Finding an addiction rehab for drug and alcohol addiction is a difficult choice to make.  Most rehabs are good to choose but there is more to the process than choosing a rehab.  This is a life changing decision to go into rehab and it takes a lot of courage and wisdom to understand you need to do something different to beat active addiction.  Rehab is a large investment, and a good one for many people, why not ensure you invest correctly and have support through the rehab process?

Top hurdles for people thinking about going into addiction rehab facility

  1. Having to go away and leave your life behind while you enter recovery rehab
  2. Trying to find the best rehab to suit your recovery and life needs
  3. How to deal with work, family and friends
  4. Thinking they can do it on their own and cancelling at the last minute
  5. Which rehabs have a good reputation and what can I expect when going there

Let’s breakdown these interconnected scenarios to show you how rehab can fit into your life.  You can overcome these obstacles you face and you will find that the problems with going to rehab are much smaller than you first expected.

Pre-rehab: setting up your addiction rehab visit

Often people are intimidated simply by the word rehab and feel it has a negative connotation.  How do you admit to others that you are going to rehab?  Well, you don’t have to right away.  It could be better in your situation to speak with an addiction counsellor about your relationships; friends, family, and work; and sort out an action plan to informing them (or not informing them precisely of the issue).  I’ve found honesty to be the best policy in most cases but in other areas, such as work, telling HR that you have met with a mental health counsellor and they recommended a treatment program which would take a month or longer is usually acceptable. But you should have that meeting with a counsellor instead of making it up because honesty is a crucial aspect of recovery. Don’t build up possible obstacles that you may face, quite often it makes a person think rehab can’t be done in their situation when the opposite is normally the truth.

The Rehab search: Finding the right rehab for you

Everyone has different starting points and goals in life.  The right rehab will be integrated into your life goals as well as recovery.  Depending on your history of drug and/or alcohol addiction, a short term, 30 day, or longer stay might be the best option for you. There are other factors to weigh in, for example, do they use detox drugs, is it 12 step based or other, and more.  I’ve worked with many clients and rehabs to understand the right for both.

After rehab: The crucial time for making your time spent in rehab to enable long lasting recovery

We have seen the celebrity stories of them going away to rehab to emerge clean and sober 10-30 days later.  Then the news stories come back that they slipped again.  Guess what? It isn’t just a problem for celebrities! What causes people to relapse?  There are a lot of reasons, from going back to your old environment and friends, age, history of use, and after care attendance.  Check out this study for a hard look at rehab and detox: Opiate addiction detox, 91% relapse rate and 56% within first week out of treatment. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20669601  This is not value for money and the problem is that even knowing the major pitfalls to relapse the person looking for help doesn’t always purchase the full solution to their addiction recovery needs.  I think this happens because it is hard to sell the full package of recovery to someone only looking into rehab. “What do you mean I do 30 days rehab and have a year of on going counselling sessions and 12 step meetings!!” How do you commit someone to a year of recovery process when they can hardly stretch to 30 days in a rehab?  And yes, for many it is a life long process, but is not as intensive over time.

The issue I find is that trust and experience are missing.  Addiction recovery is hard but worth it. I compare it to climbing Mount Everest.  If you decided to climb that mountain, what would you do?  You would do research, have proper training, eat/sleep/exercise well, and hire a Sherpa to guide you up the path to make sure you are following the safest way to the top. Rehab is like base camp, a good start but not yet real recovery. That is where you take what you have learned and begin applying it in your world.  Make sure to take your Sherpa with you on your path to recovery, the mountain climb is much better with a partner.