Category: Recovery

Life doesn’t happen in black and white. Mental illness and substance abuse disorders are the types of things that fall into that grey area. The complexities that underlie and lead people to each are vast and often inform the existence of the other.

Of course, people can have a mental illness or substance abuse but what about both together? What about and?

That’s dual-diagnosis and it’s something that many Americans struggle with. 

Treating someone with just one of the two, mental illness or substance abuse, already comes with substantial hurdles and difficulties but having both makes treatment even more difficult.

Not impossible, far from it, but there are challenges.

When multiple conditions are presenting at the same time they will start to conceal each other and obscure the real issue at the root. Therefore, going into treatment for just one may end up completely missing the actual problem and essentially only alleviating symptoms.

Defining Dual-Diagnosis

Dual-diagnosis carries the definition right in the name, it’s a person that has a mental disorder and co-occurring alcohol or drug problem. This particular type of comorbidity occurs pretty frequently with roughly 7.7 million adults in the United States being affected by it.

The saddest part is that the relationship between the two, substances and mental illness, works to make the other one worse. The drugs or alcohol intensifying whatever mental illness you’re battling and vice versa.

Almost 40%, 37.9% to be exact, of those with substance use disorders, also had mental illnesses. An astounding amount. About 1 in 5, or 18.2%, with a mental illness, also deal with a substance use disorder.

The most common co-occurring mental disorders that our partner programs treat are:

• Depression
• Bipolar Disorder
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Anxiety Disorders

That’s not an exhaustive list, at Above All Treatment Network we can help match you with a program that’s specialized to handle the particular mental disorders that you or a family member or friend are living with. 

A dual-diagnosis is tricky to untangle but once confirmed it requires an integrated treatment approach that tackles both in tandem. 

 

Finding the Right Dual-Diagnosis Rehab for You

Even though solutions are out there, a shocking 52.5% of people received no mental health care or substance use treatment at all and only 9.1% received treatment for both. The disconnect is related to the fact that dual-diagnosis rehab is a niche and the reality is that not every treatment center is equipped to handle the complications and intricacies of navigating both at the same time.

Therefore, finding the facility that’s specialized in dual-diagnosis rehab gives you the best shot at successfully conquering both demons and avoiding relapse.

What that looks like in practice is that a rehab emphasizes creating a customized plan that simultaneously targets both substance abuse and mental illness. Working on both at the same time is the only way to navigate towards a lasting and fruitful recovery.

Because of the damage that suffering from both drug and alcohol abuse as well as a mental disorder can cause, the best course of action is a stay in a residential inpatient center. Just detox isn’t enough since that doesn’t touch the mental angle and detox alone is rarely enough anyhow. Outpatient care isn’t immersive to the degree a dual-diagnosis client would need; it simply doesn’t offer enough attention.

At Above All Treatment Network, we’ve been around long enough to have seen the disparity between dedicated dual-diagnosis care and the care a standard drug rehab center provides. There is a significant difference and just tackling the substances without touching the mental health issues is a bridge that only gets you halfway there. We choose our dual-diagnosis partner programs in California carefully, let’s find the one that helps you get all the way there.

To put it bluntly, addiction recovery is a complex process. There are a lot of moving parts and reasons why a person falls into addiction in the first place, so it follows that working one’s way out won’t be straightforward either. Which is fine, the intricacies of life are what make it beautiful.

Given that, an ever more potent tool in the recovery toolbox has become alternative therapies like meditation. These types of treatments strive to compliment the clinical side and create a much more holistic recovery experience that pays the appropriate attention to all aspects of the body and mind.

The mind, after all, becomes as addicted as the body so while our bodies crave drugs, so too do our minds. Our thoughts dictate our actions and drug and alcohol abuse toys with our thinking and decision making.

Meditation is a therapy that focuses squarely on the mind, fostering and nurturing the ability to take control of your thoughts and help deal with triggering situations in the future. 

What Is Meditation?

Let’s consult the dictionary here, Cambridge Dictionary defines meditation as “the act of giving your attention to only one thing, either as a religious activity or as a way of becoming calm and relaxed”. 

Giving attention to only one thing. That’s big, don’t brush past that. Meditation, to the uninitiated, often carries the connotation of someone sitting there quietly and just kind of zoning out which is a caricatured view of what’s actually happening.

Meditation is something done with intention and contrary to the stigmatized and imagined version, the point is very much to be present rather than absent. The idea is to create mindfulness and focus.

The act of meditating encourages you to become more conscious of thoughts, feelings and what’s around you. To gravitate towards increased self-awareness.

There are a wealth of positives that come with it, Harvard, for example, notes that mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety and mental stress.

Benefits of Guided Meditation for Addiction

Guided meditation is essentially the same thing as general meditation, the difference is that you’re being guided by a trained professional or teacher. They walk you through the process with the aim of making you present and mindful and the benefits are immense to both the body and mind.

Body Benefits

As mentioned above, meditation can ease anxiety and stress. Additionally, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health adds that it can help with fatigue and sleep patterns. Increasingly, evidence has come to light that meditation can help lower blood pressure and even more profoundly, perhaps even improve immune functions.

In terms of our physical health, those improvements make a world of difference in how our bodies feel and that plays into how our mind copes with things. A healthy body corresponds to a healthy mind.

 

Mind Benefits

The most powerful benefit is the ability to control your thoughts, this leads to an increased ability to focus and ultimately a heightened capacity to find calm in the midst of a storm. The concept of mindfulness comes into play here as well, meditation encourages you to connect with your thoughts & feelings and learn to accept them.

That mindfulness and self-awareness of course also get you on the path towards creating or finding your inner peace.

Find Recovery With Above It All Treatment Network

The mind tends to wander and those wandering can lead to dangerous places, chaotic places but with continued guided meditation a person can learn to control those wanderings and step away from the chaos and into a more serene & controlled headspace. If getting your mind back in order is a priority reach out to us at Above It All Treatment Network, our years of experience and vast network means we can connect you with a rehab specialized in meditation to get you the best outcome possible.