Roger P. Watts, Ph.D. — Contributor
Dr. Roger P. Watts is a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor who practices as a Chemical Dependency Professional II at a world-renowned treatment facility in Saint Paul MN.
Dr. Watts received his Ph.D. in General Psychology from Capella University in Minneapolis with a specialization in addictions therapy. His dissertation was entitled “The Lived Experience of a Spiritual Transformation in the Everyday Lives of Alcoholic Men New to Recovery: A Phenomenological Study”. He is currently writing his first book entitled “101 Ways to Tell if Your Teen is Using Drugs” and working on development of a psychological simulation game for training corporate customer service employees.
Dr. Watts came to the practice of chemical dependency treatment at about mid-life after a series of business and journalism positions in Boston, Washington DC and the Miami FL area. He started his professional career in public relations work for the Yankee Atomic Power company in Boston and moved on quickly to become Director of Public Relations at Bentley College in a Boston suburb. In 1976, Dr. Watts went to Washington DC to work in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, first as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and shortly after as an advance press relations staff person in the White House Press Office under Jody Powell.
Shortly after the 1980 election, Dr. Watts started his career as a photojournalist working out of Washington DC for the Paris-based Gamma–Liaison Picture Agency. In this capacity Dr. Watts was responsible for covering the White House and Capitol Hill with daily photographs of activities as well as feature picture stories. The position also allowed Dr. Watts to work on a number of photojournalism assignments including documenting the development of Baltimore's inner harbor area, the destruction of the last blast furnace in Pittsburgh and numerous political and entertainment celebrities. Dr. Watts also worked as an assistant in the Time Magazine Washington office.
For more than 18 months Dr. Watts worked as a sous-chef at the historic Maison Robert restaurant in downtown Boston under chef Jacky Robert.
Dr. Watts entered the field of chemical dependency treatment in 1989 as a member of the detoxification section at one of the nation's first alcohol and drug treatment programs called the Comprehensive Addictions Recovery Program (CARP) in West Palm Beach FL. This continuum of care, community-based treatment program offered detox, treatment, half-way house and continuing care services for patients of all ages and Dr. Watts worked in each of these divisions during his employment there. In 1992, Dr. Watts returned to his native New England and worked in several outpatient treatment agencies serving men and women with addictive disease. He specialized in the treatment of people with co-occurring chemical dependency and mental health disorders. He worked in two maximum security prisons with the mental health departments serving the addictive disease needs of prisoners and was an outpatient counselor with the Federal Bureau of Prisons Pre-Release Program.
In 1996 Dr. Watts received his Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Cambridge College in Massachusetts. Dr. Watts worked as a counselor and supervisor of counselors in a variety of community-based programs. He joined the prestigious McLean Hospital, the psychiatric teaching hospital for Harvard University, in 1999 and provided psychiatric evaluations in the emergency room of a large urban hospital for five years. He moved to Maine in 2004 and worked at a hospital-based chemical dependency treatment program there before moving to Minnesota to take his current position as a chemical dependency counselor.
Dr. Watts lives in suburban St. Paul. He is the father of three grown children. He is a cancer survivor and involved with volunteer activity with Narcotics Anonymous as well as work in the area of helping newly diagnosed men cope with cancer. He also is in recovery from addictive disease and is now in his 25nd year of continuous sobriety.
The following are Roger's contributions to MentalHelp.Net
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Addictions
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Because alcohol and other drugs literally change the structure of the human brain in the process of causing an intoxicating “high” (see the How... Read More
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Dr. David Burns wrote a classic self-help book to help relieve depression and other psychological problems called Feeling Good (1980). In it he outlined a... Read More
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Last year I completed a research project on the spiritual transformation that alcoholic men go through in the first year of their sobriety. I called... Read More
Addictions
Addictions
