Outpatient Recovery Information
If you check the licensed alcohol and other drug treatment programs in your area you will find that outpatient treatment recovery programs make up about 70% to 90% of the total. This shouldn't be taken as evidence that they are, therefore, the best or the most effective forms of treatment. The reason that there are so many is because anyone that is certified as an alcohol and drug counselor, clinical social work, psychologist or psychiatrist can obtain a license as an outpatient alcohol and other drug treatment provider. Because of this factor and others, one should realize that each of these types of providers have different philosophies and methods to treat addiction.
For example, the psychiatrist will usually only schedule appointments of less than thirty minutes in duration and will usually prescribe some type of psychotropic medication to "handle" the emotional components of addiction. This approach may be more harm than good.
The social worker will usually have a systems approach to treatment that sees that addict as part of a family and community system and will work on the addiction from that point of view. The psychologist will use his orientation to emotional problems and so on.
None of these approaches are effective in treating addiction. Addiction has a major physical component as well as mental and social influences. Therefore, it is naive to think that you can go to an outpatient therapist three to fifteen hours a week and expect to be rid of your addiction.
Ethical outpatient alcohol and drug therapist will recognize their limitations and can give you an assessment of your problem, follow you to see if you are able to handle your life free of alcohol or drug use and, if not, refer you to a residential program and hopefully a residential program that has a physical handling as well as emotional. These types of programs are referred to as biophysical program and are usually at least three months or more of residential care. Naturally, the most problematic element in outpatient recovery is the inability of the program to control the access of drug use while the person is in treatment.
Drug addiction is a severe affliction and should be taken very seriously when one finally wants to find effective drug addiction treatment. In 1992, alcohol addiction and abuse cost our country $148 billion, with 50% of the costs due to illness, over 20% were attributable to premature death, and the remaining cost were due to health care, crime, and other factors. All other drug abuse costs the country $98 billion, with 60% of the costs were related to crime, with illness, premature death and health care accounting for nearly all of the remaining cost. The important point to notice from these figures is not just the tremendous cost of drug addiction, but the point that the number one cost amongst drug addicts is crime. This demonstrates how many people addicted to drugs compromise their ethics and does whatever it takes to secure their next high. In drug addiction treatment, some programs believe that if you can stop the cravings for drugs, you have handled the addiction. This is not the case since research shows that a person must also confront his past behaviors and take responsibility for changing their attitudes towards others and society. The most common outpatient drug addiction recovery program is pharmaceutical replacement therapy, with methadone maintenance being the most widely known. These programs replace illicit drugs with legal drugs that have less euphoria or other types of "highs", but are many times harder to withdrawal from than are the illicit drugs.
By the time that you are looking on the Internet for help for your addiction, you have realized that this part of your life is out of control and that with the best of intentions, you are still unable to keep yourself from violating your resolutions. If you have been in the addiction long enough to suffer much of the financial and emotional pain that accompanies addiction, you should take the only smart approach to this problem and thoroughly investigate a good biophysical program. Most of these programs graduate over 75% of their clients with the wherewithal to manage their lives from graduation on, without the need or use of alcohol or other drugs. At that point, you are free to create and do the things that will give you "highs" or lasting happiness that you never experienced with chemicals. A partial handling of your problem, as seen in those programs that treat the systems of addiction and not the problem, is not a solution.
In interviews with those persons that were four to six years clean and sober from attending a 12-step based treatment facility and attending support group meetings for all of those years, researchers have found that they are still very much bothered by the nagging feeling of needing drugs and their old drug lifestyle. Again, a biophysical program is the prudent decision when seeking treatment since these programs do not need ongoing care to keep a person from using. They do not profess to addiction being a chronic and progressive disease, but see it as a physical and behavioral problem that you can solve, and most of those that choose this form of treatment do solve their addiction, period.
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