Substance Abuse Treatment
What is Substance Abuse?
Substance Abuse can best be understood as the over consumption of harmful chemicals such as drugs or alcohol, to the point where it causes harm to the user or others. This doesn’t just mean illegal narcotics. Many substance abusers need treatment for things such as prescription pain medicine, or alcohol. In America today, it is estimated that over 20 MILLION men and women suffer from addiction, yet only 10% of them seek or receive treatment. The death toll continues to rise – but there is hope. By educating yourself, and understanding that you are not alone, you can start a new life free of addiction.
What is Substance Abuse Treatment?
When you think about a substance abuse treatment center, you may picture a sterilized hospital setting, with white beds and scrubs. For many men and women, this can be a very frightening or triggering visual. Luckily, that is not what your typical treatment facility looks like at all. The goal of a treatment center is become a positive environment and clean, sober living arrangement for people looking to reclaim their health and wellness. Substance abuse treatment centers are where you go to recover from a repetitive self-destructive lifestyle caused by the emotional, spiritual and physical addiction to drugs or alcohol. The goal is to make a transition to a healthy and self-fulfilling lifestyle that allows for transformation, evolution and growth. You are given the tools you need to live a life of enrichment and success through sobriety and beyond.
Myths About Substance Abuse Treatment
Here are some common misconceptions about substance abuse treatment that you may have heard in the past. Hopefully, we can debunk these myths so that you can have a more clear understanding of what real treatment is:
Myth: I will Lose My Job if I go in for Treatment
False! Typically, after working with an organization for an extended period of the time, you will have access to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which considers substance abuse to be a serious health condition and as such, allows for it to be eligible for you to take leave as long as that leave is for treatment.
Myth: I can’t Afford Substance Abuse Treatment
Most reputable rehabilitation centers work with major insurance providers, and many insurance providers consider substance abuse treatment an essential healthcare benefit. On top of that, it is not uncommon for drug and alcohol treatment centers such as Royal Life Detox to provide scholarships for people who are in need. There is always hope, and always a way to get the help you need.
Myth: Treatment Will Cure my Addiction
Sadly, this is also false. While many men and women who graduate from treatment live happy and healthy lives of recovery, addiction is an ongoing battle. Once you have started your path of recovery, you will need to continue to strive for a life of positivity and growth, and shed the situations that brought you to substance abuse in the first place. This doesn’t mean you will not succeed! It simply means that you will need to dedicate yourself to your own ongoing wellness.
The Beginning Stages of Treatment
When you first start your path to recovery, you probably will have no idea what to expect. The only thing that you can be certain of, is that you can’t go on the way you have been and that something needs to change – for your own safety. You may have felt fear. Fear that if you don’t take action, your life may be in danger. You will also likely experience the same sort of thoughts that the majority of men and women currently suffering from chemical dependencies thinks: “Why me?” or, “Why can’t I just have fun and enjoy recreational use like everyone else?”. It’s hard to imagine that you are suffering from such terrible consequences.
Perhaps you believe that once you’ve become abstinent from drugs or alcohol for any length of time at all, you’ll be “cured”. If you just stop, it will make it possible to stop forever, without any trouble. It could be that you’ve quit already—and fallen off the wagon, unable to keep up the heroic discipline it takes, especially if you are not getting the support that you need. Maybe you think sober living just isn’t for you. Likely, you’ve never understood what recovery would mean in the first place or how you would handle it. For most people, quitting substance abuse cold turkey is extremely unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous. It is also very difficult to go through treatment alone, without the support of a trusted loved one. Unfortunately, many users have confined themselves to solitude because they have not asked for help from their loved ones.
Addiction treatment is a lot more than just detoxing from substances. Through therapy and support, you can understand what caused you to turn to substances in the first place. From there, you can begin to work on those reasons in order to view the world in such a way that you won’t need chemicals to feel good. By working through the situations that made you choose drugs or alcohol originally, doctors, like the ones at Royal Life Detox, can help you to eliminate that negativity from your life.
Here at Royal Life Detox, we will guide you through your recovery from start to finish, starting with abstinence and ending with true recovery: finding success in sobriety and beyond.
It is important to remember that while abstinence—giving up alcohol or drugs entirely-is a very necessary first step, it is not true recovery. Abstinence by itself should never be the end goal. Substance Abuse Treatment will teach you the difference between just abstinence and living a life that is happy, healthy, full and meaningful in sobriety. Simply abstaining from substance usecan and will create a lifetime of recovery tormented by constant urges for a line of powder, a joint or that after-work drink. This is what the experts call “white-knuckle sobriety”. Unfortunately, while that may seem like a solution, studies show that it will almost always fail. It’s like gritting your teeth and just barely hanging in, fighting every day. It is certainly not as a devastating, or unhealthy as being addicted to harmful chemicals, or the pain it will cause your family and friends, but it isn’t that great either.
Real recovery is great.
Transformation
Substance abuse treatment will show you the difference between just quitting and actual recovery. Your support team at your treatment facility will help you understand why recovery is a much better life to live. This is the way the graduates and alumni from our drug and alcohol treatment programs describe their feelings. The truth is, they actually tell us they are “grateful” for having had their illness, because without it, they don’t believe they ever would have achieved the personal transformation they have undergone. Every human changes and evolves over time, but the transformation that a man or woman in recovery experiences is true transcendence. It is leaving behind one world, taking your experiences and joining a new world of clarity.
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