Saturday 4 August 2007

Long Term Drug Rehab

Long-term treatment is something that not everyone can do. With a family, with work, with life, it is hard to remain in treatment for so long. However, there are significant benefits associated with an extended stay in rehab and whoever can afford to take the time out for recovery should consider it.
I feel that a 28-day program is only long enough to change your way of thinking. It is not long enough to teach you how to interact with society living a drug free life. Long-term drug treatment, or extended care, provides all of the valuable tools needed to be able to interact with life while staying clean and sober. Many facilities allow you to have your car. Many of them allow you to go back to work while sleeping at the facility. Some facilities keep the standard care patients and the aftercare patients separate, some let them interact.

Once in long-term care you can expect to see the group therapy classes a little less. The therapy you get is focused more on how you’re handling life and getting back to work, and how you are staying sober in the process. When in aftercare you can expect to be pushed to get a sponsor in AA and NA. He/She can pick you up and take you to meetings. That is generally allowed in long-term care. All drug treatment facilities have long-term care. Most of the time it is cheaper then the standard care. All facilities have contacts with sober living homes that they can refer you

I have found that the best way to find a high quality sober living home is to contact any major drug treatment center. I strongly encourage anyone who needs a 3/4 way house or halfway house to contact a major facility. They have close contacts and refer many of their customers to them for aftercare.
Against Long Term treatment (post 28 day program) Posted by Larry
The program of AA/NA is free. People go to rehab for a month and then they should be ready to go back to life with the additon of daily meetings. I think the sober living homes are a safe haven - yes - but they get you in the mental habit of being "institutionalized" in my opinion. You have to deal with life eventually, why not get right to it when you leave treatment. It is not supposed to be fun or easy, it is recovery. Meetings work great if you surround yourself with the right people.

quick methadone fix

Recent editorial comments and news articles reflect a new wave of attacks in Scotland on what’s described as the “quick methadone fix” (editorial, The Scotsman, 22 July), and the “’Black cloud’ of methadone use” (Scotsman 24 July). The current vitriol is occasioned by the tragic death of a two-year old who ingested her mother’s methadone, at a time when revised estimates suggest there are 21,000 opiate-dependent individuals who receive methadone maintenance, 7,000 of whom live in households with children under age 16. This has occasioned the leader of the Tories, Annabel Goldie, to urge a “programme that eradicates, rather than manages, the problem…”, and Fergus Ewing, the safety minister, “…promised to improve service provision to get people off methadone.”

Imagine politicians promising to “get people off insulin,” or dismissing medication that “manages” but fails to “eradicate” hypertension, asthma, arthritis, AIDS, etc! Consider attacking Alcoholics Anonymous because while it has helped countless alcoholics remain abstinent, it adamantly refuses to accept the notion that the disease of alcoholism can be “cured.”

Addiction is a chronic medical disease; get used to it! The good news is that it can be treated, often with extremely positive results, and the more people who need treatment that get it, the better.