Residential Drug Rehab and Addiction Treatment Centers

Residential Drug Addiction Treatment

 When searching for an residential drug rehab center center, there are a few vital factors that one should dearly hold before making their final decision. Effectiveness of the alcohol and drug rehab or treatment is the most important issue. Findings by a five year government study from across the nation, Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Studies (DATOS), made it clear that treatment effectiveness is related to patient motivation and problem severity, therapeutic engagement and intensity of services, as well as linkages to community-based social supports. The study was comprised of 1-year and 5-year followups used to describe the long-term outcomes of drug treatment and to further clarify the relationship between treatment duration and post-treatment outcomes in four treatment modalities: outpatient methadone, long-term residential (LTR), outpatient drug free (ODF), and short-term inpatient. It should be noted that the choice of alcohol and drug rehab programs DID NOT include the biophysical model of drug treatment.

Not including the biophysical treatment was a political decision to protect many special interest that are vested in the types of treatment that were compared. All of these studies are marked by low expectations of change and are so convoluted in their descriptions of the outcomes, that the parents or loved ones of an addict looking for treatment will find these studies totally useless.

What is needed is a very simple comparison of the outcomes of one modality to another by an outside party that can be trusted to report the actual truth. In identifying success, it is proper to allow some margins for slips, but that needs to be defined, but the return to treatment after a relapse that is marked by uncontrollable use, should be registered as a failure.

Many of these "outcome" studies look a very specific parameters of a unique problem within a system of drug treatment that isn't producing the outcomes that would be expected of any other medical treatment. If you go from the basis of a successful outcome being someone that attends alcohol and drug treatment, no matter the length of stay or clinical approach, and after leaving treatment, if he continues his addiction at any level that causes hardship personally or to his family, than that should be considered a drug treatment failure. This is assuming that we have a person that enters alcohol and drug treatment, or certainly during treatment, makes a firm decision that he wants to live free of addiction. (Most drug addicts long to be free of their cravings and uncontrollable actions that are characteristic of their addiction.)

For whatever political and financial reasons, the entire study of alcohol and drug treatment excuses programs for a lack of success and refuses to examine programs that have remarkable outcomes. This page is not intended to give you the entire argument on the dysfunction of most approaches to alcohol and other drug treatment, but to introduce you to thinking from a different point of view. If you go from the premise that alcohol and other drug treatment programs have been developed from a lack of understanding of the causes of addiction, it is easy to see that any program coming from a false premise wouldn't be able to have an effect at reversing a situation. (You might start by finding the definition of a disease and seeing if you feel that the addiction that you are witnessing is a person that has a chronic and progressive disease or is there something else that would better describe what is happening in the addiction that you are able to examine?

In the beginnings of alcohol and other drug treatment or rehab the devleopment of rehab centers were basing their treatment on the twelve-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was a successful approach to helping alcoholics recover from their addictions, but was never meant to be institutionalized in an residential setting. This changed the twelve-step technology and, therefore, did not produice the outcomes that one would expect if they were seeking a cure to their addiction. For about twenty years, this didn’t seem to matter since these residential drug rehab centers were expanding rapidly, finding clients and were making money.

Naturally, in time, the insurance companies and other funding sources, became disaffected with these poor outcomes and measures were put into place that limited the amount any one insurance company would pay for addiction treatment and the number of times anyone was approved admittance. Most of these residential drug rehabt centers had less than 10% of their graduates leaving their care and being free of their addiction, which means that most were still craving their drugs of choice and would soon be back in their destructive lifestyles and needing treatment again. It wasn’t uncommon to find addicted persons that had attended these types of treatment multiple times, with many going through more than five episodes of treatment, without any sustained successes. In fact, most patients that repeat treatment have to also deal with their feeling for failure in treatment along with their desperate feelings of having a incurable “disease” that will keep them from actualizing their goals and dreams.

The twelve-step program adhere to the disease model of addiction which believes that addiction is a chronic and progressive disease; which means that no matter how long a person remains drug-free, the disease is still progressing and could, at any moment, destroy the persons life once again. This model is still the most prevalent model of addiction with approximately 80% of today’s treatment facilities subscribing to this belief.

By the end of the 1980’s, residential drug rehab was no longer seen in the same light as other forms of medical treatment, and third party payers were reducing their coverage for this ineffective form of care. rIf you took your car to a mechanic that told you that he only fixes about one in every ten cars that works on, you would be thankful for his honesty, but you would probably not leave you car to his care, but, ionstead, you would explore other mechanics and shops to see if there were any that could actually give you a better shot at getting the product that you were seeking.

In finding a drug rehab center, you should use this same wisdom and explore the programs that are available to you and make your decision on the one that can demonstrate that most persons that graduate from their residential drug rehab center have a reliable chance of being drug-free. In making your search for drug treatment, look for at this statistic before you consider the price and the length of stay, since it is obviously more expensive to attend multiple treatment centers that offer you “help” in thirty days than it would be to attend one time and be through with this problems in your life.

Base your decision of residential drug rehab on the best treatment outcomes and evidence from graduates and their significant others that report successes in their lives that had once resembled a situation similar to yours or that of your loved one. Programs that handle the bio-physical aspects of addiction are many times more likely to have a treatment success than those that rely on the disease model of addiction.

There are many different and confusing terms related to finding effective care for someone on alcohol or drugs. Depending on your level of addiction to drugs you may neeed a specific type of treatment. There are many terms that are used to describe clinical actions related to alcohol and other drugs. Some terms you may have come across are: Alcohol and/or Drug Detox Center, a Alcohol and Drug Rehab, Alcohol and/or Drug Treatment, Drug Addiction Treatment, Drug Addiction Counseling, Alcohol and Drug In-Patient Treatment and Alcohol and Drug Out-Patient Treatment. For anyone that has developed a physical addiction to Alcohol or other Drugs, you will need alcohol or drug detox or withdrawal. Detox and Withdrawal are the same actions. Most of the time, that won't be enough treatment since it will only handle the immediate physical withdrawal symptoms. Anyone that is having alcohol or other drug withdrawal symptoms will be very anxious to end the severe flu-like symptoms that accompany any physical withdrawal and calling our counselors can help you fiind an effective alcohol and drug detox or a comprehensive drug treatment program that has detox and effective drug rehab.

You don't have the time or money to go to a drug rehab center that isn't going to handle your addiction problem. Find out which drug treatment facilities will deliver an outcome that they promise and which drug treatment centers are going to make you the problem and tell you how bad your addictive disease is and that it is, of course, a disease of relapse, so you will have to plan on drug rehab at least yearly...THAT IS JUST NOT THE TRUTH!!

CALL 1-877-444-1137 and get some clairity about addiction and addiction treatment centers.