In drug and alcohol rehab and addiction there is lot’s of good news, if you look for it. There are literally armies of people trying to make a difference in this field. It’s really interesting to see that there is a large divergence of opinion on how to treat addiction. There are lots of different drug rehab programs to choose from. These treatment programs are being researched and updated constantly. Many groups have formed to share knowledge about addiction and drug treatment. Another one of these groups is National Families in Action. Have a look at their great site at www.nationalfamilies.org. It’s a great site for any parent concerned about drug addiction.

Those who are dealing with drug and alcohol addicition often feel powerless against the situation in society. How can a parent make the world safer for their kids? How can a church leader work to make their community safer from drug addicition and all it’s problems? How can a young person, frustrated at seeing his or her clssmates offer and using drugs and alcohol do something to make a difference?

There is a website for just such requests. It is about ordinary people making a difference. There is lots of good information. Best of all on the home page there is an area called “What can I do?”. Click on it and the are suggestions to try. The theme is joining together to make a difference in the struggle against alcohol and drugs. The site is www.jointogether.org. It is a truly great idea.

Sometimes it is so easy to be negative. When talking about alcohol and drug rehab programs it gets easy to slip into discussions about the “odds” of success. The best ways to prevent relapse. What to do when relapse occurs. Meth came onto a already crowded drug and alcohol scene and made it worse. The emotional and financial cost or drug and alcohol addiction are staggering. Dealing with the cost of drug rehab and how to finance it, are daily struggles for the people working in this field.

However there are lots of victories. People do change. People do turn their lives around. Everyone needs to remember this when they are in these situations. Families can save eachother. I read a victory story today. We all need to read one every day. It reminds us of what we are trying to do. Miracles happen everyday in drug rehab.

Clients leave a drug and alcohol rehab program early for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is a personality conflict with a staff member or another client of the rehab. Sometimes the rules may be too harsh, or cumbersome. Sometimes part of the program doesn’t make sense to a client. Sometimes the client only stays long enough to tell their family, “I really tried but it just wasn’t for me.”

What are the real costs, both emotional and financial when some leaves rehab early. First is the increased chance of relapse. If the best chance of success involves staying for periods approaching 90 days, leaving early has to increase the odds of returning to drug and alcohol abuse. Using again has real health risks, as well as the financial costs. This also means another detox will take place down the road. This again, is costly and uncomfortable as well.

Sometimes there are added transportation costs by leaving early. If flights have to be books with very short notice, this is always expensive. A lot of rehabs charge more during the intake phase of rehab, so this too will be lost and have to be charged again somewhere else.

Then there is the damage to the relationships in the family. Firstly often it is the family that will bear the added cost and lost fees. The emotional cost and damage is likely far higher. The family has to start all over again looking for another program or rehab. Then also is the return ot worry if their son, daughter or spouse is safe. Often during a stay in rehab is the first time in years, a family goes to sleep without worry. They often feel powerless to be returned to the nightly worry of what their loved one is doing.

Sometimes a client may reconsider leaving program early if they realize the true cost. Is a personality conflict really worth all this cost? Are the rules really that difficult to deal with? Staying and completing the program is not only the safest and most cost effective route, but it will go miles in rebuilding the trust between the client and their family. And that’s a bargain in anyone’s books.

The journey to alcohol and drug rehab is varied and different for all clients. The war on drugs has been ineffective for the most part and it seems we are facing greater numbers of people in trouble than ever before. Where does it all start? If we put our education efforts in the beginning before people are well down the road of addiciton maybe we will have a greater impact. It seems alcohol, not drugs is the initial path most people start in. Alcohol use in the young may be the culprit that starts to journey to self destruction. It least that seems to be the opinion of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. It is their research that alcohol is causing more problems that drugs in the young. Read their imformation for yourself at www.ias.org.uk. Maybe by concentrating on alcohol use in the young, we will have less drug rehab to deal with later.

At a drug and alcohol rehab center, how long should you stay? Ideally this might be arrived at by looking at the length and severity of the addiction. How many other attempts at drug or alcohol rehab have been attempted before? Another possible suggestion might be to stay until you and your counselor felt you were ready.

Such attempts to customize the length of stay, don’t seem to result in higher success rates. Unfortunately, even with very skilled counselors, predicting outcome is very difficult and the research shows, these predictions are not very accurate. The most accurate determanent we have for outcome, is length of stay. The longer you stay, up to a point, the more likely of the client staying sober. Staying longer and the odds of success actually go down. Somewhere around the 90 day mark is the highest chance of success. If drug and alcohol are severely affecting and destroying the quality of your life and you have had no success in your previous attempts to stop, three months is the length of stay which will give you the best opportunity to achieve your goal.

After alcohol and drug rehab what is sobriety anyway? Some define it as total abstinence from all drugs and alcohol. Others may define it as holding down a job and realationship with little or controled use. I personally like total abstinence, simply because it is easier to judge and safer in the long run.

Often we hear from a client that it is ok for them to drink alcohol as it never was a problem for them. Cocaine was the problem. Cocaine wrecked their life. It was drug addicition, not alcohol addicition that needed to be worked upon. Secondary drug or alcohol use is always a concern. It is not that because one had a cocaine addiction that now we are worried you are predisposed to getting a problem with alcohol. It is because even with just having a couple of drinks once a month you are increasing your risk of relapse with cocaine.

Those couple of drinks will LOWER your inhibitions. You feel more confident. You are relaxed more. It is in this state that if someone offered you a few lines of cocaine, you might say, “just this one time“. It is because the alcohol can and does alter your ability to make good decisions that it is so dangerous. Most heroin relapses are PRECEDED by alcohol use.

So I agree with clients when they say only one drug is their problem. But because it is a dangerous problem, the use of other drugs and alcohol is still very dangerous. After drug and alcohol rehab take the safe and easy road. Abstain from all drug and alcohol use.

I have never been a big fan of methadone. In drug rehab it may be useful to get clients off of opiates, however even with that said there are probably better drugs to do that with. The reason I don’t like methadone as a treatment modality is two fold. Number one is the length of a detox required. If fact, most times you really can not detox off of methadone. It is much more of a methadone taper. If someone is taking 100 mg per day it would take 5 to 6 months to taper down to zero useage. Therefore if someone is entering a three month drug rehab residential program, if they are taking over 60 mg per day it will be difficult to be drug free after they are complete. Many clients just get too uncomfortable dropping more than 5 mg per week.

The other problem is that with many of the rules in place about prescribing and dispensing methadone. Clients are sometimes virtual prisoners while on methadone. Leaving for a week long holiday may be impossible. Many programs will dispense only three day’s worth of methadone when leaving town. So people can only leave their area for a maximum of a long weekend.

If you are on methadone or are considering it as a treatment choice, you can always use good information and help. Before you enter a drug rehab program you may want to work on getting your dose down to the 50 to 60 mg per day range. Regardless check out the site www.methadone.org. It might help you figure out if methadone is a good option for you.

Whether it is in drug and alcohol rehab or some other area of our lives, we have all tried to change something. Most times we are able to adopt a new healthier behavior for a while. However for a lot of us we find that after a period of weeks to months we end up sliding back into the old routine with all of its consequences. If we are dealing with a drug or alcohol addiction the old actions may lead to disasterous results.

What is different about permanent change? What happens when someone truly goes in a different direction and never turns back to his or her old ways? I think that to truly make a permanent change with a stay in drug and alcohol rehab two things have to occur.

The first is in the “definitions” we all carry around in our head. If you want a permanent change in your drug or alcohol addiction you must break the old definition and replace it with a new one. When you think of the words, alcohol or drug, what comes to your mind? If it is something like, “something that others can use but I can’t“, you will never stay sober permanently. If you likewise think,”Something I need to reduce all control” or “I need it to relax and control stress“, you will sobotage all the effort you have put in at a drug and alcohol rehab program.

A better definition to the words drugs and alcohol would be, “Something that when used even ONCE, removes and destroys all the things I love and value in my life!“. How about something more clear and short. Drugs are deadly poison. Unless you have a real connection to a definition of alcohol and drug use that supports permanent change your odds of sliding back are much higher.

The second component of permanent change is doing some physical changes, not just mental ones. Change your job. Change where you live. Change your friends. If you change your enviroment, your other changes will be supported with new routines. Old routines trigger old habits. Permanent change is not impossible. It cannot however, happen simply by wishing it.

When it comes to drug and alcohol rehab centers we try here to give as many opinions as possible. A website with a much different view of addiciton and drug rehab centers is the Stanton Peele Addiction Website. For the people looking for non 12 step programs he has a lot of information. Again he as a lot of information available of why 12 step may not work for you. His reasons to go non 12 step are at www.peele.net . He has written books to give you some self-help tools with addiction. There is also a “question answered” section that has lots of answers to commonly asked questions about addiction. For those looking for a non 12 step approach, this is a good site to visit.