The Problem with Drug Treatment Centers

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The biggest problem with addiction recovery is that there are so many people that have failed one ormore times. This causes those to become discouraged when in reality it never was their fault thatthey were not successful. There are millions of addicts hooked on drugs or alcohol and unfortunatelyonly a small, actually very small, number seek professional treatment and very often the treatment issubstandard at best.

A treatment center that fails to offer proven methods that deal with the underlying root causes ofaddiction and triggers that lead to relapse is going to have very low success rates. The truth is thatmost treatment centers are currently using outdated methods of treatment as opposed to the newerscientific approaches that have proven to be more effective in achieving total sobriety.

This means that when people are seeking treatment for a disease as deadly as addiction is they needto do their research on the facilities that they are exploring. This is a major purchase whether or notthey are cash payers or using insurance. People must make sure that any center for treatment thatthey consider must be one that offers evidence based care.

To deliver evidence based care the facility must use medical professionals and they must also beequipped with the skills, credentials, and the knowledge to deliver medicine and psychotherapy,which is part of evidence based care. One of the problems is that too many treatment programs areusing practices that are outdated by as many as fifty years.

Another problem is that most trips to rehab are in 30 day intervals and very often that is not enoughtime. Addicted individuals that have serious abuse issues can need much more time than that. Shortterm fixes often lead to relapse. How long should treatment last, well the answer to that is as long asit takes and each case will vary? When you hear about someone that was in and out of rehabmultiple times the reason for it is that they never got the treatment that they needed.

Before entering any treatment center people should check the credentials of the people that thefacility employs. See if they have a minimum of a master's degree and the therapists should becertified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Ask in advance what kind of treatment planthey would tailor just for you. Treatment should include more than classes, movies, and seminars.

Make sure they offer licensed addiction counselors who meet with clients at least twice a week on aone-on-one basis, offering individualized treatment. Make sure they know how to identify and treatdual diagnosis patients. Left undetected, these things will kill any attempt at recovery. Treatmentcenters that employ cognitive behavioral therapy are good.

Check out what you will be paying for and do everything in your power to make sure that a trip torehab only happens once. Do your homework, take it seriously, and remember that addiction is adisease so treat it like you would if you had diabetes or heart disease.