Is it possible to do in home drug rehab?  How could you do it if you had to?  What are the risks of in home drug rehab?  Does the concept of doing drug rehab at home even make any sense?  Lots of questions to be sure, and the answers depend on the individual and the specifics of each case.  If it were possible to do drug rehab in your own home, several key advantages would be there for some individuals.  If you are a parent with small children, it might be one of the only options available to stay with your kids.  Obviously another advantage would be cost.  Anything that can be acccomplished without travel and accomodation expense has to be less expensive.

To some degree in home drug rehab is probably a misnomer.  A more likely case for most people would be an outpatient program combined with a highly sctructured program and plan for staying at home for the times not spent in an out patient drug rehab program.  It is technically possible to drug rehab at your own home and not leave for 90 days, however it does require the commitment of some other people to come to your place of residence to help you examine and learn some of the skills you need to change.

The obvious thing that needs to be asked is, if it were possible to change and do drug rehab at home, why wouldn't the person have changed before?  The answer lies in where along the the path of addiction the person is.  Clients that still have some structure in their lives may benefit from an attempt at in home drug rehab.  External testing would be recommended.  Some external formal instruction would also play a large difference.  This means if you are still able to maintain your job, but are in danger of cossing the line to being out of control, maybe a in home drug rehab would work.  It you life is totally out of control, the odds of in home drug rehab being successful would be slim.  Can you make your home safe from drugs and alcohol?  How close is a supply of drugs and slcohol to your home?  If you can answer those questions and still be reasonably safe, then again you may be a candidate for in home drug rehab.  The short answer again is that in home drug rehab is possible, but it is selective and difficult to do.

We are proud to say we have finally launched our book, Make your last relapse, your last.  For a lot of people trying to deal with a drug and alcohol addiction this book will make a large difference.  I have to admit though, I have someone asked the strangest comment today.  They asked me if I was worried that the book would make it so people would not come to our rehab?  Seemed like a strange question.  If a book alone could help some people, that is wonderful.  However, there are people that need a drug rehab, so they can be safe, while they explore the book.

Addiction is a gradient.  No two people are exactly the same.  There are people whom a book will be all they need to move on in their life.  There are others whom a book and a drug rehab program will be needed as they need to have the space and privacy to figure it out on their own.  If addiction could be solved by a book alone it would not be the problem that it is in our society.  Our book will help.  Drug rehab will still be needed for those with a severe addiction.  Drug availibility and potency mean drug rehab centers are required no matter how good any book is.  I think people constantly underestimate addiction. If it were easy to change, clients would have done it already.  Drug rehab centers will exist for a long time, no matter how good any book is!

A lot of people view  addiction as a life long disease, that is progressive and unrelenting.  You are powerless over it and have to turn it over to a higher power.  This may not be true.  When you leave a drug rehab center you may actually be able to move past addiction for good.  A study recently published in the Canadian Journel of Psychiatry stated that many gambling addicts recover naturally on their own.  Addiction is not always progressive, and may have ebb and flow.

It is a behavioral problem that can be resolved with gathering the skills to behave in a different way.  Sound familiar?  It is something I have been writing about for a couple of years now.  Drug rehab should teach skillls.  Rehab is about learning, not about admissions of powerlessness.  It is about asking about what you need to learn and change in your life.  Then find the place that can teach it too you.  You can and will move past addiction.

In drug rehab there is definately a limited amount of time available.  People do not stay in rehab for long periods of time.  Most clients stay in a drug rehab center from one to three months.  To maximize the potential for change, it is wise to utilize all the available methods for improving the rate of change.  One of the more effective methods uses the value of measurement.  Could you imagine trying to lose weight without ever having a scale around.  How would you know what worked?  How would you stay motivated when changes visually occur very slowly. 

Drug rehab is very similar.  You will not see the changes visually for a few weeks at least.  Health and body changes occur at a slow rate.  Relationships improve at a slow rate.  Trust is rebuilt at a slow rate.  What yardstaicks can you use in a drug rehab center.  One obvious one is drug and alcohol testing.  As you stack up more and more negative tests in a row, it is proof of your commitment to and evidence of change.  Another useful one is depression indexes.  You may be feeling a little better, but how do you know what is really happening?  By taking a weekly mood index and regularily retaking it and comparing the results, you will be more accurately charting your progress.  This will allow you to alter your efforts as needed which will make for much more effective results.

You can also monitor the improvement in your physical fitness level as all drug rehab programs should have some component of getting back in shape.  Charting your hours of sleep and rating how easily you fell asleep the night before will also allow you to see your return to a normal sleep pattern.  The more things you can accurately relate to a number, the easier and more rapid your change.

I was discussing drug rehab with a family a while ago.  To put it mildly there was a disagreement in the family about how to proceed.  Thie siblings wanted their brother to go into a drug rehab.  Which rehab and where, they could not decide.  They were a large family and have always been close.  Some saw the value of being close to the client with the addiction, others thought he should be far away to start over and resolve his issues and drug useage.

The father saw the world in terms of more black and white values.  He thought the son should be locked up for a year or two and with time to consider his punishment, he would change his ways.  Let me say first, I do understand the frustration of someone close to someone with an addiction.  Lying, deceit, theft, damage to relationships and property take place.  I will leave the decision about punishment to the courts.  What I want to make clear, is that if new skills are not learned to replace the ones the individual has now, behavior will not change. 

Maybe we need to change the name of drug rehab.  If we started calling it, life skill and stress management course so you do not damage yourself with self medicated drug use and worry, maybe everyone would get what we acually do.  Punishment does give people a new skill set.  They learn how to lie better, and steal with more skill, and fashion weapons out of combs.  Do any of those skills actually help someone change their life? 

Labelling someone, and admission of a problem publicly do almost nothing as well.  The number of people who have gone to an A.A. meeting ONCE and stood up and said, "Hi I'm Terry and I'm an alcoholic" is a staggering number.  Yet only 5% fo those people will stick around and change their life.  Only 1 out of 20!  Television and Hollywood make such a big deal out of "admitting you have a problem", but that has so little to do with the actual solution.  Do you really think someone stealing a T.V. and selling it for drug money actually thinks it is normal behavior and that they do not have a problem?  Locking people up makes us feel better.  It does nothing to the long term course of and addiction.

Empowered is one of those words sometimes I do not like.  Comes across as sort of new age assertion type of thing.  What is an empowered client in a drug rehab center?  I think it may involve some of the following things.  Firstly they would know the rationale and evidence of the treatment they are participating in at a drug rehab center, and are comfortable with it.  They also know how to maximize the benefits they get in drug rehab.

Simple things like arriving on time and organized for their one to one counseling.  Write down your questions as they occur during the day. Then you will not have to remember them during your counseling session.  Write down things during the drug rehab groups that are confusing to you.  Again order them as to which are more important to you in your life.  Then proceed through the list with your counselor.

Do your reading before going to group.  Being familiar with the material will greatly aid in how much you gain from the discussion.  Simply by reading, you will understand any of the terms or lingo used.  Another simple thing to improve you results in drug rehab is to be sure to eat properly.  Have breakfast, even if you are not feeling great.  Coffee will not give you the energy to focus and learn in the morning.

Be polite in your requests and questions.  If you are at all acusatory in your approach, people will spend less time an tend to avoid you.  If you start with, "Sorry for all these questions, maybe I'm just having a slow brain day, would you mind helping me through them?", everyone will help you.  You may be able to get people to help only because you are paying and you can "demand" service, but you will never get the very best effort out of the other person.  Just be polite is a good rule.

Thank people for their help.  Even if they cannot get you the answer, thank them for their effort.  Let your conselors know when they did something that really helped you.  Everyone needs real praise for a job well done.  If you try most of the suggestions here you will gain much more than just putting in time at drug rehab.  It is your time and money, spend both of them wisely.

How often in life do you get to start over?  How often do you get the chance to choose who and what you want to be?  When you enter a drug rehab center many people might view this as a negative event.  However is it a glorious chance to remake yourself in areas you have always felt you wanted to change.  The beautiful part of drug rehab is that nobody knows you.  It is a safe enviroment.  You can take some chances without permanent consequences.  If you have felt you whole life you wanted to be more social and connected to other people, why not be that person in drug rehab.  Go out and talk to everyone in the drug rehab center you are in.  If you seem clumsy at it, blame it on the detox and your head not being clear.  If you always wanted to be more of a leader in life, volunteer for everything at the rehab.  Ask for things you can do to assist in the drug rehab program.  Be an advocate for those who are withdrawn and quiet.  Ask fo rtheir opinion and voice it to the group, and let them know you value them. 

Hey if you are going to be a sober person, you get to choose what kind of sober person you are going to be.  It does not have to be just a non-using version of the old you.  It can be a whole new you with characteristics and traits you wish you always had.  Drug rehab for many clients is starting all over.  Learning life skills and learning to live in ways they may have never lived before.  The best part of staring over, is starting over.  Stop and think of the kind of person you would like to be in a drug rehab.  Then become that person.

When thinking about change and trying something different like drug rehab, we all tend to look from a negative viewpoint.  There just seems to be a natural tendancy to drift to thoughts of all the things that could go wrong or have a bad outcome.  It is funny how as adults we can slip back to thoughts similar to when we were going to summer camp as a kid.  Will I fit in?  Will my room mate snore?  What if there are too many rules?  Will I like the food? 

The first thing to remember is that the drug rehab center has done this many times before.  They have earplugs for if your room mate snores.  They have orientation programs and buddy companions so that you fit in quickly.  They post rules clearly so you are never confused about what to do.  They have had "picky" eaters before.  The thing to remember is as much as we like to think we are unique, we are not.  Others have had the same problems before.  Most of the issues you might have about being fearful in going to a drug rehab have been dealt with a hundred times over.  Think of all the times in your life you worried about something that never happened.  Going to a drug rehab program is much the same.  It will be much better than you think.

Everyone would like a simpler solution to drug and alcohol addiction.  Drug rehab is certainly possible and successful in a large number of cases.  It requires a lot of work and commitment to change.  Because drug rehab is expensive and time consuming, nobody really wants to go and wants to spend the money.  This makes us open to things that seem to good to be true.  Actually when it comes to health in general we are all victims of one time or another of junk science.  What I am talking about is "loosely defined claims" made to look like science. 

Many health supplements play this game.  They mention lots of conditions and suggest a certain herb may be helpful, when there are no studies proving it has any effect at all.  The same thing happens is drug rehab.  Sometimes things are suggested and presented as science when there are no study proving the treatment any more effective than doing nothing.  Drug addiction is a complex problem and no one solution is effective on all clients in all situations.  Mant times treatment is suggested simply because that is the way the person suggesting the treatment got sober. 

Ask for treatment based on evidence.  Ask for a list of references backing up the form of treatment.  Look some of them up.  Junk science is long on story, but very short on real studies.

When pondering your life in a drug rehab center, unfortunately you cannot change everything in the world around you.  Everyone has heard the serenity prayer about knowing the wisdom to tell the difference between what you can change and what you cannot change.  I think there is more to it than just deciding what you can change.  I wonder if sometimes when dealing with an addiction in drug rehab , if we sometimes take the easy road out and say I do not have the power to change this.

However when we look at history many times truly great things have been accomplished by people who set out to complete a task, that by all accounts before they did it was impossible by the standards of their day.  So when looking at your future and deciding what to focus on, it might be wise to for the moment imagine all things are possible to change in drug rehab and your life.  Anything you really think is important is possible, anything.  Real wisdom may lie in the questions you ask about change.  "What things if change in my life will have the MOST impact on the quality of my life and those around me?"   It is never a case of if you can do something.  It is always a case of what are the reasons to do something.  If you get enough reasons, really good reasons to do something in and after drug rehab, you will find a way to make an impact in this area.

There is also the chance that in attempting to change the "unchangeable" in your life you will make all the other changes in your life to make it truly satisfying and great.  Here is what I mean.  Many great physicians and researchers in the last 100 years have been looking for a "cure" for cancer.  Many, especially in th first half of the 1900's made no significant impact on the outcome of cancer patients, for their whole live's work.  At best you could say their work allowed other's to move ahead and make discoveries.  Here is what may be important to remember.  In pursuing a great goal, they developed wisdom, patience, discipline, tenacity, self-sacrifice and a host of other skills.  Not a bad list from a result of NOT having the power to change something.

So if you are really concerned if you will ever have the power to change something ask this question.  "What will I gain and learn personally even if I ultimately do not succeed in changing this in my life?"  If the answer to this question is filled with positive things,  that you might not get any other way, then proceed, even is you do not have the power to change something.