Searching for a Residential Drug Addiction Rehab
Drug addiction is an incurable disease. Once you’ve crossed the line from drug abuse to drug addiction, it can never be undone. A person that becomes addicted cannot use drugs recreationally or socially safely at any point in the future. The good news is that drug addiction can be effectively treated.
Many drug addicts will have tried to stop using by themselves and discovered to their horror that they cannot. Despite a sincere intention to stop they find themselves slipping back to drugs after just a few days or weeks.
This attempts to control and the subsequent ‘loss of control’ over the drug of choice is one of the diagnostic criteria of addictive illness. Eventually they may give up hope and resign themselves to living with active drug addiction.
Of course you don’t have to let drug addiction run its inevitable course of destruction in your own or your loved one’s life. You can get effective treatment for this illness and halt the cycle of compulsive drug seeking and using.
Medical science currently does not have a cure for drug addiction (despite what some rehabs may claim) and views this disease as “chronic and prone to relapse. This means in a nutshell that your addiction can be clinically managed but never removed – just like diabetes.
Therefore any drug addiction rehab that claims to have a “cure” for addiction is most likely being a little liberal with the truth in their marketing department. Don’t be taken in by such promises when you are searching for an out-patient treatment program or a residential / in-patient setting. Rather look for a centre that offers a program that promotes ongoing recovery through working several different tools.
Recovery from drug addiction can be a wonderful lifestyle. Those who live it display a new sense of freedom and happiness. They live in acceptance of their past, never wishing to close it up and forget the lessons learned. They work a daily program of self-improvement, which guards them against relapse into their illness and provides a sense of fulfillment in trying to help the still suffering drug addict.
When you’re searching for a residential drug addiction treatment program you should ensure that at the very minimum it has the following points:
It must be properly registered with the relevant government regulatory bodies and comply with Health and Safety procedures.
It must be staffed by experts who are properly registered with relevant professional bodies.
It must provide a medically supervised drug detox.
It must have nursing support available 24/7.
These minimum requirements will help you to weed out fly-by-night centres but won’t help you to distinguish between excellent rehabs and the mediocre.
The next thing to check when choosing where to be treated is to look at the program itself. Drug addiction is a complex illness that affects many areas of life. You want to be sure that every aspect of the disease is fully addressed. Therefore you need to choose a rehab that offers a comprehensive approach, one which uses a diverse range of groups and a multi-disciplinary team of addiction treatment consultants.
This means that it should employ professionals from different clinical disciplines, such as doctors, psychologists, social workers, addiction counsellors and occupational therapists. By working together the team will bring their specialist knowledge of drug addiction into the pool of experience to create a complete understanding of your illness. This allows for a much more effective treatment plan to be implemented.
As mentioned before, the treatment plan should include a variety of different sorts of therapy sessions:
Group therapy
One-to-one individual counselling
Art therapy
Music therapy
Psychodrama
Attendance at 12 step support groups
Written work
Although you can be treated for drug addiction in very basic living conditions you may want to check what amenities the rehab offers. It is quite common for rehabs to offer swimming pools, gyms, saunas and other such facilities. This can make your stay a little more comfortable.
If you would like help in choosing a drug addiction treatment rehab then please contact one of our intake coordinators for expert and confidential advice.