What is the best way for helping drug addicts with addiction recovery services?  What is the best path to direct them towards?

One thing that you might do is to assess where the addict is at with their addiction before you make any decisions about the level of care that they need.  Many rehab centers will attempt to do this for you and do an assessment in order to determine the level of care that an addict needs in treatment.  My thought is that if you are on the ball then you should know in advance what will and will not work for the struggling addict in question.  Of course, you cannot always know for sure, but predicting how much care someone needs is not rocket science.  Let’s take a look.

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photo credit: kouk

Let’s say that a person has never had any treatment before in their life and they just starting to experience problems with, say, alcohol abuse.  Maybe they have suffered some minor consequences due to their drinking but they have not really got into any serious trouble, and maybe their family does not even think there is a real problem.  In this case, you might direct such a person to counseling, so that they can talk with a therapist about their problems and hopefully make corrections.  Now, the hard core alcoholic would not be able to just talk with a therapist and make corrections in their life, they would continue to get worse with their drinking in spite of the therapy.  So we are making an assumption at this point that we have a “problem drinker” on our hands rather than someone with a real addiction.

Let’s say, on the other hand, that this same person is having more than just a few problems.  They are very definitely addicted to alcohol and they depend on it every day in order to unwind and even to sleep each night.  Without it, they get the shakes and cannot fall asleep at all.  In this case, you might direct such a person to an inpatient addiction recovery service, because they obviously need medical attention when they stop drinking.  Of course, it is not certain that the person will be willing to go to rehab, or even that it will necessarily work out for them, but this is the best level of care for their needs at this point.

Now let’s take this same person and pretend that they have been to rehab before.  Maybe they have been to several rehab facilities over the years, this is actually a very common occurrence in the substance abuse treatment community.  In this case, you might make the observation that short term residential treatment is not working very well for the person, so perhaps they need a greater level of care.  And what might that be?  In this case you would probably recommend long term rehab, or living in some sort of halfway house or transitional housing.  This person needs a strong support system that can help him for months or even for over a year as he learns how to actually live a clean and sober life.

In all cases you want to start with the least amount of treatment services and progress to the more intensive types such as the long term rehab.  This makes sense and if someone continues to struggle with addiction then you simply urge them to bump up to the next level of care, in the hopes that this will offer enough help and support to make a real difference for them.  Those who refuse to get a higher level of care are probably still stuck in denial, and may not make the leap until they suffer more consequences in their lives.