Who we are - Drugs: Help and referral

Mission

Drugs: Help and Referral (DHR) provides support, information and referrals to anyone worried about their use of drugs, alcohol and/or medication, as well as, to their loved ones.

Listening and support: It is with attentive and non-judgemental listening that our counselors assess the person’s situation, identify the issue(s) and provide support, information and the appropriate referrals. Difficult situations, an urge to use, risk of relapse, or difficulties to live with a loved one that suffers addiction? Our counselors will offer you immediate support.

Information: Our expertise allows us to inform callers on different levels. For example, we can give information on the consequences of substance abuse, as well as, the effects of mixing drugs or the impacts of excessive use in a person’s daily life and that of his/her loved ones. We can also inform our callers on how addiction centers work and on therapy services that can help them.

Referrals: We refer available resources in the caller’s area able to meet their needs.

The advantages of our service

Our counselors are available via telephone or chat.
The service is accessible 24/7, across Québec.
It is confidential and free.

Our counselors respond to different types of calls and chats. They assess the needs of the callers and make the appropriate interventions and referrals. They must exercise very sound judgement as they, in fact, come across requests that are diverse, beyond the scope of therapy and demanding quick solutions.

We can also inform and assist counselors from the health and social services network and social workers, etc. in their search for services and resources adapted to the needs of their clients.

Here are some examples of calls we receive:

A teenage girl worried about her older brother’s cannabis use;
A consumer looking for a support group to help with their abstinence from cocaine;
A former alcoholic who is going through a difficult time and fears relapse;
A person who has just consumed several substances and wants to learn about the possible effects of the mixture;
A young woman who uses medication to concentrate in school and doesn’t seem to be able to do without it;
A crisis call from an intoxicated person in distress;
A social worker looking for a therapy center for his patient, client.

Those are but a few examples.

Team

The Drugs: Help and Referral team is made up of about a dozen counselors. They hold Bachelor’s degrees in psychology, criminology or social work. The majority of them have completed a Certificate in Addiction (certificat en toxicomanie) while others have completed Certificates in Mental Health Intervention, Youth Intervention, Victimology, etc. Over the last few years, our team grew with the addition of counselors that have completed Collegial programmes in Social Work or Special Care Counseling. Other than for education, new counselors are hired for fulfilling the following criteria:

Possessing excellent knowledge of counseling techniques.
Being able to show empathy, being mature, responsible, as well as, working well within a team.
Being completely non-judgmental.

Pierrette Gagné

Interim Executive Director, Information and Referral Centre of Greater Montréal (DHR Manager)

Nancy Rocha

Director of the Specialized Addiction Helplines and the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers

Mrs. Nancy Rocha is Director of the Specialized Addiction Helplines and the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers. As such, she supervises her team, ensures the proper functioning of the follow-ups, trains new team members and builds collaborations to better meet the specific needs of callers. Learn more.

Gaëtan Brière

Coordinator of Addiction Services

Gaëtan has about twenty years of experience in counseling and team management in the socio-community field, more specifically services for homelessness, mental health and addiction. He is a committed manager known for his harmonious management style of multidisciplinary teams, for his ability to mobilize work groups as well as for his determination to achieve goals by optimizing existing resources and introducing innovative practices.

Sophie Duchesne

Coordinator of the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers

Sophie holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, a certificate in criminology from Université de Montréal and a master’s degree in addiction from Université de Sherbrooke.

She was first a counselor on the addiction helplines, Drugs: Help and Referral and Gambling: Help and Referral before joining the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers team as counselor and then becoming its Coordinator.

Lucie Kechichian

Director, Communications and development

Catherine Bellemare

Director, Finance, administration and technology

Privacy officer

Contact our Privacy Officer

If you have any questions or concerns about the processing or updating of your personal information, please contact us at catherine.bellemare@crgm.ca, 438 940-5661.

The Privacy Officer will contact you within 30 days of receiving your email.