Tag: Drug Rehab and Addiction Treatments

It’s well known that seeking treatment is the first step on the road to recovery.

Just like you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, leading an addict that is not done using to treatment will not make him stop.

Drug treatment can be with a medical program, a residential program, or just counseling, depending on the level of addiction, and the duration.

A good approach is to start at the lower levels first, and quickly work your way up.

If AA meetings work, then use them. If that is not enough to help an addict quit, try sober living for a week or two, and then move up to a residential treatment program.

If the addict is in the throes of serious addiction and needs to quit quickly without hesitation, then a residential treatment program is a good first step.

If it is a long-term addiction, where the addict may be in danger of medical complications caused by a withdrawal, then a medical detox would be necessary.

Drug Rehab is The First Step of a Sober Lifestyle

After the treatment is the rehabilitation. It usually starts with humbling yourself and taking a more basic approach to life.

A low-end job is a step many former addicts take. It is a way of reaffirming that life is more important than money, and that money and drugs do not create happiness. If you can work at a crummy job and be happy, then you can progress faster in your rehabilitation.

There is another reason for starting the rehabilitation program with a low-paying job, economics. If you are just making ends meet, paying for rent, food, and bills, there is little leftover to seek out trouble.

Too much free time and too much free cash are usually what helped fuel an addiction.
Rehabilitation and Recovery

Recovery is the next progression, where you start to take on more responsibilities and commitments.

Do not be in a big hurry to get back into full gear right off the bat. You have just gone through a difficult and trying process of quitting a lifestyle. There is no need to quickly get back into doing the things that might have driven you to a life of addiction.

Once you have taken the steps of recovery, and are ready to move into rehabilitation, then you move back into the career or jobs that you were previously doing.

Set a timeline for your recovery. A few months in a rehabilitation mode, and then slowly moving into a recovery mode. Your sobriety is more important than your job title, salary, or prestige.

Learning to Live Clean and Sober

You can’t go from addict to sobriety in one day, it takes weeks, months, or years. learning to adopt a sober lifestyle means respecting your sobriety date more than allowing any road bumps in the path of life to destroy it.

Each person will take a different path. Some will go from drug addiction to a healthier “addiction”, such as church, meetings, working out, or hobbies. People rarely give up one addiction without acquiring another, it’s just that in sobriety you strive to work on staying clean with a “healthy” addiction.

Go to an AA club for a while, and you will soon see a core group of people attending, with some others that regularly filter in and out.

The core group is addicted to the meeting, with the camaraderie it provides, the outlet, and the socializing, while the ones that filter in and out are going out to use, getting locked up, or don’t respect their sobriety.