Many individuals have approached their loved one regarding his/her drug/alcohol addiction, with no success. It may be helpful when talking with your loved one, to have a third party, an interventionist, present that is professionally trained and knowledgeable about alcoholism and alcohol abuse. Intervention is the best way to make help available to those struggling with an addiction. 92% of those intervened on go to treatment and have the opportunity to change their lives. Although substance abuse treatment works, it is only the first step toward recovery from drug abuse or alcohol abuse. Why? Because addiction to alcohol or drugs is a chronic illness and should be treated as such. Other chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and asthma are treated using a disease management model. Disease management not only focuses on treating the illness, but also, on managing the illness over the course of a lifetime through continuing care.

In order to meet the post treatment needs of the addicted individual one should ensure that the substance abuse treatment center has developed a suite of services that focuses on the transition from the treatment facility to a day to day life of recovery, assisting sustained recovery and improving the quality of life.

Substance abuse cost’s Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year in criminal and justice, health care and reduced productivity costs; and conservative estimates have 1$ spent on drug and alcohol rehabilitation reaping an eventual 7$ savings in societal costs. Since the numbers seem so overwhelmingly in favor of enacting social and economic change towards better drug and alcohol rehab access, why are we not spending more public tax dollars on the very sound investment of drug treatment?

“Because drug treatments don’t work”

Well actually they do work, and drug rehab/alcohol rehab programs save countless thousands of lives a year…but the nature of addiction is such that often a single period of drug treatment doesn’t induce permanent change, and thus the treatment statistics per individual rehab visit are not particularly encouraging. It’s hard for public officials to publicly commit great resources to programs with such low success rates, and since incarceration and “getting tough on crime” are so much easier to sell to the electorate, we are continually enacting short sighted and ineffective policies.

There are many different ways of dealing with drug addiction and drug abuse. Addiction can be a scary thing for people to deal with, and it can be especially scary when it is happening to someone that you love. You might not be aware of the details of your loved one?s sickness, but you will be aware when they need drug rehab. Drug rehabilitation is a tool or program that can help fix relationships, repair things that have been broken, and, above all else, save lives. People who are going through a problem with drugs are often going to be upset that they have been found out, or caught. Often they will be angry and irritable with the person who has brought their drug use problem to the forefront. However, once they have gone through addiction treatment, they will be able to get on the path to recovery and will end up thanking the person who has made them realize they had a problem in the first place. Drug rehab can be a difficult thing to pursue. Many times, someone is afraid to admit that they have a problem, or they refuse to admit that they need help. Until they can readily state that they do indeed have a problem with drugs, or you are ready to call an interventionist and have an intervention, they will not be able to benefit from treatment. You cannot force someone to get better unless they actually want to. However, once someone has taken that great first step and admitted that they might need help for their drug addictions, they have taken ownership for their problems and have begun to take care of themselves. This is the point when someone might need drug abuse treatment.