Category Archives: drug treatment
What You Should Know About Effective Drug Treatment
Selecting a drug rehabilitation center can become complicated as well as challenging if you don’t know the best points for which to look. Be it for yourself or perhaps someone you care about, you need to try to get the best match to start with. Struggling with harmful addictions can be a heart wrenching process, and you need the best prospect for being successful.
In many cases, when people go into a drug rehabilitation program, they suffer relapses as soon as they return to their normal way of life. This is why it can be doubly important to select an experienced service, given it can become more expensive, and not to mention emotionally draining, to have to do a program multiple times.
One solution to ensure an excellent drug rehabilitation program is to look for something that is going to be personalized, and not just a cookie-cutter copycat. If you have a plan that’s specifically made for your individual necessities, you will have a much greater chance of completing the program as well as leaving the compulsion behind forever. From beginning to end, you need individual treatment as well as help that can tackle not just the substance abuse, but any unwanted side effects too, such as depression.
A good drug rehabilitation facility needs to walk you through the process so that you don’t need to do it by yourself. Try to find a system that encompasses your family in the process as well. Your family must understand what your situation is, and in case you are a family member thinking about clinics for someone you care about, you want to know some ways to help.
When considering drug rehabilitation clinics, personalized comfort plays a large part in helping people overcome dependency. Look into the amenities and search for what is essential to you, whether that be yoga exercises, deep massages, acupuncture, spas, walking or something else entirely. Of course, some aspects of drug rehabilitation are going to be unpleasant, and that’s why you want to be as comfortable as possible for the entire time. A facility should treat an individual with dignity as an individual for treatment, not as someone to be punished for your addictions.
Comfort is an extremely important aspect in deciding on a drug rehabilitation center, because you will be more likely to be successful if you feel at home. You want this to become a positive experience, so it will be worth the money to get the ideal center for your needs. This gives you the best likelihood for success and results in fewer relapses.
Besides checking out the level of quality and experience of the staff members, if you are looking at drug rehabilitation clinics you should also consider the privacy of the facility. Naturally you are worried about privacy, but you ought to look for a facility that values it as highly as you do. For both the person being treated and their family, privacy ought to be a high concern.
Privacy is an important factor in choosing a drug rehabilitation facility, but the after-care plan is also important. With correct after care, a person can keep on being drug free and keep on the path they started throughout rehabilitation. This program ought to be personalized to the individual’s addiction, environment and background. When searching for the ideal program, you must above all, seek out something that meets your needs.
Residential Inpatient Treatment Programs for Drug Addicts
Many people in the United States have a cursory knowledge of substance abuse therapy, but the popular media’s portrayal of drug rehab does not depict the average addict’s treatment. For the most part, only recovering addicts and their families fully understand the different types of treatment programs available in America. Every program has a specific purpose, but they all use similar therapeutic practices to illicit positive lifestyle changes from drug abusers. The most intense and longest-lasting of these plans is the residential inpatient program, a thirty-to-ninety day stay at a rehabilitation facility with fifty or more hours of intensive therapies per week. Unfortunately, most people do not understand the nature of these therapies and how they help addicts overcome their compulsions. It is important for laypeople to know what to expect during inpatient programs should they ever fall victim to the disease of addiction.
The one to three-month stay at a rehabilitation center is highly structured and supervised. Clinicians create an environment of isolation from compromising situations which would put addicts at risk of relapse. This isolation can be critical, and many healthcare professionals agree that the first thirty days of sobriety are the most important in breaking bad habits and dealing with negative thought patterns. For some patients, even longer periods of isolation are necessary to solidify positive lifestyle changes and develop strategies for coping with the inevitable real-world pressures to use drugs.
Although inpatient residents live in environments isolated from their normal lives, they usually still cook, clean, and shop for themselves. Their living quarters are somewhat like a college dormitory, complete with in-house facilities such as kitchens, stores, and laundry areas. During the daytime, recovering addicts are required to attend their intensive therapies, but they do have free time in the evenings and on weekends.
The therapies offered during inpatient programs are varied. Among them are:
* Evidence-based therapies: These treatments have been rigorously tested and are typically government-mandated.
* Reality treatment: Patients adopt the simple but important attitude that there are situations in life they can control and others they cannot. It is up to them to recognize the difference and, when possible, take positive actions to control their environments. Reality therapies also involve simply allowing patients to go about as normal a life as possible during the treatment process. Learning coping strategies and healthy thought patterns in a close-to-life environment makes the transition into a drug-free life much easier for addicts.
* Individual Counseling: Substance abusers discuss their behaviors, thought patterns, and emotions with a clinician who helps them uncover the underlying causes of their addictions. These sessions can sometimes uncover co-occurring conditions such as depression or bipolar disorder. Treating these conditions can be essential for a successful treatment process.
* Group Counseling: Addicts share their stories and difficulties with each other in a positively-reinforcing environment. Discussions are facilitated by rehab clinicians.
* Family Counseling: An addict’s family members join him or her in a clinician-facilitated discussion. The families explain to addicts the ways in which their behaviors cause them all to suffer.
* Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Substance abusers are taught that any unhappiness or frustration they feel are results of their negative thought patterns. By changing the way they think about their environments and circumstances, addicts are empowered to better themselves.
* Biofeedback: During active drug abuse, many addicts ignore the physical consequences of their behaviors. Biofeedback therapies teach these clients to recognize bodily signs indicative of possible relapse. With a better understanding of biofeedback mechanisms, addicts can avoid a sudden and unexpected return to substance abuse.
Overall, this combination of isolated environments and proven therapies make inpatient programs the most effective choice for addicts seeking first-time help. If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, click the links below for a toll-free, obligation-free consultation with one of our counselors.
Drug Treatment – Do You Need Inpatient or Outpatient Therapy?
Once you face up to the fact that you have a real problem, that you can’t seem to stop using on your own, and that for any chance at getting better you’re going to need some professional help, you’ve taken a great step forwards to recovery.
However, even once we make that monumental decision to get help, we are left facing some pretty tough decisions about what we need and where to get it. Inpatient rehab can be very costly, and requires that you leave your job and family for a month or more; is it really necessary, wouldn’t outpatient therapy work just as well?
The advantages of outpatient therapy
You’ll save a fortune, you can support your family, and you’ll be home every night to tuck the kids in; outpatient therapy for addiction offers a lot. Because it is far less disruptive, most addictions professionals recommend that anyone who has never before received professional therapy for the treatment of addiction start with outpatient therapy.
It just makes sense to start with the easiest solution and see if it will work before progressing upwards to more expensive and intrusive therapies on an inpatient basis. You can get outpatient therapy from a psychologist or counselor, by joining a peer support recovery group, or even through the 12 steps meetings of organizations like AA.
If it works, it’s the best possible solution.
The problems with outpatient therapy
While it does make good common sense to begin your healing journey on an outpatient basis in the hopes that you’ll not need anything more intensive, a lot of people find that they cannot resist urges to use without getting away from the home environment for a while.
When you participate in therapies on an outpatient basis, you remain immersed in an environment of temptation, exposed to relapse provoking triggers to use, and exposed before you’ve gained enough strength and awareness to get past them. You’re also constrained by your normal family and professional responsibilities in how much focus you can give to your therapeutic recovery. No one can concentrate exclusively on getting better while they remain working and pulled in the thousand directions of normal everyday life. Without extreme focus, it’s pretty tough to consolidate these therapies and lessons that will keep you sober.
The benefits of inpatient therapy
Inpatient therapy costs a lot, it takes you away from friends and family and it disrupts your life; but for a lot of us, nothing less than a complete exit from our environment of use offers much chance at recovery.
During inpatient rehab we benefit from a month or more of enforced sobriety, a month where we can start to heal without continual exposure and temptation. We also have the time and focus needed to really get to know why we use, and to learn how we can do better. Inpatient therapy is a big commitment, but when drugs or alcohol have made life unmanageable, sometimes it’s the only thing that offers much hope.
Try outpatient first
If you’ve never before received professional therapy for your addiction or alcoholism, you may want to consider attempting therapy and abstinence on an outpatient basis. It makes sense to start with easier and less costly outpatient therapy.
But if this doesn’t work, or if you’ve tried outpatient in the past and failed, or if you’re just so tired of using that you want to make a clean break; try inpatient rehab. It costs a lot and it requires a big commitment, but it works better than anything else and if it can get you sober, it’s surely worth it at any price.