Inpatient Drug Abuse Treatment

Inpatient drug abuse treatment provides individual and group therapies to help in the patient's recovery. With the personal awareness and education that is conveyed through the inpatient approach, there is a higher success rate of recovery than there is when trying to do it on your own.

What to Expect

• When first arriving, you will be expected to do the normal inpatient paperwork of insurance and permission-to-treat forms. You will then have all your luggage checked. You might feel violated while having your belongings gone through, but it is a necessary part of the treatment. They don't want to set people up for failure by allowing concealed substances to slip by. Anything that contains alcohol is taken away until you leave. This is done for obvious reasons.
  Phone calls and visitors are not allowed in the first week or so. This differs from rehab to rehab, but you will find most follow these rules. Some do not let you have contact of any type for the duration of the stay. This is done so that there are minimal distractions while concentrating on your recovery. Most inpatient rehabs do have visiting hours after you have been there for a specified time.
  Unless you are in a posh resort in the Hollywood hills, you will most likely have at least one roommate. This can be awkward at first. The rehab process is not about making you comfortable and on a vacation-like stay. You are there to do some hard work, and that is breaking a cycle of drug use.
  Most inpatient rehabs follow the 12-step model of recovery. You will be expected to attend at least two groups with your fellow patients daily. These groups can be either off the campus of the rehab or on the premises. Some rehabs bus their groups as a whole to different 12-step groups in the area.

Considerations

• You will be assigned a counselor upon admission. This will be the person who will do private therapy with you as well as the person responsible to chart your progress. You can expect to meet privately with this counselor a few times a week. Again, schedules do vary from rehab to rehab, so it may be more or less. Your assigned counselor will also do some type of family outreach work for you. This can be in the form of facilitating a family meeting or by contact over the phone. Of course, this is only done if you agree to do so.
  People seek inpatient rehab for many different reasons, and unfortunately some are not the right ones. This type of treatment, as well as any type of recovery treatment, is not going to work unless you are truly invested in overcoming your addiction. Many come to rehab as a last-ditch effort to avoid consequences with the courts, family and job. They might have been given an ultimatum of some kind, such as losing their job unless they get this help. Their spouse might be ready to call it quits unless they do this, or it could be they need to do this to avoid prison time. These reasons alone are not going to make this a successful venture. Unless you are willing to stop this addiction cycle, therapy will not work for you.
  You will receive education regarding addiction and abuse origin as well as learn how to live a life that is clean of substances. When listening to others' stories in the various group therapy sessions, you will start to see the common threads that run through abuse and addiction. There are many different groups that you will attend. Some, like guided imagery for relaxation and role playing, are two of the more prevalent in these settings. You may be intimidated about participating at first, but you will need to participate as part of the treatment. You will find it easier as time goes on, and many find these groups are a fun activity.
  Keeping a daily journal is something the majority of inpatient rehabs will ask you to do. These are your thoughts and feelings, and you need to be open and truthful when writing this. It is your personal journey. Once you have completed the expected duration of this rehab, you will be amazed at the progress that is evident through your daily writings.

Time Frame

• The amount of time that you spend at an inpatient rehab depends on a couple of factors, the most prevalent being your health insurance and how many days it allows. The second is the rehab itself and how long they have structured these inpatient stays to be. If you do not have insurance, you may still be eligible for admission to a rehab. Many of these agencies have space that is offered to the uninsured. They usually receive funds from the state or federal government for this reason. You will need to contact the inpatient unit you are interested in to find out if this is a possibility.
  When leaving the inpatient drug abuse treatment, you will still have a long road ahead of you in recovery. You will be given follow-up treatment directions that may include outpatient counseling. You will also be given lists of 12-step meetings, such as AA and NA, that are held in your area. It is easy to slip back into your old habits once you are no longer in the structure of an inpatient setting. This is where the education and skills that you have obtained from your stay will come in. Unfortunately, the majority of people go through multiple inpatient drug abuse treatment stays before being able to maintain sobriety as part of their lifestyle.

Prevention/Solution

• It is not a rare occurrence for a substance addict or abuser to go through rehab eight or nine times in his or her life before staying completely on the road to recovery. There are reports of people who have gone through inpatient drug treatment programs as many as 30 times. Being in the grips of a drug addiction is something that is not an easy thing to stop. You are never completely "cured" of a drug addiction or your tendency to abuse substances. It is something you will always have with you. You will be in recovery once you become clean and absent of substances in your system.
  Relapsing is prevalent, especially in teens and young adults. The reasons for this are vast, but peer pressure and the stress of being that age in today's world are on the top of the list. Relapsing at any age can be contributed to the lifestyle a recovering addict is expected to go back to at the time of discharge.
  Most inpatient drug treatment programs will work with the family regarding some behaviors they might want to change while their loved ones are in the program. Many people are going home to a lifestyle that is not free of drug abuse. There might be family and friends that are still practicing drug activity.
  Addressing the living conditions for the patient once discharged is also part of a reputable drug abuse treatment program. This treatment is almost sure to be a failure if upon leaving the program this person is jumping right back into a drug using household. There are options of sober living that can be explored before discharging the patient. Family counseling can be an option that is set up upon discharge to help everyone who is playing a part in the enabling of the patient.

Misconceptions

• Unfortunately, many people think that a drug abuse treatment facility is the answer to all the problems associated with drug abuse. The cycle of going in and out of a rehab can be part of the cycle in carrying on this abuse behavior. When taking any substance, an immunity is built up in your system. Where it once would take a small amount of the drug to achieve the desired high, as the abuse progresses in time more of the substance is needed. This poses a problem for the drug abuser. To obtain more of the substance he or she is using is costly. Soon the drug abuse has become very expensive, and the high that was once achieved is harder to get.
  This drug abuse treatment program can be an instrument used in cleaning up just enough to be able to go out and get that original inexpensive high that is the main objective in drug abuse. Treatment programs can be a part of the high-seeking cycle. This is another area of substance abuse that a drug abuse treatment facility needs to tease out and also treat.
  With all the external factors of a drug abuse case, an inpatient program is the place for best addressing this because it gets the person out of his or her elements -- elements that may consist of many precursors that contributed to the abuse in the first place. A treatment facility is also the only venue that provides a long, consecutive period of time to address this issue without any interruption from outside intrusions.