classes focusing on things like DWI laws, the effect of alcohol and other substances on the body, and other things of that nature. We do classes on a pay-as-you-go nature. You are welcome to pay it all in advance, in fact, with Covid19 going on, it will likely save you money.
If you were given 30 hours or more will get to do 2 classes per week, one an education group and the other a process group. A process group is less about education and more about the stress, difficulty, and common problems of living life without substances of abuse. There will be groups about the common triggers that cause us to want to abuse substances. There will be groups about managing stress, anger, and other destructive emotions that lead to relapse. There will be groups about relapse prevention. These in combination with the educational groups should give you a well-rounded foundation of how to prevent future DWI’s and even more than that, future substance abuse. If you have 30 hours you will have 11 sessions total, 6 education, 5 process. If you have 40 hours, that will be a total of 14 sessions, 7 of each. And finally, if you have 60 hours it will be a total 24 sessions, 12 of each type.
If you are pretrial (you have yet to be convicted of your DWI) when you complete all your classes, we will await your conviction date (we need that to enter your completion into DWI Services website). Once we’ve been provided with that date (assuming you have no outstanding balances or fees), we will enter your completion. If you’re post-trial (you’ve already been convicted of your DWI) when you complete, we will enter your completion as soon as your done (once again assuming you have no outstanding balances or fees).
As always, if you have any questions please give any of our offices a call. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.