Treatment Archives - Page 64 of 66

Feb102015Apr252025

A Resort Environment Can be a Bridge to Addiction Recovery

The right recovery resort may be the key towards successful addiction recovery. Substance abuse is a life altering issue that causes pain and suffering to the user, their family and their friends. The first step towards getting help is admitting there is a problem. After that initial step, picking the right type of treatment for the individual patient is important. Every person is different and will respond to a different type of environment. Pricing and comfort levels are two of the most important considerations when choosing a recovery resort. The right environment could be the answer towards successful addiction recovery.

Why the Right Environment Matters and How it Helps

There are several things to look for when choosing a resort for recovering from addiction. It is very important to have the most comfortable and welcoming environment for anyone who wants to seek treatment. Often times, mentioning treatment brings an extreme picture of a stark white facility that is unappealing and impersonal. However, a recovery resort presents a warm and welcoming environment that eases the fears for those seeking treatment. The following are the essential services leading towards a more fulfilling life:

With two facilities in Thailand, DARA provides cost effective treatment plans for individuals looking forward towards a second chance at life. DARA supports and works with the 12 step recovery program. For those taking the initial step, the First Step Recovery Program is designed to aid people in taking first steps towards recovery. Additionally, clients can choose between inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation. There are benefits and drawbacks to both and experienced staff at DARA can help patients choose the perfect treatment. DARA is the perfect recovery resort with a well-trained professional staff providing a warm, welcoming environment for addiction recovery.

If you, or someone you care about, needs help for a drug or alcohol addiction,
contact us at 1-888-457-3518 US, 0-808-120-3633 UK or 1-800-990-523 AU.
We’re here to help you take that first important step.

Jan062015Apr252025

A Recovery Roadmap to Discovering Your Value

Treatment, Understanding Addiction

Recovery is a life-long journey that fueled by understanding the root of an addiction problem. Recovery also helps you learn coping mechanisms to help enjoy life as a healthy and happy individual.

Many treatment facilities utilize a recovery “roadmap.” A recovery roadmap will have several stages that will help you reach key milestones.

Getting Started
This first phase can last from the first few days to the first few weeks. This phase involves completing a detoxification program and getting substance abuse treatment, as well as a recommendation for placement in a treatment facility. You will enroll in your chosen program and start your psychosocial therapy meetings.
Early Recovery
The second phase generally lasts anywhere from six weeks to three months. In phase two, participants learn to change their behaviors. You will begin working on your personal problems and learn how to control personal emotions. At this point, you will also become active in a self-help program, such as the 12 step program.
Recovery Maintenance
The third phase lasts anywhere from two months to one year. Phase 3 offers benefit from continued participation in outpatient substance abuse treatment sessions. You will be putting your prevention plan into action and learn new coping mechanisms. Phase 3 helps improve on personal issues, educational and career dreams, while you work alongside support groups.
Continued Recovery
This phase lasts for the rest of your life. If necessary, you will continue to participate in support groups and work on becoming more independent and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The goal in continued recovery is to maintain independence and develop positive interests and new hobbies.

A treatment facility also makes it a priority to personalize programs for each individual by being mindful of their strengths and interests so they are primed for success. Once on a path to successful recovery, you’re empowered to rebuild self-esteem and rediscover your value.

Dec232014Jan272016

Learning to Handle Responsibilities in Recovery

Education, Treatment

Many addicts can find handling responsibilities in recovery a challenging, if not completely new sort of task to endeavor. Assigning blame has become an easy method for people to avoid the truth about a situation and relinquish any need to resolve it. The responsibilities we hold to ourselves and other people, places and things can become obscured by this negative pattern.

People use blame every day, whether complaining about taxes or an unfair boss, its function is a venting of frustration. When abusing substances, addicts tend to have many justifications that deferred any accountability resulting in a chaotic and unmanageable life. Taking personal responsibility will bring to the surface the underlying issues about the ability to make choices, and become accountable for these choices and consequences.

Many argue that an individual is not responsible for falling into addiction, however they certainly have an independent responsibility to change their situation. No one else can do this, and this first step is essential to learning to manage responsibilities in recovery as well. Recovery teaches addicts to become answerable for their actions, in the past and the present, by outlining a course of action.

By taking sobriety one day at a time, and working with supporting, trustworthy people in a program of recovery, lost bills, broken promises and forgotten appointments can be sorted through, and over time, resolved. Learning to manage responsibilities in recovery is a process of learning to take everyday duties and obligations one at a time, with the next indicated step toward a positive action.

Addiction is a fact that won’t change, but no one is defined by their addiction and the future will provide the opportunity to grow and change. Was your life unmanageable before you entered treatment? How has accepting accountability in recovery helped your life become more manageable?

Nov252014Jan272016

War on Drugs Redux: In Turkey this Time

International, Treatment

Last month, President Erdoğan of Turkey gave a speech at International Symposium on Drug Policy and Public Health in Istanbul, in which he claimed that drug addiction is the result of a lack of moral values, and that religion is the best way to counter both problems. He went on to equate drug trafficking with terrorism, stating that his government will treat drug traffickers in the same way that it treats terrorists, and that a war on drugs is the appropriate stance for enforcement. A week earlier, the Turkish prime minister and health minister delivered a joint statement declaring a war on drugs.

In recent years, Turkey has experienced an escalating drug problem, and the government responded in June by increasing penalties against drug traffickers. In 2012, Turkey prosecuted over 130,000 people on drug charges, more than four times as many as in the previous year. A large percentage of these were young people smoking marijuana.

Poppies are a traditional crop in Turkey. Under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, it was classed as a “traditional opium producing country.” In the following years, Turkey reduced its production and eventually banned it. Then, in 1974, it introduced a licensing system for cultivation of poppies for medicinal purposes.

Because of its geographic position at the heart of trade routes going both east–west and north–south, Turkey has long been central to international drug smuggling. In the mid-90s, there was a scandal involving the Turkish government, its armed forces, and organized crime. The government had been economically impacted by the loss of trade due to the Gulf War and the Iraq embargo, and members of the government were complicit in allowing large amounts of heroin to flow westward into Europe.

Although mitigating drug use and smuggling is a legitimate challenge for the Turkish government, political incentives to conflate trafficking with terrorism exist. The Kurdish separatist movement known as the PKK is accused of financing its operations with money gained through the drug trade, and to the extent that it can be called a terrorist organization, fighting its source of funding could be fairly considered part of Turkey’s war on terrorism. However, the social implications of the “war on drugs” have been shown to be generally negative in the West, and the criminalization of recreational drug use results in the disenfranchisement and alienation of mainly young people who might otherwise be productive citizens.

Oct012014Apr252025

Learn From the Past, but Don’t Live There

Treatment

In recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, we find that our past, in all its dark and shabby glory, has become our greatest asset. It has been said that we “will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” This is because our experience, individually and collectively, with the pain and loneliness of addiction is not only part of the bond of mutual understanding that we have with others in recovery, but also because it establishes us as credible to the newcomer who needs help.

That said, it’s important that we don’t dredge up the past for the wrong reasons. I sponsored a man in recovery who had just come out of a horrendous detox episode—alcohol, no professional help, no medication—and who had nothing left: no car, no job, no money. And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about—and talking about—the BMW, his successes as a businessman, and how much cash he used to have. It was as if without those things he lacked an identity, which is often how we feel when we are stripped of alcohol and drugs and all the things that propped up our lives.

The thing is, a new identity is waiting to be discovered and nurtured in recovery, and letting go of old attachments is the best way to take care of this emerging self and support its growth. That holds true for our attachments to situations—circumstances, relationships, disagreements, resentments, and negative emotions in general. Resentment in particular is critically dangerous for us in recovery. The word is a combination of the intensive prefix re, which can mean either again or strongly, and sent, meaning to feel, and the combination has come to mean a continuing feeling of anger and bitterness. Resentment is literally a way of being stuck in the past, whether recent or long-ago.

Instead of staying stuck there, we have tools for examining the events that caused our resentments, and understanding that we usually played a part in what transpired, or at the very least had an expectation that wasn’t met. As we learn from our past and become willing to let go of it, we find new freedom both emotionally and in our thinking. In the process, we grow further away from our desire to drink or use.

Hope is a major element of preventing relapse because without hope and connection to others, the lure of addiction remains strong.
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