California Drug Rehab Info on Drug Addiction

There are many addictive drugs and treatment options. From detox to long-term care and from residential drug rehab to outpatient drug counseling, the decision to get help is just the first step. Drug rehab can include behavioral therapy, medications, or their combination.

Problems associated with an individual's drug addiction can vary significantly. People who are addicted to drugs come from all walks of life. Many suffer from mental health, occupational, health, or social problems that make their addictive disorders much more difficult to treat.

California Drug Rehab offers information on drug rehab and addiction for those in need. Its never too late to get help with your own or your loved one's drug addiction.

How Effective Is Drug Rehab?

In addition to stopping drug use, the goal of rehab is to return the individual to productive functioning in the family, workplace, and community. Measures of effectiveness typically include levels of criminal behavior, family functioning, employability, and medical condition. Overall, treatment of drug addiction is as successful as treatment of other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. According to several studies, drug rehab can reduce drug use by 40-60% and significantly decreases criminal activity during and after treatment.

Drug Rehab Can and Does Work

Extensive data document that drug addiction rehab is as effective as treatments for most other similarly chronic medical conditions. Because of such obstacles to the right facts as personal denial and incorrect information issued by the press, thousands of people are getting misinformation instead of the help they need.

In spite of sound evidence that establishes the effectiveness of professional drug abuse treatment, many people still believe that rehab will be ineffective. Distrusting rehabilitation can also stem from unrealistic expectations. Many people equate addiction with simply using drugs and so they expect a quick cure—and if it is not cured quickly, they think treatment is a failure.

Addiction is more than an uncontrollable desire for substances; it is an underlying behavior pattern with deeply emotional roots. Successful rehab requires digging down and revealing the long-ingrained pattern at the root level. What's often revealed is behavior born of anger, helplessness, and shame, compounded by intense desires for immediate escape from these unsettling feelings. Because addiction is a chronic disorder, the ultimate goal of successful, long-term abstinence often requires dedication to sustained and repeated treatment.

Why Can’t Drug Addicts Quit On Their Own?

Nearly all those addicted to drugs believe in the beginning that they can stop using drugs on their own, and most try to stop without treatment. However, most of these attempts result in failure to achieve long-term abstinence. Research has shown that long-term drug use results in significant changes in brain function that persist long after the individual stops using drugs. These drug -induced changes in brain function may have many behavioral consequences, including the compulsion to use drugs despite adverse consequences — the defining characteristic of addiction. This makes drug rehab the only choice for some.

Understanding Drug Addiction

Many people view drug addiction as strictly a social problem. Parents, teens, older adults, and other members of the community tend to characterize people who take drugs as morally weak or as having criminal tendencies. They believe that drug addicts should be able to stop taking drugs if they are willing to change their behavior.

These myths have not only stereotyped those with drug -related problems, but also their families, their communities, and the health care professionals who work with them. Drug addiction comprises a public health problem that affects many people and has wide-ranging social consequences. It is the National Institute on Drug Addiction's (NIDA's) goal to help the public replace its myths and long-held mistaken beliefs about drug abuse and addiction with scientific evidence that addiction is a chronic, relapsing, and treatable disease.

Drug addiction does begin with drug abuse when an individual makes a conscious choice to use drugs, but addiction is not just "a lot of drug use." Recent scientific research provides overwhelming evidence that not only do drugs interfere with normal brain functioning creating powerful feelings of pleasure, but they also have long-term effects on brain metabolism and activity. At some point, changes occur in the brain that can turn drug abuse into addiction, a chronic, relapsing illness. Those addicted to drugs suffer from a compulsive drug craving and usage and cannot quit by themselves. Treatment is necessary to end this compulsive behavior.

A variety of approaches are used in treatment programs to help patients deal with these cravings and possibly avoid drug relapse. NIDA research shows that addiction is clearly treatable. Through treatment that is tailored to individual needs, patients can learn to control their condition and live relatively normal lives.

Treatment can have a profound effect not only on drug abusers, but on society as a whole by significantly improving social and psychological functioning, decreasing related criminality and violence, and reducing the spread of AIDS. It can also dramatically reduce the costs to society of drug abuse.

Understanding drug abuse also helps in understanding how to prevent use in the first place. Results from NIDA-funded prevention research have shown that comprehensive prevention programs that involve the family, schools, communities, and the media are effective in reducing drug abuse. It is necessary to keep sending the message that it is better to not start at all than to enter rehabilitation if addiction occurs.

A tremendous opportunity exists to effectively change the ways in which the public understands drug abuse and addiction because of the wealth of scientific data NIDA has amassed. Overcoming misconceptions and replacing ideology with scientific knowledge is the best hope for bridging the "great disconnect" - the gap between the public perception of drug abuse and addiction and the scientific facts.

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