Addictions Treatment Blog

When it comes to knowing what would work best for their drug addiction, addicts perhaps know better than any one else and its worth listening to them.

There is a price to pay for being a drug addict or alcoholic and nobody knows this better than the substance abuser themselves. In fact, they pay the price in many different areas of life. One of these many areas is their lack of credibility. In general society looks at the drug addict as being an individual that can offer nothing of substance to the world, while they are dealing with an addiction. As a result any input an addict may have concerning drugs and the rehabilitative measures that are in place holds no credence. After all what do they know? They are too warped by their drug use to be able to offer anything intelligent right?

Well perhaps we are the ignorant ones here, if that is the type of thinking we have adopted. Who better is there to explain the pain a person is in when something is wrong with their body other than the sufferer themselves? So why is this any different for the drug abuser? They know their thoughts and they know their body. They know the symptoms that appear when they are in need of their drug of choice, and they know what it is going to take to alleviate what they are going through.

So if the drug addict knows all this wouldn't they be the ones to listen to when they tell you what would give them their best shot at rehabilitation? Yet how often do we hear drug addicts tell you they won't consider drug rehabilitation because it doesn't work. We just assume that this is their excuse for not wanting to become clean. However, how many of their fellow addict friends have gone into rehab numerous times and relapsed? Unless we are in this inner circle, we don't have the answer for that but you can bet there are several. Drug addicts are aware of the tremendous effort it is going to take for them to sober up and become clean. It is understandable why they would be wary of taking this first step when they have seen so much failure in the rehab systems. Based on this it would be fair to say that addicts think much more logically about drug rehabilitation then society does.

How many addicts are there out there, that if they knew that there were other drug rehab programs that have a much higher success rate compared to the old standby programs, such as the 12 step or drug replacement programs, would not give it a shot?

If we plan on taking an active role in convincing drug addicts and alcoholics that rehabilitation really does work, then we have the responsibility of educating ourselves about what really is available, and start looking at the success stats instead of just going with the rehab programs merely because they have been around the longest.

Perhaps the best approach to drug rehabilitation is drug rehab education first, then we have something viable to offer to the addict. It can even become easier than that if we responsible individuals who are acting on behalf of the addict, seek out professionals who do have the expertise and knowledge that the drug addict and alcoholic needs to help make a decision.