Substance Abuse Treatment
What is Substance Abuse?
Substance Abuse can best be understood as overusing harmful substances such as street drugs, prescription medications or alcohol, to the point where it causes harm to yourself or others. Many people think of substance abuse only as hard, illegal street narcotics such as heroin or cocaine. Many abusers need treatment for legal addictions such as prescription pain medicine, or alcohol. In our country today, it is estimated that over 20 MILLION individuals suffer from addiction, yet only 10% of them seek or receive treatment. The death numbers continue to rise – but there is hope. By educating yourself, and understanding that you are not alone, you can start a new life free of addiction from drugs or alcohol.
What Treatment for Substance Abuse?
When you hear the term substance abuse rehab facility, you may picture a sterilized hospital setting, with white beds and nurses in scrubs. For most individuals, this can be a very frightening or triggering concept. Fortunately, that is actually not what your typical treatment center looks like! The goal of a substance abuse rehabilitation center is be a positive environment for healing and peace. Your traditional sober living arrangement is designed for people looking to reclaim their health and sanity. Addiction recovery centers are where you go to recover from a repetitive self-destructive lifestyle caused by the emotional, spiritual and physical dependence to drugs or alcohol. The goal is to make a transition to a healthy and self-fulfilling lifestyle that allows for transformation, evolution and growth. You are given the tools you need to live a life of enrichment and success through sobriety and beyond.
Misconceptions About Substance Abuse Treatment
Here are some common myths about substance abuse treatment that you may have heard in the past. Hopefully, we can help you to understand these myths and learn the truth so that you can have a more clear understanding of what recovery looks like:
Myth: I will Lose My Job if I Enter into Substance Abuse Treatment
False! Typically, after working with an organization for an extended period of the time, you will have access to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which considers addiction to be a serious health condition and as such, allows for it to be eligible for you to take leave as long as that leave is for treatment.
Myth: I can’t Afford Rehab
Most reputable drug and alcohol addiction centers work with major insurance providers, and many insurance providers consider substance abuse treatment an essential healthcare benefit. On top of that, it is not uncommon for addiction treatment centers such as Sound Recovery to provide scholarships for people who are in need of care. There is always hope, and always a way to get the help you need.
Myth: Treatment Will Cure my Addiction
Sadly, this is also false. While many individuals who graduate from a substance abuse recovery program live happy and healthy lives, addiction is an ongoing battle. Once you have started your path of recovery, you will need to continue to strive for a life of positivity and wellness, and shed the situations that brought you to drugs or alcohol in the first place. This doesn’t mean you will not succeed! It simply means that you will need to dedicate your energy to staying clean and healthy.
The First Stages of Treatment
When you first start your path to sobriety, you may feel a little lost or confused. The only thing that you can be certain of, is that you can’t go on the way you have been and that something needs to change – for your own safety. You may have felt fear. Fear that if you don’t take action, your life may be at risk, or that you may lose the people you love. You will also likely experience the same sort of thoughts that the majority of men and women currently suffering from substance dependencies thinks: “Why me?” or, “Why can’t I just have fun and enjoy recreational use like everyone else?”. It’s hard to imagine that you are suffering from such terrible consequences.
Maybe you believe that once you’ve become quit drugs or alcohol for any length of time at all, you’ll be “cured”. If you just stop today, it will make it possible to stop forever, without any hardships. It could be that you’ve quit already—and relapsed, unable to keep up the incredible discipline it takes. This is especially difficult if you are not getting the support that you need. Do you think sober living just isn’t for you? Likely, you’ve never understood what recovery would mean or how you would handle it. For most people, quitting the addiction cold turkey is very painful, and sometimes even lethal depending on what you are abusing. It is also nearly impossible to go through substance abuse treatment alone, without the support of a trusted loved one. Unfortunately, many users have confined themselves to solitude because they have not asked for help from their friends and family. Others may have allowed their addiction to push others away. Do not be afraid to ask for help.
Substance abuse recovery is a lot more than just detoxing from the drugs. Through therapy and education you can understand what caused you to turn to drugs or alcohol in the first place. After that, you can begin to work on addressing underlying issues and learning coping mechanisms in order to view the world in such a way that you won’t need chemicals to function. By working through the situations that made you choose drugs or alcohol originally, medical professionals, like the ones at Sound Recovery, can help you to eliminate toxicity from your life.
Here at Sound Recovery, we will guide you through your treatment from start to finish, starting with abstinence and ending with true recovery: finding success in sobriety and beyond.
It is important to remember that while abstinence—giving up alcohol or drugs entirely-is a very necessary first step, it is not truly recovery. Abstinence by itself should never be the end goal. Substance Abuse Treatment will teach you the difference between just abstinence and living a life that is happy, healthy, full and meaningful in sobriety. Simply abstaining from your vices can and will create a lifetime of recovery tormented by constant urges for a line of powder, a joint or that after-work drink. This is what the experts call “white-knuckle sobriety”. Unfortunately, while that may seem like a solution, studies show that it will almost always fail. It’s like gritting your teeth and just barely hanging in, fighting every day. It is certainly not as a devastating, or unhealthy as being addicted to harmful chemicals, or the pain it will cause your family and friends, but it isn’t that great either.
Real recovery is great.
Transformation
Substance abuse treatment will show you the difference between just quitting and actual recovery. Your support team at your treatment facility will help you understand why recovery is a much better life to live. This is the way the graduates and alumni from our drug and alcohol treatment programs describe their feelings. The truth is, they actually tell us they are “grateful” for having had their illness, because without it, they don’t believe they ever would have achieved the personal transformation they have undergone. Every human changes and evolves over time, but the transformation that a man or woman in recovery experiences is true transcendence. It is leaving behind one world, taking your experiences and joining a new world of clarity.
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