When one decides to quit drug abuse they need to make up their mind to undertake the kind of treatment and care they would need to make the procedure more effective and alleviate its process as much as possible. Treatment always starts with detoxification of one’s body. A person has two options to choose from here. Those are inpatient and outpatient detox. We will focus more closely on the first one.
The primary purpose of inpatient detox and treatment is to provide 24/7 care and professional supervision to manage withdrawal symptoms and eliminate their effect on a person’s state of both physical and mental health. The length of inpatient detox may vary significantly depending on the type of substance one’s abusing and severity of addiction. Normally it can take from five days if one is being detoxified from alcohol abuse up to 90 days if there is a strong drug one is addicted to. Every person’s specific needs and preferences are taken into consideration while determining what kind and duration of treatment will meet their conditions.
Among the prime advantages of inpatient treatment are ability to concentrate fully upon one’s health and recovery, ensuring absence of access to any abusive substances, getting restrained from particular people, places and situations that may be a trigger and cause relapse, being in productive and supportive environment where all kinds of help may be provided immediately at request, maintaining personal safety while both detoxification process and further treatment and, last but not least, increasing one’s chances for life in sobriety after going through addiction treatment.
However, inpatient detox may also pose a challenge for many people and appear to be not the best option for a particular person. One of the main issues here is the cost of inpatient detox programs. Staying in a treatment facility for a certain period may require big amount of money one does not always possess. Though the costs also vary depending on the term of staying, kind of abuse, any co-existing health issues, state, kind of facility (state or private one) etc., one could still consider special financial help programs the US government has, discounts available, or look for some other options of getting inpatient care.
Another thing is that being cut off from the world can do more harm than good to a particular person. This is especially relevant for those who would like to manage their personal relationships, career, maintain ability to move freely and organize support themselves to make sure they will be able to live in sobriety in their environment and will not have to cope with necessity to adapt to the world after leaving a treatment facility. It could also be a problem for people who haven’t got heavily addicted yet and would like to undertake treatment secretly from their employers or other people to keep their social image unharmed.
Moreover, one should not think that inpatient care is always more effective than an outpatient one. Quite often it is staying in a certain surroundings that helps a person to stay clean and sober. A person engaged in outpatient care also has significant amount of support from doctors both for their physical and mental health. There are, however, a few conditions that strongly require inpatient care because of the threat they pose to one’s life. Those are
- Dual diagnosis
- Long history of abuse of heavy drugs that cause life-threatening withdrawal symptoms during detox
- Addiction that may cause serious health issues developing due to detox, such as internal bleedings, cirrhosis, paranoid psychosis or severe depression etc.
- Serious risk of overdose caused by particularly hard withdrawal process
To pick an option that suits one best, one must carefully consider all the aspects of one’s situation. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that decision to quit drug abuse is the first step towards successful recovery, therefore the chances of living a sober life after treatment are already high.
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