What’s residential rehab?
Residential rehab is a rehab programme that takes place at a facility that you would move into for a short amount of time. Rather than going to daily treatments and then returning home, you would live at the rehab centre for the duration of your treatment. A typical residential rehab programme lasts 30 days.
The rehab centre provides everything you need, including accommodations and meals. You may have a private or shared room, depending on the facility you choose. You would also receive all of your treatments at the facility. This includes detox, behavioural therapies, group therapies, and counselling. Everything you did would be supervised by trained medical professionals.
What’s the difference between rehab and detox?
As previously stated, rehab is a long-term strategy that seeks to help alcoholics fully understand why they drink and what they can do to avoid returning to drink after finishing rehab. It consists of a variety of therapies that can help a person change the way he/she behaves. Alcohol detox is a short-term thing, designed only to help the body cleanse itself of alcohol and its constituents.
Why is alcohol rehab so important?
Addictive behaviour can return if a person is not prepared to deal with the pressures of permanent abstinence. This is why alcohol rehab is so important. A person can go through a detox-only programme and manage to stop drinking completely. But will that person be able to handle future temptations to drink?
Rehab not only helps the alcoholic detox, but it also helps him or her learn and adopt strategies for dealing with future temptations. Rehab significantly increases a person’s chances of giving up drink for ever.
Are there other kind of addictions?
Though the main focus of this page is alcohol addiction, there are other types of addictions that can be successfully treated through rehab. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine addictions are just three examples. Furthermore, there are other types of addictions that are treated outside of the rehab environment. These include things like gambling and pornography addiction.
How long does alcohol rehab last for?
Every alcoholic reacts differently to detox and rehab treatments. Thus, treatment times can vary. The general rule for private rehab is 30 days of residential treatment followed by aftercare. Of those 30 days, anywhere from 7 to 10 are devoted to detox.
Including aftercare in the total time it takes to complete rehab can extend a treatment programme from 30 days to up to 12 months. But really, this is just semantics. The residential portion of alcohol rehab typically takes no more than 30 days. It can be shorter in some cases. Aftercare takes place outside of residential rehab and is typically integrated into the patient’s daily life.
What type of support is available after rehab?
The support services offered after residential rehab are referred to as aftercare. Alcohol rehab centres throughout the UK offer different aftercare services as they see fit. One of the more common services is ongoing counselling. Patients continue seeing their counsellors for at least several months. Counselling can continue for up to a year.
Most facilities encourage rehab graduates to join a local support group as well. Through a support group, a patient can receive additional counselling and other services. Group meetings offer the opportunity for fellowship, encouragement, and accountability.
Finally, prescription medications may be offered in some cases. When they are, they are intended to help the recovering alcoholic avoid the temptation to return to drink. The medications do what they do by creating very unpleasant symptoms should a patient decide to take a drink.