Quite a number of people look at drug abuse and addiction as primarily a social problem. Parents, teens, older adults, and other community members have a tendency to characterize people who use drugs as morally weak or as having criminal tendencies. These individuals believe that drug abusers and addicts are capable of stopping themselves from taking drugs if they are only willing to change their behavior.
These are myths have stereotyped those with drug-related problems, and also involved in the prejudice, their families, their communities, and the health care professionals who work with them. Drug abuse and addiction is a public health problem that affects many people from all walks of life, this is one disease that doesn’t pick its victims, and does not separate them by race, gender, lifestyle, preference, or status.
Alcoholism – This is also known as alcohol dependence, classified as a disease that normally includes the following four symptoms:
• Craving
A very strong, often irresistible need, or urge, to drink.
• Loss of control - Not being able to quit drinking once alcohol intake has begun.
• Physical dependence -Represented by the withdrawal symptoms, such as severe nausea, shakiness, sweating and anxiety after stopping drinking.
• Tolerance -The need to drink larger amounts of alcohol to get "high."
Formal diagnostic criteria for alcoholism have been developed, for clinical and research purposes. Such criteria are all detailed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, as well as in the International Classification Diseases, published by the World Health Organization. Pick up these books if you have a further interest in the intricacies of alcohol addiction.
Detox - also referred to as detoxification, is the initial step in substance abuse rehabilitation and treatment. The term detox refers to the detoxifying, or purging of the residual toxins left in the human body resulting from taking drugs or alcohol. Alcohol and drug detox, from a medical point of view, is the process of carefully managing, through medical means, the body’s physical withdrawal from alcohol or drugs to minimize the possible harmful side effects and help prevent potentially severe, and sometimes life-threatening consequences. There are a variety of methods and programs for the actual medical process of alcohol and drug detox, which program a person takes, all depends on the type of addiction the patient has.
“Treatment”, what does it mean?
Alcohol and drug abuse treatment, also widely referred to as rehab, is the educational, therapeutic process of starting a person’s recovery from substance abuse. The first step, always adopted in the treatment process is detox or the detoxification of the body while also emotionally stabilizing the individual. Once a person is totally and properly detoxified, they’re ready to start their treatment and rehabilitation.
Types of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment
There are several methods of alcohol and drug abuse treatment. The short-term methods last less than 6 months and includes residential therapy, medication therapy, and drug-free outpatient therapy. A longer term treatment may include a combination of various programs if an individual has a more complicated form of addiction, set on various drugs, and possibly a co-existing mental disorder.
Outpatient
Outpatient drug-free treatment most often does not include any medication and encompasses a wide choice of programs for patients who drop by their clinic at regular intervals. Most of the drug and alcohol treatment programs have individual or group counseling. The patients entering these drug and alcohol treatment programs are abusers of drugs which exclude opiates or are opiate abusers for whom maintenance therapy is not advisable or needed, such as those who have stable, well-integrated lives and possess only brief histories of drug dependence.
Short-Term Residential
The short-term residential drug and alcohol treatment plans, sometimes referred to as chemical dependency units involve 3 to 6 weeks of inpatient drug and alcohol treatment phase followed by an extended outpatient therapy or active participation in 12-step self-help groups, such as Narcotics Anonymous or Cocaine Anonymous. These chemical dependency programs for drug abuse were established in the private sector around the mid-1980s, targeting insured alcohol and cocaine abusers as their primary clients. These days however, as private provider benefits gradually decline, more drug and alcohol treatment programs are extending their humane services to publicly funded patients.
How Substance Abuse Treatments Work
For the majority of alcoholics and drug dependent people, an inpatient alcohol and drug abuse treatment is advised as the proper, first step. A residential alcohol and drug abuse rehab program (or inpatient) is when patients reside full time in a treatment facility. Alcohol and drug abuse treatment (or rehab) combines education and behavioral therapy in its programs. A person needs to learn the objective facts about alcohol and drug abuse dependency, in order to efficiently work a program of recovery.
Therapy generally comprises of both group and one on one counseling sessions. These sessions emphasizes personal interaction, and addresses aspects of personal and developmental issues. The length of stay in residential alcohol and drug abuse treatment depends on a number of factors, usually determinant on the type of drug addiction, and drug of choice the patient exhibits.
While choosing the drug rehab it has to be made sure that all the aspects of what caused the addiction problem in the first place have to be addressed.
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