How to Pick a Rehab Program There is no set standard for evaluating the “success rate” of a rehab program. As a result, many programs define a success as completion of their program, even though from 80% to 98% relapse soon after completion.
I think you will agree that the best definition of “success rate” for a rehab program is having the person off drugs, restored mentally and physically to the condition they were in before they started using drugs/alcohol and able to now lead a normal life without relapsing. If you can find a program that uses that definition for success rate, AND which generates a 70% to
80% success rate (a few such do exist), you’ve got the best bang for your buck, and the best chance of getting off drugs permanently.
The unfortunate facts are that most of the 16,000 or so registered drug rehab programs in the United States get only 2% to 20% permanently off drugs or alcohol and able to lead a normal life without relapsing and without having to go to meetings for the rest of their life to keep the beast in check. So trying to find a program that gets better results is kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, as only about 1% or less of all programs out there get better results than 20% without having to attend regular meetings for the rest for one's life.
In looking over rehab programs, one should evaluate them by asking the following questions:
1. Do they consider addiction to be a disease (especially a lifelong disease), or do they give the person the tools to be responsible for their own life again? Addiction is not a disease. That’s a lie which prevents real recovery in far too many cases. Also, one does not have to go to meetings for the rest of their life to stay off drugs/alcohol if they have been rehabbed properly.
2. Do they consider that relapse is part of the recovery process? Many will tell you that it is. However, that’s just an excuse for the program’s failure to actually rehab the person, as relapse is not a part of the recovery process in a good rehab program.
3. How long is the program? Less than 3 months is not enough to get the body detoxed and the person able to operate in life again without drugs. In shorter programs, the success rate is an average of only 2% to 10%.
4. Does the program use drugs (any drugs) as part of the rehab? Programs that do are simply trading one addiction for another, often worse addiction. The use of any drug in
a rehab program (except for legal drugs used to taper the person off their addiction during the short withdrawal period) should be cause for rejection of the program outright, as replacement drugs are at least as destructive as the one the person went to rehab for. And the use of replacement drugs does not result in the person being restored to the condition they were in before the addiction.
5. Does the program offer “treatment” for people with Dual Diagnosis? Beware of programs that talk about handling Dual Diagnosis cases, as Dual Diagnosis is psychobabble for the fact that a person who has messed up their mind and body with drugs or alcohol does not usually have what one would call a “normal” mental outlook on life. That’s to be expected. However, the solution for such a situation is not to now put the person on a psych med (which is what the Dual Diagnosis programs do), as that simply compounds their problems. The real solution is to get the person off the addictive substance and then get the remnants of it completely out of their system, after which one finds and handles the reason the person went on the substance in the first place so that it is no longer a problem for them (which is possible to do in nearly every case). Instead, the mental health wizards of today put the person on a much worse drug (anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, tranquilizers, etc.) to handle the effects of the drug they were taking, with the effects being called a mental illness. Labeling the person as “mentally ill” and putting them on another drug, with side effects such as suicide and violence (see their black box warnings) does not contribute to restoring the person to the condition they were in before the addiction, and can actually leave them even worse off.
For an explanation of what a black box warning is and what it means to the user of the drug, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_warning, or type “black box warnings” into google.com or any other search engine, and you will find that it’s the most serious
warning that can be given, about how dangerous the drug is.
Typical Costs
30-day programs average $30K and higher in costs, with success rates maxing out at 20% (that’s 80 out of 100 people reverting after completion of the program), with a low of 2% (or 98 out of 100 reverting) for many addictions. If you spend that much time and money, don’t you think you should have a better chance of recovery than only 20%?
Hospital programs average $1K per day with a 2 to 4 week wait for most. And their success rates average from 2% to 10%. Why bother?
Long term residential programs average $31K and take from 3 to 6 months. The average success rate for these programs can go as high as 80%, depending on the program.
Considering the extremely high cost of continuing with the addiction, in terms of ruined lives, ruined relationships, ruined health, and the cost of the drugs themselves, not to mention the potential for legal problems that can more or less permanently ruin one's life, the cost of a good rehab program is not much, if it actually gets the person over their addiction permanently and restores them to the condition they were in before the addiction began.
