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Addiction Treatment on Long Island

At Long Island Treatment Center, we offer rehab services for a wide variety of addictions. Our programs were specifically designed to cater to the unique needs of each patient who walks through our doors.

What to Know About Addiction Treatment

Addiction can have a profound impact on not only your life but the lives of those around you. Even if you consider yourself to be a functioning alcoholic or a social drug user, your choices can still make it harder to find work, find housing or finish your education. It can also put a strain on relationships with your spouse, kids or others who you care about. Fortunately, there are resources available that can help you manage your addiction and help you live a productive and happy life.

Seeking the Right Type of Treatment

Ideally, you will seek out an evidence-based program that uses science to bolster its credibility. For example, the 12-step program has been studied extensively and is proven to provide positive results for those who follow its tenets. Those tenets include giving yourself up to a higher power and constantly taking stock of your actions.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is another type of treatment that is based on scientific principles. It aims to help you make connections between your thoughts, actions and beliefs.

A final example would be ketamine therapy that uses injections of ketamine to help you achieve a more calm and peaceful state. Combined with talking to a therapist, ketamine has been shown to improve both mental health and addiction symptoms in a matter of weeks.

The Various Types of Programs

Treatment programs can be broadly classified as inpatient or outpatient. Inpatient programs are typically designed for people who need direct help or supervision detoxing or overcoming withdrawal symptoms after they have begun to detox on their own. A typical inpatient program will last anywhere from 30 to 90 days. However, programs can last for several months or years depending on your needs and budget.

Outpatient programs are geared toward those who need help maintaining their sobriety after finishing a more rigorous inpatient program. Typically, these programs will focus more on group meetings with other addicts as well as meetings with a therapist. You may also spend time working with a physician to find medication that can help with secondary damage that your addiction caused to your body without causing a new addiction.

It’s possible that you may need to enroll in both inpatient and outpatient programs multiple times as you work your way back to a sober lifestyle. For example, you may need to go back to inpatient care if you relapse or develop a dependency on medication prescribed to deal with neuropathy or other issues caused by drug or alcohol use.

The most important thing to understand is that going to rehab more than once doesn’t mean that you have failed. Instead, the fact that you have sought help multiple times means that you are strong enough to get past your addiction.

What to Consider When Choosing a Rehab Program

As you might imagine, the most important part about choosing a rehab program is that you pick a facility that offers quality service tailored to your needs. However, after that, the location of a given facility may be the most important issue to consider when choosing who to seek help from.

Staying home may be ideal if you have kids, want to keep your job or feel as if you have a support system in place. However, going away for treatment may be ideal if your friends, family members or colleagues are the ones who enable your behavior.

Cost is another important consideration whether you have medical insurance or not. While insurance companies are required to cover certain addiction and mental health treatments, they may not always cover the full cost of treatment. This may be especially true if you are seeking novel therapies such as ketamine injections that can cost hundreds of dollars per session.

Are You Ready for Rehab?

Another significant issue that you’ll need to consider is whether you are actually ready to seek help. Generally speaking, rehab of any kind is not effective for those who don’t take it seriously or who are simply going because they are ordered to by a court. While you may obtain short-term results while enrolled in an inpatient program, it’s unlikely that you will maintain your sobriety if you willingly rejoin a world that offers you booze, drugs or other substances of choice.

Of course, it’s important to understand the difference between being ready and trying to find a convenient time to get help. Usually, there is no best time to get help, so you are advised to simply enroll whenever you feel ready and willing to commit to making the most of your treatment options.

Common reasons why people seek rehab include wanting to remain employed or a desire to reconnect with their children. Addicts may also want to avoid losing a spouse or connections to friends or family members who have been in their lives for years or decades. A close brush with death while impaired or a desire to stop spending so much money on something that is killing them are other reasons why addicts may decide it’s time to seek help.

Should You Include Your Family in Your Quest for Sobriety?

Family therapy sessions may be effective if you think that a parent, spouse or sibling contributed to your addiction. For example, you may believe that being abused as a child led to your dependence on alcohol or that spousal neglect caused you to develop an addiction to pills or other controlled substances.

These sessions may also give you a greater appreciation for how your addiction has impacted those closest to you. For instance, your spouse may talk about how the money you spent on alcohol makes it difficult to pay the rent or save for the future. Your parents might also talk about the emotional damage you inflict on them when they see you too drunk or high to move from the couch for days on end.

You may also have a chance to discuss the ways that your family might enable your behavior. Even if they haven’t actually done anything to prevent you from getting sober, the ability to express your feelings may be helpful in itself. This is because they can better understand how to meet your needs while you gain valuable insight into what you can do to take responsibility for your own health and safety.

Ultimately, bringing your family along with you can help to create the strong bonds that are necessary to help you obtain and maintain your sobriety. It can also help you to create and maintain boundaries that might allow you to reconcile with or forgive loved ones. It’s important to note that forgiveness doesn’t mean that you forget about what has happened to you. Instead, it can serve as a form of healing that allows you to focus on yourself on the promise of better things in the future.

Recovery Lasts a Lifetime

The purpose of an inpatient program is to help you overcome the temporary symptoms associated with withdrawal. Typically, they last for anywhere from several days to several weeks depending on your condition prior to detoxing. In other words, it is designed to ensure that you are stable and able to focus on beating your addiction.

However, the truth about addiction is that you never truly overcome it, which is why you’ll likely need to remain in treatment for the rest of your life. This is also why it’s not uncommon for addicts to relapse months or years after they achieve some semblance of normalcy.

In many cases, recovering addicts believe that they can handle having one drink or using marijuana one time at a party. However, the truth is that once you use again, there is no guarantee that you won’t undo the progress that you made getting sober.

This is why developing a support network is important to your success in remaining sober. Whether you rely on friends, family members or another recovering addict who has had success staying sober, you can’t expect to remain sober on your own. Instead, you’ll need to have at least one or two people who you can call, text or email at a moment’s notice.

Your Own Role in Staying Sober

While your friends, sponsor and therapist are all working to help you stay sober, you are the only one who determines your fate. There are a number of steps that you’ll need to take to give yourself the best chance of success while outside of an inpatient setting.

First, you’ll need to acknowledge or avoid your triggers as best as possible. For instance, if you are recovering from an alcohol addiction, you shouldn’t step foot in a bar. You may also want to avoid company parties, family gatherings or any other events where alcohol may be present.

If you can’t avoid a trigger, you’ll need to find ways to cope with it. Let’s say that you are triggered by the date that your father died or that your spouse asked for a divorce. In that case, you should schedule something fun or relaxing such as a trip to the spa or an outing with friends.

To deal with routine stress that occurs during the day, you could take up yoga, mediating or painting. You could also get into video games, writing or anything else that will take your mind off of your problems until you can focus again.

Working out can also be a great way to relieve stress while also helping your body recover from the damage done to it by your addiction. Getting sufficient exercise can also make it easier to sleep, which can reduce stress and make it easier to remain sober and content.

How to Enroll in a Treatment Program

If you are ready to seek help, you should be able to enroll in a rehab program in a matter of minutes. Typically, you will be asked to fill out an intake form that lists basic personal information, the nature of your addiction and anything else that the facility should be aware of.

You are encouraged to be as honest and comprehensive as possible when communicating with a treatment facility. This is because medications that you’re currently taking may interact poorly with anything that you’ll be given during rehab. In some cases, not taking medication will make withdrawal symptoms worse or exacerbate other health issues that you might have.

You will also be asked for payment information prior to enrolling in a treatment program. Typically, you will make a claim against your insurance policy or pay with cash. Friends, family members or your employer may also pay on your behalf in an effort to get you help in a timely manner.

It may be possible to start treatment immediately after filling out admission paperwork and making payment arrangements. However, you can also choose an admission date if you need time to make childcare or other plans before committing to your sobriety.

If you are ready to seek help for a drug or alcohol addiction, the folks at Long Island Recovery Center are eager to meet you. We offer a variety of individual and group plans that can be completed either inside or outside of our facility. Get in touch with us today by phone or online to learn more about our services and payment options.

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Reviewed for Medical & Clinical Accuracy by Long Island Treatment Center