Thursday, September 11, 2014

What is the Treatment for alcohol addiction?

After being asked a few times on what is treatment? I found this article which describes treatment



What is the treatment for alcohol addiction?BACK TO TOP

If you are having problems with alcohol, it doesn’t mean that you are weak or unable to change. Reducing the negative effects of your drinking by cutting down or quitting often takes more than willpower or good intentions. There are many effective resources and treatments that can help you quit. Veterans of all ages, backgrounds, and eras have gotten treatment for alcohol problems—and treatment works.
“Until I went in and talked to someone, I had no idea just how many areas of my life were being affected by booze. I feel so much more in control of my life now – almost everything was very repairable.”
Your doctor may decide you need detoxification (detox) 
before you start treatment. Alcohol detox uses medicine to help you safely stop drinking and manage the symptoms of withdrawal.
One of the most effective forms of treatment for problems with alcohol is therapy, either alone with a therapist or in a group, and sometimes in conjunction with anti-addiction medications. Therapy can help you maintain your motivation to seek a better life, avoid occasions that may trigger abuse of alcohol, manage your cravings, and strengthen your relationships. Medications can help manage withdrawal symptoms and reduce your desire to drink. You and your doctor will work together to determine what combination of treatment strategies will work best for your situation.
Treatment doesn't just focus on alcohol; it also addresses ways to improve other parts of your life. Having satisfying relationships, work environments, and physical wellness can help you stay sober.


Drug addiction treatment and recovery 2: Explore your treatment options

Once you’ve made the decision to challenge your drug addiction, it’s time to explore your treatment choices. As you consider the options, keep the following in mind:
  • There’s no magic bullet or single treatment that works for everyone. When considering a program, remember that everyone’s needs are different. Drug addiction treatment should be customized to your unique problems and situation. It’s important that you find a program that feels right.
  • Treatment should address more than just your drug abuse. Addiction affects your whole life, including relationships, career, health, and psychological well-being. Treatment success depends on developing a new way of living and addressing the reasons why you turned to drugs in the first place. It may have been because of an inability to manage stress, in which case you’ll need to find healthy ways to handle stressful situations.
  • Commitment and follow-through are key. Drug addiction treatment is not a quick and easy process. In general, the longer and more intense the drug use, the longer and more intense the treatment you’ll need. But regardless of the treatment program’s length in weeks or months, long-term follow-up care is crucial to recovery.
  • There are many places to turn for help. Not everybody requires medically supervised detox or an extended stint in rehab. The level of care you need depends on your age, drug use history, and other medical or psychiatric conditions. In addition to doctors and psychologists, many clergy members, social workers, and counselors offer addiction treatment services.
As you seek help for drug addiction, it’s also important to get treatment for any other medical or psychological issues you’re experiencing. Your best chance of recovery is through integrated treatment for both the substance abuse problem and the mental health problem. This means getting combined mental health and addiction treatment from the same treatment provider or team.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

When Friends Relapse

It’s not easy to watch the people you've been sober with decide to leave. But I've learned to not make it any harder than it already is.

Relapses happen. We all know it and many of us fear it. But watching a friend “slip” can be almost as hard as going through it yourself.
It might seem like the toughest part of a friend’s relapse would be watching the person revert to sad, old behaviors and seeing her life grow smaller and darker. But for me—and maybe this is selfish—the hardest part has been the fear it stirred in me: fear for their well being, of course, but also fear for the fate of our friendship and an anticipatory sense of mourning for the closeness we’d had. Somehow I just know, deep down, that nothing will ever be quite the same between us.
Miraculously, I've had only two good friends “go out” over the course of the seven years I’ve been in and out of program (but mostly in). The first was a high school friend, Miriam, when I had about a year of sobriety. It was difficult but I observed it from a distance of 3,000 miles, which helped soften the situation somewhat. 
After five sober years in AA (she’d been tossed in rehab after trying to kill herself with pills), Miriam simply decided she was…done. She’d never embraced the program despite the fact that, from an outsider’s perspective, it had visibly changed her life for the better by making her less anxious and self-destructive. She couldn't see those changes in herself—at least not the way I could (even from 3,000 miles away)—and she started drinking and popping pills again. Within months, she had gotten a bunch of plastic surgery, had a scary car accident after passing out behind the wheel and decided to dabble in becoming an escort on Craigslist. 
That all sounds extreme, I know, but it happened. Still, I don’t want to use Miriam’s story as a moralistic cautionary tale; I don’t actually subscribe to the AA party line that all addicts who go out are damning themselves to an inescapable future of jail, institutions, or death. That was not Miriam’s fate. She had a bad few months (um, see above), but eventually she resumed a life of non-sober pseudo-normalcy and she’s still alive and kicking—if not exactly a fount of serenity and bliss. 
Miriam’s decision to leave AA freaked me out, as you’d expect, because in some ways she had been a sober role model for me. I tried to convince her not to walk away; I tried to articulate all the positive changes I had observed in her from afar but she wasn't having it so I was forced to let go of the outcome I wanted. We remained friends and we’re still in regular contact, but I miss the shared sober common ground we used to have.
My experience with Miriam taught me perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from friends’ relapses: No matter how hard we try, we can’t change their minds, so we might as well stop trying and instead step back and try to be an impartial but supportive observer. Friends’ sobriety or lack of sobriety is not up to us. In fact, it has nothing to do with us. It doesn't matter how much begging or pleading we’re tempted to do; the sanest thing to do when watching a friend relapse is to try to gently disengage from your feelings about the matter. (Easier said than done, I know.) But unless it directly threatens your own sobriety, being a good friend means being there for your relapsing buddies—even if it’s just to listen—during their weakest times.
I learned that lesson the hard way after going through a relapse myself. In 2010, after almost four years of sobriety, I decided to try “moderate” drinking again. My father was dying of cancer, I lived on the opposite side of the country and I felt like I absolutely couldn't go on without something, anything, to numb my constant, all-encompassing anxiety. I was a mess and in the worst kind of fear I’d ever known. I talked about my decision with my therapist and told my friends I was thinking about drinking. It wasn't sudden; it wasn't like I suddenly gave in to a random urge for wine with dinner. Regardless, I was disheartened to find that some of my sober friends seemed to vanish when I started drinking again. A few of them did stick around and continue to hang out with me, never judging me or pushing me to come back; they just stepped back, listened and we continued to do the old ordinary things we used to do: dinner, coffee, movies. The gentle support and lack of judgment I got from those friends meant so much to me, especially because I felt super-disconnected and isolated without a program to tie my days together. After about six months of supposed “moderation” (um, or not), I stopped the experiment and rejoined San Francisco’s sober contingent..
And then I had to re-learn the lesson of disengaging from my own feelings about a friend’s relapse again when another friend, Lisa, decided to pick up. We both had about two years of sobriety at the time and were both prone to anxiety, depression and discomfort. We were close: we texted each other all day long, about stupid things, big things, “meh” things, life. During the period when we were the closest, we were both between jobs and lived just a few blocks away from each other. So we would meet up often, grab coffee and aimlessly walk around San Francisco, taking her dog up to Bernal Hill, snapping dumb photos of each other posing in the park or hovering beside weird signs. She was one of the few truly close friends I had in the program—one of the only ones I could imagine having been friends with in my old life, before I got sober.
I didn't crave alcohol anymore. But I struggled with the program: I never felt fully at home there. The God stuff was gross to me; I felt like I was faking it. I smiled and nodded when people talked about faith in a Higher Power; I didn't share that faith but I knew I was “supposed to” so I kept my ambivalence hidden. Lisa felt the same way. I felt less alone when I was with her. 
One night she called me, telling me she was suicidal and wanted to drink. She had recently gotten out of a painful relationship with a guy who’d betrayed her. I knew she was having a rough time but I couldn't fathom the idea that she might turn her back on sobriety altogether. That night, Lisa sounded…bad. Desperation rising, I begged her to stick around, telling her that no matter how shitty she felt, she would absolutely not feel better by drinking over it. I believed wholeheartedly that alcohol would only make her problems worse. She wasn't buying it and my sense of panic—“I’m losing her!”—continued to build as she explained that she needed to drink to avoid killing herself. By the end of that phone call, she had begun drinking again. That was about four years ago. She’s still out there.
Our friendship changed after that, of course. At first she made feeble attempts to stop drinking again; I’d pick her up and take her to meetings while she reeked of booze. But soon it became clear that Lisa didn't really want to come back. She’d chosen alcohol and her old, crazy, more exciting version of life. I tried to hold onto our friendship but she didn't call or text as often; within six months or so, we were barely in touch at all. That wasn't my doing or my intention; she just suddenly seemed so slippery and impossible to pin down. So eventually I gave up and let go. She abandoned almost all her sober friendships—looking back now, I imagine it must have been hard for her to stay close with her AA friends while drinking and using. I’m sure it felt at least a little bit awkward and I suspect she worried about being judged (or 12-stepped). Hanging out with her when she was drunk—even if it only involved taking her to a meeting—felt weird and somehow wrong to me, too. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years now.
And yet, despite all my initial fear and doubt about my friends’ decisions to drink, it never really made me question my own resolve to stay sober. I've been hovering around the rooms long enough now to realize that though it will never be easy to watch a friend go out, it’s not about me and it’s in my own best interests not to make it that way. I can stay supportive without letting myself get too attached to one specific outcome. I may be upset, even devastated, when friends leave sobriety behind, but that doesn't mean I have to do anything about it. 

Posted on thefix.com by Laura Barcella