Jan Kuhn and her husband, Gary have begun working with people who are affected by substance abuse, trying to enable them to make changes in their lives.
Gary Kuhn opened Sacajawea Substance Abuse Counseling and Drug Testing Center in May.
Jan Kuhn uses different techniques to counsel a variety of different clients, including individual and family counseling as well as co-dependency counseling. The business also offers DUI evaluations and classes along with drug testing.
"We thought it was a service we could provide to Dickinson," Gary Kuhn said.
If an employer is suspicious of an employee, the Kuhns can come in and test them for alcohol and drugs.
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"If we drug test someone and they come up positive for drugs or alcohol, we can set up the counseling," Jan Kuhn said. "I can also drug test them during counseling so that I make sure they go back to the employer clean."
She said they use a high-tech breath tester, as well as urine tests which show results almost immediately. They can have a lab confirm the results of the tests within 24 hours.
"We want to accommodate the companies by coming in and being full service where they don't have to send their employees someplace to have it done," Gary Kuhn said. "We can come right into their facility and handle it for them right on site and it's convenient and it doesn't take a whole lot of the employees' time away from them."
The Kuhns also test for adulterants in urine, which are products used by people in an attempt to make a drug test show a false negative.
Jan Kuhn has mostly been holding down the fort, since Gary Kuhn is in Iraq working as an international police advisor.
Gary Kuhn has been taking vacation time to come home and help and also does what he can over the phone. However, he plans to return in November and help run the business.
"I plan on doing the drug testing and I also want to get certified for the DUI classes," Gary Kuhn said.
Jan Kuhn became interested in counseling after teaching music for Kindergarten through Grade 12 at New England Public School for 14 years.
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"I kind of became the unofficial school counselor because I had a couch in my office and then it just turned into something that I really knew I would be good at," Jan Kuhn said. "I wanted to try to be who I was before I died."
She went back to college to become a counselor and graduated in 2007. She then went to work with other counseling businesses in Dickinson until her husband opened Sacajawea Substance Abuse.
Jan Kuhn wanted to be an addiction counselor because of her prior knowledge in that area.
"I've had a lifetime of experience with people that I love and their addictions," Jan Kuhn said.
She also counsels family members who are affected by a loved one's addiction.
"Addiction really is painful to marriages," Jan Kuhn said. "People don't understand what the addiction will make their partner do. It's really not their partner, it's the addiction."
She said those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol are not necessarily bad people.
"They're just addicted and addiction makes you do all kinds of stuff which in most cases is totally against who they are," Jan Kuhn said.
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Her counseling techniques differ from many substance counseling abuse techniques.
"My emphasis is different," she said. "We don't really do a whole lot of 12 step here. What I do is cognitive behavioral therapy. I deal with what you're thinking and I do motivational therapy."
Sacajawea Substance Abuse Counseling and Drug Testing Center is located at 112 Third Street West Suite 301. To contact the Kuhns, call 1-701-483-9150 or
1-888-483-9150.
