What Happens in Drug Rehab?
Drug rehab is a series of groups and individual sessions that lead an individual to an understanding of their disease through multiple different aspects. I wanted to share some of what happens within the process of drug rehab and also share how these things are not scary to the average individual.
Detox Treatment
During your first week of drug treatment you will go through the detox level of care, this will involve taking meds and getting physically attuned to sobriety. This process takes about a week and is the most physical aspect of care but fear not, detox is not like the movies, you will be medicated and safely lowered in medications to be free of addiction physically. After detox occurs, then comes the process of residential treatment which is the more difficult aspect of aligning the physical aspects of the disease to the mental aspects of the disease.
Residential Teatment
During residential treatment, many people deal with the psychological effects of the disorder. This can include an array of different types of groups and settings including relapse prevention, individual therapy, trauma therapy and other groups and settings. Trauma therapy is especially important within the residential treatment setting because significant studies suggest that childhood trauma is a predictor of addiction and often times those suffering from addiction have serious childhood and adult trauma that affects how they process emotions and thoughts.
Residential treatment can typically last anywhere from 21-90 days based on the facility. In most studies, the longer the individual remains in residential care the more likelihood long term sobriety will follow.
Aftercare – Relapse Prevention
Relapse Prevention is another aspect of care during residential treatment. Relapse Prevention is the work to avoid relapse after you leave treatment. This can include worksheets, talk therapy and other fundamental aspects that help increase the likelihood of sustained sobriety. Relapse prevention explores what one will do when faced with issues in the real world, maybe you struggle when you are faced with difficult financial decisions and how will you provide yourself with dealing with these difficult interactions or maybe your family and you struggle with how things will occur when you are sober, this is part of the foundations of relapse prevention skills.
Individual therapy and Group Therapies
Individual therapy is provided at the residential level of care and typically provides time for an individual to process their emotions as a newly sober person and who they are today as well as the mistakes they’ve made. Typically, in most settings you have both a counselor and a therapist. A counselor typically deals with how you are going to stay sober and the plan you put in place for long term sobriety while a therapist is going to deal with how you got here and what you can do to process the feelings and emotions that led you to addiction.
From residential treatment, most individuals end up going to partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient levels of care typically referred to as IOP level of care. These are less restrictive models of care and typically involve the individual either living at home or within a sober living environment. Sober living homes typically provide a curfew and a safe environment for the individual to focus on the next phase of their life following addiction treatment.
Outpatient Treatment
Throughout the outpatient process an individual will slowly attend less and less over a period of 1-6 months starting out attending 3-5 days a week and eventually lowering to 1 day a week or every other week to check in and be drug tested. The longer an individual attends treatment, as previously stated increases the outcome and likelihood the individual will remain abstinent long term from drugs and alcohol. Addiction treatment is a process that takes time and over time an individual can successful get sober from substance abuse.
Outpatient treatment is typically recommended for those who have completed at least the detox phase of treatment at minimum and have gotten to a point where they can start to return to the real world where recovery begins.
Alta Centers is a licensed drug and alcohol rehab center that focuses on detox level of care and residential levels of care in Hollywood Hills, California. Alta Centers is inpatient drug rehab offering detox programs, residential program, dual diagnosis, individual and group therapies . Alta Centers is in network with Anthem Blue Cross, Beacon Health Options and the Screen Actors Guild insurance and other major insurance providers.
