The advantages of a long term rehab. Why sometimes 3 months or more just offers more.

If a month at rehab can teach you what you need to know to get off, and stay off, drugs and alcohol...isn't it worth it? Learning to live without abuse isn't going to be easy, and there are no shortcuts to success; you need to take the time and make the effort to get better, and stay better. I've been to rehab twice, and even though I needed to go back a second time, I've never considered either rehab a failure, and I'm just grateful I can enjoy my life, and my family, without the pain and suffering of addiction.

When choosing a drug rehab facility I tried looking for a few very important features.

You know I know of dozens of large treatment centers in California alone. There are plenty of them lined all over the coast. There must be something in the water, or it is a trend.

With all the choice available, it's easy to get overwhelmed when trying to select a quality rehab facility. You desperately want to make the right choice, and because achieving sobriety is so important, the pressure to choose correctly can become very stressful. The perfect facility for one might be a disaster for another, and as such you need to choose the facility that's the best match for the addict and their personality. As follows are 8 criteria I've used when evaluating rehab facilities and these criteria may offer you a starting point when thinking about how to pick a rehabilitation facility. Remember that any rehab is better than no rehab, and by taking a bit of time, and selecting with care and the needs of the addict in mind, you'll almost certainly make a great choice.

While Californian doctors could previously receive drug and alcohol treatment without their patient's knowledge, and while retaining their medical licenses, this program of professional rehabilitation has been suspended, and abusing doctors will now be required to forfeit their license to practice until they can demonstrate that they are no longer a threat to their patients. While this may seem a very logical policy, by increasing the barriers to rehab and the costs of treatment, the number of abusing doctors that do get help will decrease, and in fact more patients will be at risk from intoxicated doctors.

I believe in God, but I'm not much of a church goer, and so when I needed to go to rehab, my family arranged for a secular facility. I can't complain about my rehab experience; it worked and does work for me still, but a Christian Rehab offers some compelling features, and If I ever need to go again, I'll consider a Christian rehab.

Avoiding rehab for financial reasons is shortsighted. Even if you have no insurance coverage, and even if you are required to pay full price (most rehabs will work with patients in financial need) a month of rehab is not likely to cost as much as a few months of drug abuse, and once sober, you'll perform better at work as well. Getting sober should never be about doing better financially, but if you need to look at the bottom line...recovery always pays off.

With seemingly daily stories of celebs entering rehabs, mockery seems to have shifted slightly away from the stars themselves, and onto the rehab centers; and the price tags, the services and the resort style accommodations are ridiculed as excessive pampering, not befitting a serious attempt at recovery. But why must recovery be more painful and difficult than it already is, and if you can afford a comfortable, beautiful and luxurious rehab, why not make what is always a difficult transition as comfortable as possible?

Too good to be true sounding success rates published by many of the nation's rehab facilities may sound impressive, but do the advertised success rates have any basis in reality? 75%...85%...are these types of recovery statistics really even possible, and how can we know whether the relapse rates as advertised by different drug rehab programs are accurate representations of reality?

Sober living housing reduces stress, offers sanctuary from temptation and improves sober social skills; and most importantly, sober living housing improves the likelihood of long term abstinence and a happy life free from substance abuse. The period right after the successful completion of a rehab stay is one of the biggest risk periods for relapse, and to minimize the risks and stress of a transition out of rehab, a lot of people very sensibly consider moving out of a residential rehab into a sober living housing environment.

There are hundreds of facilities offering drug and alcohol rehab and detoxification that do not allow for the use of any medications as a part of their recovery philosophy. While at face value, the ideation that adding more drugs to eliminate a drug problem makes some sense, when you look at the actual risks and benefits associated with using appropriate and safe medications in drug rehab, it becomes absurd not to use them.

Maintaining contact with the office while in residential drug treatment can’t be beneficial to recovery, but if it's the only way to induce executives into needed residential rehabs, then it’s probably a positive thing

It can drive you crazy trying to find out how much a stay at a drug or alcohol rehab is going to cost; and although the price of treatment should never be the only consideration--and you don’t necessarily want a "bargain" drug rehab--we all live within our financial realities, and you can only afford what you can afford!

Whatever people in the drug and alcohol rehab business might tell you, not everyone needs, or even benefits from rehab. That's not to say that no one needs rehab, and for some people, nothing short of residential care offers much hope of a betterment of the problem, but it's certainly not outrageous to at least try either cold turkey willpower, or some form of outpatient therapy first before committing to the intensity (and expense) of a month or more of inpatient rehab.

Making the decision to get help takes you closer than anything else you'll ever do to getting sober and getting better; but even once you've decided that you need residential drug or alcohol rehab treatment, you still have an enormous availability of choice as to where to get it, and thus a difficult decision. For people wanting a quick transition into rehab and into a better life, the many options available brings unwanted stress into an already difficult time. The deciding factors may include location, price, philosophies, and probably also treatments offered; and when evaluating the last of those, it's easy to wonder how important seemingly frivolous programs such as yoga or meditation really are to your likelihood of recovery. After all, wouldn’t your time be better spent in therapy?

Mr Drug Rehab Owner - would it be too much to ask to have you put the price, balpark figures are fine, of a stay at your facility on your website? How many treatment seekers get discouraged enough after calling 4 or 5 rehabs - and finding that they cannot hope to afford them, to go back to drinking and drugging for another long while?

I am a little tired of people who complain about the motivations of evangelical Christian addiction treatment organizations. If you don't like what they do - why don't YOU, by donating your money or your time, offer people in need something else?

You may have done some terrible things while under the influence of alcoholism or addiction, and you may be ashamed of what you have become; but at the core, you are not a bad person you are a sick person, and the things you may have done do not reflect who you are and what you believe.

There is no problem. Anyone who wants to get into drug rehab, regardless of how much or how little money they have, can get in… Or at least that's the message I keep getting from state social services personnel. Which is kind of funny, since a lot of the people I talk to that are struggling with addictions are telling me a very different story.

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about drug or alcohol rehabs…until they need one. Once you make a decision to enter into treatment, the sooner you can get help the better. Unfortunately, since you need to make a decision about rehab quickly, you can easily get overwhelmed by the difficulties of finding an appropriate facility, and even in finding accurate and transparent information.

Rehab is a business, and it's big business, and as unfortunate as it may be, those without money wait a lot longer for care; and too often never do get into treatment, deterred either by unreasonable waiting times or by a simple lack of access.

A step by step guide to finding treatment that you can afford - right now!

What's the old saying, "No man is an island..."

Some people can get better on their own, most need a little help.