The Problem with Drug Treatment Centers

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

A treatment center that fails to offer proven methods that deal with the underlying root causes of addiction and triggers that lead to relapse is going to have very low success rates. The truth is that most treatment centers are currently using outdated methods of treatment as opposed to the newer scientific approaches that have proven to be more effective in achieving total sobriety.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 need to do their research on the facilities that they are exploring. This is a major purchase whether or not they are cash payers or using insurance. People must make sure that any center for treatment that they consider must be one that offers evidence based care.

To deliver evidence based care the facility must use medical professionals and they must also be equipped 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 One of the problems is that too many treatment programs are using practices that are outdated by as many as fifty years.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 enough time. Addicted individuals that have serious abuse issues can need much more time than that. Short term fixes often lead to relapse. How long should treatment last, well the answer to that is as long as it takes and each case will vary? When you hear about someone that was in and out of rehab multiple 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 the facility employs. See if they have a minimum of a master’s degree and the therapists should be certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Ask in advance what kind of treatment plan they 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 a one-on-one basis, offering individualized treatment. Make sure they know how to identify and treat dual diagnosis patients. Left undetected, these things will kill any attempt at recovery. Treatment centers 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 to rehab only happens once. Do your homework, take it seriously, and remember that addiction is a disease so treat it like you would if you had diabetes or heart disease.