When a family member is in drug rehab, what can the family being doing while they are there?  What does quality support for someone in drug rehab look like?  What are a few of the most important things you can do to help?  Everyone wants rehab to be successful.  Everyone wants to move past the pain and difficulties an addiction causes within a family.  However, even with good intentions, it does not happen in a high enough percentage of the cases.  So what are some things family members can do to raise that percentage of success towards a higher number?

The first one is so obvious it really does not occur to most people.  You need to start to take care of yourself.  You might want to consider some basic exercise and relaxation techniques.  Getting your loved one into drug and alcohol rehab was most likely an exhausting and long experience.  Before that, I am sure you had many sleepless nights.  You need to restore yourself.  Many of the poor phone calls between a family member in drug rehab and someone home in the family are simply because neither party is rested.  In the first few weeks after stopping use of a drug or alcohol the sleeping pattern has not yet turned back to normal.  Staring a new drug rehab program is stressful.  So if you have a tired stressed client phoning an exhausted family member, it can lead to poor communication.

Just as it is a new start for the person in rehab, it also can be a new start for the family members as well.  Get some rest.  Go for some walks.  Spend  a few minutes a day reading something calm and inspirational.  Eat some healthier foods.  The week before as you were making final arrangements for drug rehab you probably lived off of coffee and fast food. You cannot offer support if you have none to give yourself.  I will present a few more ideas in a couple of days, but start with yourself, which is always the best place to start.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 7:17 am and is filed under Drug Rehab, Rehab Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.