When the drink has taken over, when nothing else works, and when you just can't stop on your own, it's time for alcohol rehab.
Alcohol Rehab
Most alcoholics cannot quit without professional help, and most of us need a real intense period of residential care, focused and intense therapies, and a month or more of enforced sobriety to have any chance at breaking free. It's just too tough to quit on our own.
We go to alcohol rehab for three basic reasons:
- To get a safe and supervised period of medical detoxification
- To learn why we need to drink and to better understand our motivations and abuse
- To learn what we need to know to stay sober over the long term.
Detox without therapy rarely works, and so many of us endure uncomfortable detox on numerous occasions, never getting the tools we need to stay sober in the face of inevitable temptation.
Too many of us never fix those deep and rooted personal problems that led to abuse in the first place, and when we don’t better our issues, we have little chance of not repeating our mistakes.
Too many of us just don’t learn the tools we need to overcome triggers to use and powerful cravings to drink. These cravings are almost beyond our control, and unless we learn how to control our preconscious mind, we cannot hold much hope for long term sobriety.
It's tough to stay sober; if it were easy no one would need alcohol rehab. Don't ignore the obvious, don’t think that this time will be different, get the help you need to break free for good.
Alcohol Detox
Never detox on your own. Maybe because we can buy and drink alcohol legally we underestimate the risks of withdrawal and detox. Alcohol is one of the few drugs that can induce a detox so severe as to be fatal, and if you don’t get the medications you need to control the symptoms of withdrawal, you are at risk for convulsions, seizures and even heart failure.
You need to take it seriously, get the care you need to ensure a safe and comfortable detox, and get past the first step to recovery in a humane and effective way.
Although an unsupervised and unmedicated detox can be fatal, with proper medical supervision, care and medication; you can pass through detox relatively comfortably, and with very low risks to health.
Therapy, Learning Why You Drink
Without learning from your failures you are destined to repeat them. There is something in you that causes a compulsion to drink and to get drunk, and until you can understand and control your deep seated desires and issues, you cannot hope to stay sober for long.
Working with therapists in one on one sessions and through peer group therapy of support and discovery, alcoholics develop a greater self awareness over their personal triggers and causes to use and abuse. You may not solve all of your problems in a month of therapy, but by gaining self awareness you can retake control over your actions, and continue in the months and years ahead to better your issues…and better your chances of long term abstinence, heath and happiness.
Don’t ignore the importance of therapy. We are complicated beings and alcoholism is a very complicated and mysterious disease. You need all the tools at your disposal for any chance of beating your need for drink, and without gaining self awareness you cannot expect to stay sober for long.
Therapy, Learning How to Stay Sober
Once you pass from alcohol abuse to alcoholism, your disease gets a lot harder to beat. Once an alcoholic, the deep rooted influence of parts of your mind beyond your conscious awareness, and never-mind control, start to play a major role in your compulsion to drink.
While drinking, we may appear as though we choose our actions and that we choose to drink even when it does us harm, but in reality we act merely as puppets to the dance of our deep and unconscious mind, and we often have no awareness over the real and potent influence our preconscious plays.
Our mind will heal, and in time we can return to a normal state of functioning without the constant pulls to alcohol. To give ourselves the time we need to heal though, we need to learn effective strategies that will keep us away from temptations, will control our actions and even our thoughts, and will teach us just what to do when we find ourselves oh so close to taking that first drink.
It’s tough to stay off alcohol for good, and a lot of people never can. You need cognitive behavioral therapy, education, and learned concrete strategies that you will put into practice every day, and that will keep you sober to fight another day.
You can't control what you’re not even aware of, but you can use strategies proven to work, strategies that will keep you away from temptation, and strategies that will keep you sober in the face of incredible cravings and compulsions to use.
Other Benefits
Fundamentally we go to rehab to detox, to develop self awareness and to learn how to stay sober, but we benefit from some additional programs as well.
We start to restore our health in alcohol rehab, restore it through good nutrition and with vitamin supplements designed to reverse some of the damage of alcoholism. We also heal through exercise programming, through frequent medical care and through peripheral classes such as yoga or meditation, which salve our spiritual selves as they teach us greater mental control.
We also gain the support of other alcoholics in recovery and the inspiration of counselors working in the rehab, themselves recovering alcoholics, who show us what can and must be done.
Get Better in Alcohol Rehab
We go to rehab when things get bad. We go when nothing else seems to work and when we can't take anymore of a life of abuse, poor health and irresponsible actions. We go to rehab because a month or more of focused and intense participation in therapy gives us the strongest foundation for a better future, free from the pains of alcoholic chaos.
You can get better, it's gong to be tough and there are no guarantees, but committing to a full and honest participation in the therapies and education of alcohol rehab gives you the very best chance at a better and sober life.
You can do it.
Page last updated Sep 28, 2015
