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Addiction Treatment

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s a hard thing to remember for many drug addicts; it’s not easy to see the light when you’re mired in the darkness, not easy to breathe the air when you’ve been in the tunnel for longer than you can remember. But it’s still there, that light. And you can get to it, same as everyone else, if you learn the right facts and seek the right help.

Drug treatment, unfortunately, is something of a taboo in American society. People don’t talk about addiction treatment because they don’t understand it, or because they’re ashamed of it, or because they think people will look at them funny if they bring it up. As a result, addiction treatment is a thing which is at best dimly understood in the popular imagination, and which is at worst believed to be something other than what it actually is.

Addiction treatment, we should note at the outset, is not the freewheeling horror show that often gets portrayed in movies and on TV. It’s generally a bad idea to believe everything Hollywood tells you, and so it is with drug addiction and drug rehab: addiction treatment is a trying process, to be sure, but it’s hardly the stuff of fantastical nightmares. Patients in addiction treatment struggle every day towards the hope of a brighter tomorrow; addiction treatment centers are first and foremost places of optimism, and of aspiration. The best addiction treatment programs help recovering addicts navigate the long road to recovery with a minimum of discomfort and disease, and aim to ensure that every patient finds success on the way from addiction to sobriety.

But such success is only possible for those individuals who understand the nature of addiction itself, and who understand the functional dynamics of effective addiction treatment. Addiction treatment may not be a freewheeling horror show, but neither is it an easy thing, and only through fierce determination and diligent self-education can anyone overcome drug addiction once and for all.

With that in mind, the following text lays out the essential schematics of drug addiction and drug recovery: everything you need to know as you weigh your addiction treatment options. Maybe it’s you who’s fallen victim to drug addiction; maybe it’s someone you love. In either case, you can’t afford not to act. Drug addiction is nothing if not the most dire of problems, and hesitation can sometimes be the difference between life and death. By the same token, though, proper action can make all the difference in the world, and addiction treatment offers real hope to those individuals who have the courage to pursue it.

Again, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. At The Addiction Recovery Center, we never lose sight of it, and it’s our mission to help you get where you want to go. Given the chance, we just might be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Call The Addiction Recovery Center NOW: 1-888-510-2481.

Do I really need professional addiction treatment to overcome my drug addiction?
To put it as bluntly as possible: Yes, you do need a professional drug rehab program to overcome your drug addiction. In fact, everyone needs professional addiction treatment to overcome his drug addiction. There’s no other way to way to get better.

Many drug addicts and alcoholics make the mistake of believing that they kick their habits whenever they want to: that they can stop using drugs or alcohol through a simple act of will, at a moment of their choosing. Unfortunately, those drug addicts and alcoholics are just flat wrong.

Professional alcohol and drug addiction treatment confronts addiction as it actually is: as a clinical disease with very real clinical roots. The drug addicts and alcoholics who believe that they can heal themselves without the help of an addiction treatment program misconstrue the nature of addiction itself; as is true of any disease, addiction can only be overcome with intensive medical care. Think of it this way: No cancer patient believes that he can beat cancer simply by choosing to do so. The same should be true for drug addicts and alcoholics, who don’t stand a chance of getting well unless they first admit themselves to a qualified addiction treatment center.

Of course, that decision is often an exceedingly difficult one to make. Admitting yourself to a drug or alcohol addiction treatment center means facing an unpleasant truth: that you have a problem, and that you don’t have the ability to solve it by yourself. As such, many drug addicts and alcoholics are hesitant to seek addiction treatment, and are adamant in their insistence that their drug and drinking habits are entirely within the scope of their volitional control. Tragically, that sort of stubbornness can sometimes make the difference between life and death.

What’s the difference between casual drug use and hardcore drug addiction?
In plain terms, there is no such thing as a “casual” drug habit. Repetitive drug users, no matter firmly they believe otherwise, are never in control of their drug use; repetitive drug use is predicated on need, and need is a thing that can’t be governed by anything we might understand, conventionally, as individual will.

What that means, in the most general sense, is that every repetitive drug user is a prospective addiction treatment patient. Again, drug addicts can’t simply decide to stop using drugs; they need help, from intensive addiction treatment programs specially designed to meet their specific needs. As there is no “casual” drug habit, so is there no “casual” form of addiction treatment: Every effective addiction treatment program must be grounded in a commitment to treat the whole of an addict’s being, and to confront addiction in all its forms.

From a practical perspective, addiction treatment must combat the joint causes of drug and alcohol addiction. Addiction is a two-headed disease, one that exists in both physical and psychological dimensions. Successful addiction treatment, it follows, is that which delivers both physical and psychological therapy to recovering addicts. Anything else would only amount to an incomplete solution, and, again, there is no such thing as a halfway addiction cure.

What do I need to know about addiction treatment?
To this point, we’ve painted addiction and addiction treatment with a rather broad brush. It’s one thing to talk about the necessity of professional drug and alcohol addiction treatment; it’s quite another to explain the thing in detail. How, then, does addiction treatment work? What are its goals? More importantly, how does it seek to reach them?

First, on the subject of physical and psychological therapy: As noted above, no addiction treatment program can be successful if it fails to account for both the physical and psychological roots of addiction. With that in mind, addiction treatment is something of a two-stage process, with both phases ultimately working in tandem to help patients achieve lasting and meaningful states of sobriety.

Upon entering an addiction treatment center, many patients experience up to a week of drug withdrawal: a period in which their bodies shake the physical dependencies associated with drug addiction. Because chronic drug abuse warps an addict’s internal chemistry, the first phase of sobriety is often a physically trying one. With that in mind, doctors and caregivers in drug detox facilities use advanced medical treatments to help patients navigate the straits of withdrawal, ultimately aiming to ensure that the initial phase of addiction treatment is no more uncomfortable than it absolutely has to be.

Of course, that initial phase is hardly the end of the story. Again, addiction operates through both physical and psychological mechanisms, and no addiction treatment program is complete if it fails to address its patients’ mental health. Effective addiction treatment programs work because they impart those emotional skills that are vital to a patient’s long-term sobriety: the centered strength that allows recovering addicts to face the real world without leaning on their drug habits for chemical support. Only then, when they’ve learned to be at peace in their own skin, are addiction treatment patients ready for the rigors of independent sober living.

What determines the success of an addiction treatment program?
It’s important here to distinguish what exactly qualifies as a “successful” addiction treatment program. Addiction treatment, at its heart, is a lifetime proposition. Strictly speaking, there is no final “cure” for alcoholism and drug abuse; addiction never really goes away, and addicts continue to grapple with their demons long after they’ve checked out of an addiction treatment facility. Intensive physical and psychological addiction treatment is essential, in other words…but it isn’t sufficient to long-term addiction recovery.

On the contrary, the most successful addiction treatment programs are those that meet the big-picture treatment needs of their patient. Because addiction recovery is a lifelong process, addiction treatment does not and cannot end after a patient’s initial month at an addiction treatment center. Indeed, only with access to aftercare addiction treatment options and independent addiction treatment support groups can an addiction treatment patient reasonably expect to sustain the gains he made in his first thirty days of sobriety.

Of course, aftercare addiction treatment options and independent addiction treatment support groups are hardly within the realm of a recovering drug addict’s expertise, and that’s why it’s vital that you find an addiction treatment facility which can provide for your long-term needs. Addiction treatment is too hard to do on your own; you need help, and you need it from people who know what they’re doing. A successful addiction treatment program is successful both because of the effort its patients put into their recovery and because of the knowledge its caregivers bring to their work. If you want to get better, in other words, you’ve got to work for it, but you’ve also got to entrust your care to an addiction treatment center with a proven track of record success.

At The Addiction Recovery Center, we know how it works. And we’d love to show you, if you’d only give us the chance. Call NOW: 1-888-510-2481.

What can I expect during my time at an addiction treatment center?
But we still haven’t addressed what is, for many prospective addiction treatment patients, the most pressing question about addiction treatment and recovery: What is it like? How does it feel? What can I expect during my time at an addiction treatment center, after I’ve entrusted my health and well-being to a group of doctors and technicians I’ve never even met before?

We should emphasize, again, that addiction treatment is hardly easy. As noted at the outset, addiction treatment is and must always be a struggle; you can’t get healed, you might say, without suffering a little in the process. There is no gentle way through the crucible of addiction treatment, no gentle road through the wilderness of addiction recovery. As is so often true, anything worth having can only be had for a price.

But that doesn’t mean addiction treatment isn’t worth it. If anything has been made clear here, let it be this: Addiction treatment can change your life. With proper care and professional guidance, you can expect to get better in an addiction treatment center, to get back to living life as it used to be, before addiction made it something very different indeed. Addiction treatment isn’t easy, but then again neither is addiction itself, and the choice between one and the other isn’t much of a choice at all.

A final word, then: The Addiction Recovery Center can help you heal. Our addiction treatment programs are specially designed to meet the individual needs of our clients, and our addiction treatment success rate speaks for itself. But we can’t do anything until you take the first step, and the simple fact of that matter is that you can’t afford not to act. So, please: Pick up the phone. Make the decision. Resolve to face the music now, before it’s too late, before you’ve lost the power to do the resolving. Your life, and the lives of the people you love, may never be the same.

For more information or to speak to our caring admissions staff, call 24 hours a day, 1-888-510-2481
“It’s never too late to call.”