Drug Addiction Treatment

Drug addiction treatment depends upon the severity and nature of the drug addiction, motivation, and the availability of services. Some users may come into drug addiction treatment voluntarily and have the support of family, friends, and workplace; others may be sent to drug addiction treatment by the courts against their will and have virtually no support system. Recovery from drug addiction is possible for both scenarios if the individuals applies the knowledge they learn to their life once they have left drug addiction treatment.

Detoxification is only the first stage of drug addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long-term drug use. Detoxification safely manages the acute physical symptoms of withdrawal associated with stopping drug use. While detoxification alone is rarely sufficient to help addicts achieve long-term abstinence, for some individuals it is a strongly indicated precursor to effective drug addiction treatment.

The appropriate duration for an individual in drug addiction treatment depends on his or her problems and needs. Research indicates that for most patients, the threshold of significant improvement is reached at about 3 months in treatment. After this threshold is reached, additional drug addiction treatment can produce further progress toward recovery. Because people often leave treatment prematurely, programs should include strategies to engage and keep patients in treatment.

There are no quick fixes for drug addiction and alcoholism. The knowledge and life skills one learns during intensive drug addiction treatment must be integrated into everyday life.

Narconon Drug addiction Treatment

The Narconon drug addiction treatment program steps are entirely drug-free; that is, the Narconon program does not use drugs or medications to solve the problems caused by drugs, but does use nutrition and nutritional supplements as an important component of its delivery. Thus our drug addiction treatment program is neither a psychiatric nor medical, but a social education model of rehabilitation.

Persons enrolling in the program must receive full medical physicals, an M.D.’s permission to do the program and periodic medical review as individually needed. However, Narconon clients are not considered or treated as “patients” but as “students” who are learning to regain control of their lives. This is an important distinction. A Narconon student does not enroll to recover from an “illness”; he enrolls to learn something that he doesn’t already know. He addresses the disability caused by drug use with new abilities, new skills for life.

Narconon staff prepare graduating students with “re-entry” programs to follow as they re-start their lives on a new foot. But the full Narconon drug addiction treatment program is intended to produce graduates who can stand on their own feet and live drug-free, ethical lives thereafter. A Narconon graduate does not go to weekly meetings for months after completion, nor does he describe himself as “recovering.”

A student who has graduated from the Narconon program has recovered. He or she has obtained a new orientation in life. The premise of the Narconon model is that a former addict can achieve a new life. This goal applies (and is routinely achieved) whether the program is delivered in a free-standing center, daily after work, or even in prison.

Once well, if he uses the tools he has practiced and learned to use at a Narconon center, a Narconon graduate can stay well. This is not theoretical. There are three decades of graduates who will swear by it.

If graduates do run into serious difficulties, they return to their Narconon center where they inevitably find a specific part of the program that they earlier failed to fully understand and therefore could not apply in the travails of daily life. But the majority get it the first time through.

The Narconon drug addiction treatment program takes four to six months. During this time, some might consider the Narconon program a “therapeutic community,” but it would be more appropriate to say that Narconon clients are going “back to school”–this time to get real tools for real life.