What do they ask you during a substance abuse evaluation?

Why would you need to know? Don’t abuse and you wont have problems. It’s simple, if you break laws its your problem.

they ask about your history, briefly- (family, jobs, children, etc.) then they ask you about use of prescription, and non prescription drugs, and alcohol. It’s a checklist, they ask about frequency of use, age of first use. Based on this, they make a reccomendation to the court. I don’t think much will happen to the person in this case because it’s marijuana.

OMG! We can’t have anyone on marijuana, think of the lives at risk!
This is one of the many reasons I hate the legal system.

@XOIIO – the asker didn’t say it was her, just “the person”.
@trailsillustrated – sounds like the sentence was already carried out, that being the evaluation she’s talking about in the question, so I don’t think it’s a matter of getting in trouble. Even so, drug charges are drug charges and they’re bad no matter what the drug or who you are.

People, I think the situation here is, the person moved from a place where he/she had legal allowance per doctor’s orders to use marijuana (what’s wrong with that? it’s safer than alcohol and more effective in treatment of many ailments… and alcohol is legal nationwide).

Now that this person is in a state that is less tolerant of such treatments, and needs not legally recognize the out-of-state declaration from California, it looks like Iowa wants to know if the person has a legitimate claim or needs to be labelled a junkie.

The questions in such an exam are similar to what trailsillustrated mentioned, lots of behavioral and familial history questions and many designed to draw a line between this person’s propensity for either use or abuse. If the person needs to “pass” the exam, and is at least marginally intelligent, common sense will point to the “right” answers.

@gambitking It is general advice, I’m sure that the asker will tell her freid what the answers she got were.

The assessment will start with general questions about name, address, age, who the person lives with, if they have any children, if they are employed,where and what they do for a living, education. The CASAC (Certified Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor) will then ask about all substances, when the use of each started, how much of each is used at present, how this affects the person’s job, personal life, etc. The results of the assessment will be used to report to the Court, and to make a recommendation (which, it seems, unless the person is a saint, the recommendation is usually for substance abuse treatment).