Outpatient Rehabilitation and Treatment

Find outpatient clinics that can help you overcome your addiction today!

An addiction to drugs can be a life altering condition that devastates everyone involved with the user. In most cases, recovering is hard without help. An outpatient drug treatment center can give the individual who is addicted to drugs or alcohol a chance to overcome their addiction and get help before it’s too late.

Outpatient Treatment Centers

If you or someone you love has been struggling with an addiction problem, one option for help is to attend an outpatient treatment center. These treatment centers allow people to get the help they need,  while they can also remain working in their jobs or they can continue going to school without major interruptions. An outpatient treatment center usually gives the recovering addict the assistance they need to help them overcome their addiction via counseling and therapy sessions a few times a week and for just a specific amount of hours when they come. Outpatient treatment centers allow for flexibility, but with that, the effectiveness of the treatment can be limited depending on the severity of the addiction.

What is Outpatient Treatment?

Most outpatient treatment centers are geared toward managing the addiction that an individual suffers from but not so much their medication problems or nutritional needs. Outpatient treatment has its own challenges versus inpatient treatment and it’s important to recognize the major challenges, benefits and differences between the two before making a final decision on the type of treatment that may be best for your individual needs. For someone really struggling with addiction, the challenge of abstinence can be tougher especially in the beginning, and because their home and living environment won’t be changing, they do have access to the substance they are addicted to and will be faced with that temptation. The benefit of the outpatient treatment is that the person can come and go as their schedule allows without any major interruptions in their day to day lives.

Medications Used in Treatment

Before any type of medications are prescribed for a patient in an outpatient drug treatment center  the center will determine which types of drugs the patient has been addicted to and just how severe that addiction is. Many factors will come into play with the patient and the facility so that they can determine the best course of action for the patient and for long term recovery. Some medications used for treatments can cause additional dependencies as well, and therefore a physician will be the one who determines the medicines to be used in the addiction treatment plan on a case by case, as needed basis.

Behavioral Therapies

It’s important for patients going through outpatient treatment to receive behavioral therapy to help prevent relapse. Treatment centers usually have counseling sessions for patients on a consistent basis weekly or bi-weekly allowing them to receive the various types of behavioral therapies that may help them maintain abstinence from drugs or alcohol and achieve their recovery goals. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one of the most common types of therapy used in addiction treatment because it helps the patient to effectively deal with the circumstances that would cause them to go into relapse thus preventing such situations from occurring.

There are also family therapy uses of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy as well which include behavioral treatment regimens to help families get back on track post drug or alcohol addiction. Sometimes family stress can be a big part of drug or alcohol abuse. Treatment centers also recognize that families can give quite a bit of insight into drug abuser’s problems and they will work diligently to help resolve conflicts for everyone in their family system. Counseling can help the family find methods of effectively supporting the patient as he goes through recovery without providing a crutch or being enabling to the addict.

Support Groups

Drug addictions can be extremely hard to overcome. It’s a tough disease and family members and friends of the abuser may have a hard time showing the tough love that the abuser needs.  Outpatient treatment centers offer programs that allow the patient, and their family members in some cases, to be in support groups. There are many different types of support groups include AA, NA, CA and many other anonymous groups that provide mutual support for everyone in the group.  The good thing about support groups is that they also afford the recovering addict some support from peers who share in similar situations, addictions and lifestyle concerns which can make it easier and more comfortable to talk.

Benefits of Outpatient Treatment

There are many benefits of going to an outpatient treatment center in addition to the fact that receiving appropriate treatment for an addiction to drugs or alcohol may be the best lesson of your life.  For one, outpatient treatment centers afford you the opportunity to stop your drug or alcohol addiction in its tracks. You will have the opportunity to come and go as your schedule allows, giving you the chance to continue work or school and to take care of your family. Additionally,  outpatient treatment centers are usually cheaper than inpatient facilities because you are not paying for housing, meals and around-the-clock care which can easily cost thousands of dollars.  Despite the openness of outpatient treatment there is still privacy in these types of programs and there are not stigmas attached to the need for you to get help.