Canadian Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is defined as: “To restore to good health or useful life, as through therapy and education.  American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition Treatment is the act of applying a therapy, education or medicine to achieve a positive goal.

Therefore, when you hear these two terms being interchanged, you will recognize that rehabilitation or rehab, for short, is the entire process of change, where as treatment is a specific set of practices to help in that process.

In looking for a Drug Rehab, you want to be sure that they are providing the treatment that leads to a successful rehabilitation of the addict or alcoholic.  Some treatment programs are designed to be more intense and take longer than others and meet the needs of some individual who will require more treatment than others.

There is a common adage that states:  “You can’t Re-habilitate someone who hasn’t been Habilitated.” Meaning that the term rehabilitation is a process that restores someone to a positive level of functioning and who is responsible for all of the conditions in his life, and this takes more therapy and education in someone that has never learned these principals or lived a functioning existence. This is the case with someone who has been on drugs and alcohol since they were adolescents and has never learned the basic principal of responsible life.

In choosing a drug rehab center, you need to determine your goal upon graduation and examine the remedial work that will need to take place to have a graduate that can be gainfully employed and being responsible for a successful future.  A person who has finished his education and has been successful in his life, but later becomes addicted to alcohol and other drugs will need less rehabilitation than someone that has never had those positive life experiences.

Many treatment programs do not address the all of the impairments that come from being addicted nor do they provide rehabilitation of personal weaknesses that will surely undermine the lessons learned in the program.  The easiest rule-of-thumb for predicting a treatment program’s success, including all that has been mentioned above, is the percentage of successful outcomes of their graduates.    This is a figure that is most often misquoted and it is very difficult to find true outcome data about any program.

However, there are some other indicators that anyone can use to evaluate the potential success of a drug rehab program.  First of all, any program that agrees with the idea that alcoholism and drug addiction or chronic and progressive diseases, are not expecting their graduates to stay off of drugs for the rest of their lives.  These “disease model” programs believe that the addiction “disease” last forever, like diabetes, and gets worse in time, like Alzheimer’s disease.   These programs profess that “Once an addict, always an addict”.  The most common type of “disease model” programs are those that subscribe to the 12-steps of Alcoholic Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.  These programs are basis of more than 90% of the residential and outpatient programs available today.  Is it any wonder that less than 5% of the graduates of these programs stay alcohol and drug free?

After someone has learned to use alcohol or other drugs to escape his problems and responsibilities, it is difficult to rehabilitate someone to a point that they won’t simply return to those addicting actions whenever they are faces with adversity.  Therefore, when you find a program that is reporting more than 50% successes, then you know that they are helping to create individuals that are proud of their accomplishments in treatment and have vowed that they don’t want to return to their lower living condition and will do whatever is needed to stay clean.  These graduates have felt what life is like being totally free of the influence of alcohol and other drugs and have been amazed at how wonderful it feels to be free of the chains of addiction and to have feelings of excitement back in their lives.

This feeling can’t come from a program whose mission is to convince the participants that they need to be responsible for their “disease” and continue to go to support group meetings to stay above water.  These programs are creating victims.

Therefore, the best indicator of a good rehab program is one that has a high outcome of success, over 50% and one that when you study its therapeutic approach, it makes since to you.  Most people resist the idea that addiction is a disease because it doesn’t make sense.  Most people only begin to accept this notion when the authority of the treatment center and its staff continue to state it has fact.  Rely on your basic instincts or your gut feeling.

TYPE OF REHABS

Twelve-step: The Twelve Step modality is a time-tested method of recovery from various obsessive-compulsive behaviors that have affected individuals and made their lives unmanageable.  These simple tools for living have been used by millions of people to successfully change their lives and recover from negative and even life threatening behaviors.  They are based on a set of Spiritual (not religious) principles originally created by Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States in 1935.  Anonymity as a Spiritual principle is the underpinning of the Twelve-Step way of life.  Sharing and supporting in groups with like-minded individuals and ongoing fellowship is a major ingredient in the success of these programs.

The twelve-step based programs address different "problems" such as Alcohol abuse, Drug abuse, overeating abuse, gambling, love addiction, co-dependency, etc.  They are very helpful in giving support to someone that is struggling with changing behaviors, but they have a very low success rate in terms of having graduates that continue to stay off of alcohol and drugs.  As mentioned earlier, they don’t see this as a fault since they subscribe to the disease model of addiction and some people will have more severe cases of the disease than others and, as they state: “some people are constitutionally unable to recover”.

Long term religious based program

Many people who have failed at previous treatments, will be drawn to the idea that their addiction requires more time than the program from which they failed.  Many long-term treatment programs that are one to two years in length are based on religious principals and do very little traditional alcohol and drug treatment, but help the participants to believe in a life of religious dedication and service to God and to others.  Many alcoholics and drug addicts do not have an inclination to commit to these types of programs, but for those that do finish the entire program, you find a higher success than found in 30-day 12-step based programs. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of individuals complete these programs.

Behavioral modification :

Therapeutic Communities or TC’s are another long-term program that are very different than any of the others that have been examined.  These program usually last one to two years and are seen most commonly within the judicial system.  They employ behavior modification as a therapeutic model and are also called “boot camps”.  These are very harsh programs that “get in the face” of the addict and make them miserable if they don’t abide by the program’s set of rules and principals.  One the whole, these programs have very few that will tolerate the treatment and finish the program and of those that do finish, they have few that stay clean and live successful lives.

Biophysical treatment:

This treatment addresses the biophysical and biochemical imbalances with a unique sauna program that eliminates toxins from the body, to eliminate cravings. Followed by a social/educational program to teach New Life skills that teaches the participants to handle life’s hardships and to succeed in the important area of life, such as, responsibility, work and relationships. These programs help participants learn to communicate their feelings and build relationships through successful communication with others.  They learn to identify high-risk situations and individuals and how to best handle these pitfalls without letting them lead you back to alcohol and drugs.

The participants examine their own ethics and their responses to challenges and learn how their past behaviors have made it difficult for them to come out on top.  They learn new life-skills that make life manageable and doable, so they leave feeling confident that they can handle the situations in their lives that have previously driven them to escape through alcohol and drug abuse. They learn tolerance and appreciation of others as well as a moral code that can sustain them in their working towards happiness.

This culminates with the participants applying these skills to repair the damage of the things that are and have been holding them back in life. Through therapeutic activities, the participants repair past problems that have continued to enslave them in their attempts to move forward. The program deserves your learning more about the specific ways that it reaches these goals and how their graduates have actually increased their IQ as well as their understanding of how best to survive and thrive in life. Graduates begin to see themselves as part of a larger group and society and are proud to contribute to the wellbeing of more than their own lives.

Over the past 40 years, this method of treatment has proven, for many reasons, to be successful and has graduated thousands of happy, productive drug-free members of society.