Inpatient vs. Outpatient Rehab

Rehab facilities address particular issues, including eating disorders, drug abuse and addiction. Different facilities often offer different types of programs, with a main distinction of outpatient and inpatient treatment plans. If you or someone you know is considering recovery options, the following entry will provide you with a little insight into the basic differences between these two treatment models.

Inpatient Care

Patients choosing to receive inpatient care are provided with 24-hour care while living at the facility. Most inpatient drug treatment facility programs last 30 – 90 days, but may last longer depending on the patient’s individual needs and progress. Many of these programs also offer medically assisted detox and therapy to help patients towards a fresh recovery start. Residents must adhere to facility rules and regulations, while maintaining a clean and positive mindset.

Outpatient Care

The main difference between outpatient and inpatient programs is the patient’s ability to retain a sense of routine outside of the program. Patients involved in an outpatient program are able to keep a job, attend school, and live at home throughout their treatment. Patients are typically required to attend meetings and check-ins at the facility throughout the week to ensure sobriety and healthy habits outside the facility walls.

Inpatient Environment

The environment within an inpatient program is very defined and highly structured. Patients are monitored constantly, both physically and mentally, while keeping to a healthy dose of individual counseling, group therapy, team activities and chores. As residents succeed within the program, they are provided with freedoms, responsibilities and praise. Because inpatient programs work to remove their residents from the constant reminders of their addictions, many find them a solid step forward on the road to sobriety.

Outpatient Environment

Outpatient facilities offer patients a great deal of flexibility throughout the recovery process. However, because patients are able to remain at home throughout their treatment, they are often forced to work harder to avoid old habits.

Which One Is For Me?

When it comes to deciding on a treatment program, patients should take the time to consider the severity of the addiction at hand, and their ability to put forth the extra effort at an outpatient recovery center. Where there is a doubt, there is risk.

Above It All

If you’re searching for an effective inpatient rehabilitation treatment facility, Above It All is the place to call! With a team of seasoned addiction specialists on-hand to assess and address your individual needs and goals, you can count on Above It All to have you smiling, sober and on the path towards the happy, clean and fulfilling lifestyle you deserve. Representatives are standing by. Call today!

Family Roles In The Recovery Process

Drug addiction is a disease that affects not only the afflicted individual, but the family and loved ones surrounding them. If you have a loved one dealing with the pain of a drug or alcohol addiction, the truth is… you’re suffering alongside them. It’s only natural to feel confused, hurt, angry and unloved by the actions and behaviors exhibited by the addict. But with a healthy dose of love, determination and help, rest assured… you will all make it through.  In this entry, we will discuss the roles and actions of friends and family members throughout the recovery process.

1 – Do you due research and educate yourself in regard to the type of addiction you’re dealing with. It’s important to learn as much about the addiction as possible, in order to properly prepare yourself for the road ahead.

2 – Call an Above It All treatment center representative to discuss possible treatment options. Have a list of questions ready, and fire away! Our team of addiction counselors are on hand 24/7 to assess and address any and all of your questions and concerns… and no subject is too taboo. You may even decide to schedule a tour of the facility to gain a first-hand look at what we have to offer

3 – If you are reading this, it is likely your loved one has an issue, which you must accept. Now is the time to stop covering and making excuses on their behalf. Allowing yourself to live in denial will only accentuate the problem, offering little more than continued disappointment and wasted time/resources/energy. Taking a stand will let both you and them know that change is here, and that you’re committed moving forward.

4 – Determine whether or not the addict is open to accepting treatment. Bring up the topic lightly to gain an understanding of their thoughts and feelings on the topics. Sometimes, it only takes a kind request to put the recovery process in motion… In other instances more aggressive strategies must be employed.

5 – If your loved one is unwilling to seek help on their own. It’s time to discuss your intervention options. A quick call to our drug rehab in California will place you in touch with an array of addiction specialists who can help direct you through the intervention process.

6 – Whichever route you end up taking, it’s important to assure your loved one of how much you care for them. Recovery is directly dependent on a strong and sturdy support system. By sticking by your loved one throughout the recovery process, they will have a much better chance of achieving the healthy, happy and long-lasting sobriety they deserve.

7 – Once your loved one has completed rehabilitation, it’s vital you continue to support their sobriety efforts. Considering attending group therapy sessions and 12 step recovery programs with the addict to keep you both motivated and focused.

Keep yer chin up! In time, this period of time will be little more than a past adventure, life lesson, and success story for all involved.

Family Involvement In The Addiction Treatment Process

The addiction treatment process poses a great deal of difficulty to an addict’s loved ones. Friends and relatives often attempt to aid the addict through practices that ultimately serve to heighten the addiction rather than reduce it. Because many families rely on members for support, guidance and assistance, involvement and education of family members throughout the recovery process is a vital aspect in ensuring the successful rehabilitation of the addict.

Benefits

Recent studies show a direct link between family and social support and relapse tendencies and behaviors in addicts new to the recovery process. Most experts agree that the family’s involvement throughout the recovery is necessary to a successful result during and following the initial rehab period. Families who make a concerted effort to involve themselves ultimately garner of number of life benefits, both socially, monetarily and personally over time. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that addicts lacking family support throughout the recovery process are much more likely to return to their old habits.

Compliance

The involvement of a family serves in promoting the addict on a compliance level regarding their addiction treatment. Those who show little to no sign of motivation or enthusiasm are able to take from family members who believe in the process, thus helping to ensure a productive and long lasting recovery. In many cases, it is family encouragement that works to stabilize the patient long enough for the treatment to take effect. Over time, the addict learns to live life in a drug-free manner while commitment levels heighten. Educated families can effectively warn recovering addicts of potential relapse signs and encourage them to seek help before a problem arises.

Self Expression

It’s natural for family members of an addict to experience various emotions throughout the recovery process. Common feelings include anger, fear, mistrust and resentment. A family’s involvement in the recovery process enables members to deal with these emotions in a positive manner, while learning how best to support the addict in their rehabilitation. Often times, it is the family who is able to first point out potential issues and relapse symptoms, and as such, their involvement in vital to the success of the individual’s substance abuse rehabilitation experience.

Denial

Through the process of relating various details regarding the addict’s drug use behavior, family members can effectively break down the walls of denial in the addict found so commonly associated addiction. Once an individual is forced to face the seriousness of their addiction, they will be much more likely to gain a personal commitment to sobriety early into the recovery process.

Support

Family members who place an emphasis on addiction education will learn how to focus their attention on their own needs, rather than those of the addict. In this way, both the addict and family members can enter into a new and happy life chapter with a fixation on progress, love, support and accountability. If you’re interested in learning more about your available options, help for parents of addicts can be obtained by contacting a local addiction treatment facility.

The Benefits of Relaxation During Alcohol and Drug Detox

Unsurprisingly there are a lot of benefits from relaxation during alcohol and drug detox.  “The adrenal hormones, glucocorticoids, which increase the sensitivity of mesencephalic dopaminergic neurones to drugs, seem to be one of the biological substrates of the effects of stress on the propensity to develop drug intake (Piazza and Moal, 1998)”. “The cyclical nature of chronic drug use, involving periods of drug abstinence and subsequent relapse, highlights the presence of this disease throughout the lifetime of an individual” (Hyman , Malenka -2001).

In terms of economic and health care costs, drug abuse is among the top three health problems.  “The stress response is mediated by a highly complex, integrated network that involves the central nervous system, the adrenal system, the immune system, and the cardiovascular system. Stress activates adaptive responses. It releases the neurotransmitter norephinephrine, which is involved with memory. This may be why people remember stressful events more clearly than they do non-stressful situations. Stress also increases the production of a hormone in the body known as corticotropin releasing factor (CRF). CRF is found throughout the brain and initiates our biological response to stressors. During all negative experiences, certain regions of the brain show increased levels of CRF. Interestingly, almost all drugs of abuse have also been found to increase a CRF level, which suggests a neurobiological connection between stress and drug abuse” (Hanson-2009).

All this jargon means that when you are stressed out your mind craves something to help relax you. For some people this can take the form of getting more sleep or finding time to exercise, and sometimes this thing can take the form of drugs and alcohol. So finding a residential treatment center in California that chooses relaxation as one of the key components of rehabilitation is essential. Through this period, one can learn how to incorporate time for the self in their future sober living.

 

How do 12-step programs fit into drug addiction treatment?

Self-help groups can complement and extend the effects of professional treatment.  The most well-known programs are Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and Cocaine Anonymous (CA), all of which are based on the 12-step model. This group therapy model draws on the social support offered by peer discussion to help promote and sustain drug-free lifestyles.

Twelve Step Programs are one of the most sustainable forms of wellness that I know of. They are self-supporting, free, non-hierarchical, open to the public, available all over the world, (and now available by teleconference call for people in remote areas) and enormously successful at treating addictions, codependency, and more.

Most drug addiction treatment programs encourage patients to participate in group therapy during and after formal treatment. These groups offer an added layer of community-level social support to help people in recovery with abstinence and other healthy lifestyle goals.

The 12 steps of these programs are:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

If you find yourself in need of help with an addiction of any kind, please give us a call at Above It All Treatment Center at 1-888-971-2816 so we can set up a treatment plan to start you on the road to a drug free life.

The Start of Recovery is the Decision

“But the moment I made up my mind to go through with the process, I had the curious feeling that my alcoholic condition was relieved, as in fact it proved to be. Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems.” The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 42

Ask nearly any alcoholic or addict you have ever met and there is one thing upon which most of them will agree: the beginning, the making a decision to give up drugs and alcohol and begin the road to recovery through the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the most difficult parts of recovery. You have to say Yes to the life you want and the process before you can begin to recover.

Though it seems frightening and a life without drugs and alcohol may, at first, seem like no life at all, the rewards are far greater than most alcoholics and addicts even dream when they embark upon their journey.

For those caught in the perpetually downward spiral of drugs and alcohol, feeding addiction and chasing escape – a solution that begins with merely a decision seems impossible. We are here to assure you that not only is it possible, but it is the only way. The decision to recover is yours and so is the life you want and deserve. There are drug and alcohol rehabs that are staffed with fully trained professionals who understand where you have been, what you are going through and what it will take for you to move forward. But they cannot make the decision for you. That, you have to do on your own.

 

On Studying the Twelve Steps

“Many of us exclaimed, “What an order!  I can’t go through with it.”  Do not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.  We are not saints.  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.  The principles we have set down are guides to progress.  We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” – The Big Books of Alcoholic Anonymous, pg. 60

There are many times we strive to do things perfectly.  We set those around us and ourselves up for a failure of magnificent proportions based on our idea that whatever it is we’ve set out to accomplish will be performed nothing short of perfectly.  When this happens, many times, after the first major mistake, we shy away from any action remotely resembling the initial failure.  In effect, we are being paralyzed by our fear of getting it wrong or doing whatever it is we wanted to/meant to do less-than-perfectly.

One of the problems with this is that our subsequent fear of failure creates this idea that if it can’t be accomplished without a flaw it shouldn’t be attempted in the first place.  This pattern of inaction keeps us at the bottom of the river, wearing cement boots & drowning in our own expectations.

As we move forward in our Recovery, we learn that making mistakes is par for the course.  That, not only is it expected, it is actually okay.  We learn not to set ourselves up for the unattainable, which is based on our expected ideal of a failure-free action.  Through these moments of trial and error, we actually learn and grow.  Our mistakes become our teachers and our ideas of perfection shift to actions of progress.  With this, we move ever closer to our goal of being an effective, valuable member of society

Changes in Early Recovery

Early in recovery, nearly every alcoholic and addict struggles with great changes in themselves. Suddenly, the things they thought they enjoyed are no longer very enjoyable and they find themselves wanting to seek out new experiences and aspects of themselves.

For some this is a difficult and painful process. Suddenly, not only are they letting go of drugs and alcohol but they are confronting parts of themselves that seem to be falling away – things that seem a part of their core identity. Perhaps musical taste or taste in films or activities change. This can be frightening and can leave you wondering “Who am I”?

They are changing. As one lets go of drugs and alcohol and into recovery, the spiritual and emotional changes are so grand that they naturally affect other aspects and sometimes, external components of the life of the alcoholic and addict. For some, these changes are subtle. For others, these things change more dramatically.

As the inside changes, the outside often does as well. Drugs and alcohol have impeded our spiritual and emotional growth and now that we are sober and free from the clutches of addiction, we begin to grow in a way that we haven’t been able to for a great many years. We are free to create a concept of the person we want to be and to become that person. Maybe you want to go back to school, change careers, spend more time with your family or get back to the magic of creativity that you seem to have lost someplace along the way.

When you make the decision to let go of drugs and alcohol and to experience true freedom, you will be able to have any experience you can dream of.

On Powerlessness in the Lives of Alcoholics and Addicts

“At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail.” – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 24.

This is Powerlessness.

Our souls beg us to cut out the drinking.  There is attempt after attempt to engage our will to halt the madness of the drink and no matter how hard we try, we cannot.  The body sends signals that the drinking isn’t doing what it initially did; the mind, fully conscious that nothing but misery is at the bottom of every glass, is incapable of overriding this burning need.  Even feeling all of these feelings and intrinsically knowing that all of these more-than-obvious clues scream STOP, we continue to imbibe.  We gamble our very lives, and as we lose over and over, we watch, almost as outsiders, any and everything loved and cared for slip away.  It still isn’t enough.  We plead with ourselves; we make promises, fully meaning them at the time; we swear on all that we have or don’t have and yet, we cannot stop.

Why is this?  It’s the allergy of the body which is triggered by the drink itself and subsequently it ensnares our mind causing an obsession that overrides EVERYTHING else and that, in turn, relies on and continues our spiritual bankruptcy.  It is a threefold catch 22, which is the disease of alcoholism.  And, our very starting point is our Powerlessness over alcohol.

In early Recovery, this first half of the first step can be difficult to grasp, to truly learn how insidious this Powerlessness is.  The California alcohol rehab staff has an intimate understanding and can clarify and expound on this, going so far as to give examples of what this looks like and how it manifests.  If we don’t have a thorough comprehension, there is the possibility we may still hold to the idea that somehow, someday, we can control our drinking.  As alcoholics, we must grasp this fundamental truth.

Winning the Confidence of Another Alcoholic

“But the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution, who is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours.  Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.” – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 18

This Los Angeles rehab is primed to help those who are looking to move forward, out of the alcoholic addict lifestyle and into a healthier way of living.  The staff is not only trained in the clinical aspect of recovery-related therapy, many of them have had drug and/or alcohol-related issues and are now in the process of their very own recovery as well.  This is a boon for those who might feel uncomfortable with the idea of having to pursue their venture into sobriety thinking there will be no one with whom, staff-wise, they can genuinely lock into.  The staff at this alcohol rehab has the ability to be present and available in a way that, no matter how empathetic a non-addict can be; only another alcoholic can connect.  They are able to truly recognize and can share from a place of intrinsic understanding.

As our path to sobriety continues and we are now out and active in the world of recovery, we will be able to become the very same people who, as we once relied on the truth of others who were in our position, are now capable of being the ones with whom newer alcoholic addicts can identify.  This is the opportunity where we now start being able to give back and feel a sense of purpose in the world.  We become the bridge to sobriety for others by offering that which we had received; the ability to really “get” it like no one else can.