Drug Rehab

December 22, 2022

Effective rehab treatment can help anyone struggling with a substance use problem. When you’re in a supportive rehabilitation environment, it can make the recovery process much less intimidating. In meth rehab, you’ll be surrounded by sober peers and supportive professionals, allowing you to stay on track with your goals and focus on recovery. Treatment links you to aftercare resources that can help you transition into a sober lifestyle with a reduced risk of relapse.

Unfortunately, relapse is common after rehabilitation, and the risk is even higher without proper treatment. That is why it is a huge accomplishment to go through meth rehab successfully. Everyone who does so should be proud. Implementing the lessons you learned during meth rehab also takes a significant amount of commitment and effort. This is why aftercare is important after completing a rehab program.

Aftercare programs help people who have finished a meth rehab program to keep living sober lives without the structure of an addiction treatment program. They include any follow-up or ongoing treatment for substance abuse. It is about more than direct relapse prevention; aftercare helps recovering individuals keep growing and becoming stronger in recovery. The aim of addiction aftercare after rehab is to do the following:

• Helping the individual achieve a life with a sense of purpose and rewarding relationships.
• Find ways to prevent relapse
• Maintain recovery from substance abuse

Even though the timeline for meth rehab or any formal treatment usually varies, it will end at some point. However, ongoing recovery efforts are likely to continue long-term and are even encouraged, which is why diligent aftercare planning is essential. Some meth rehab treatment programs prioritizing recovery will ensure graduating participants go on their way with a good discharge plan and link them to quality aftercare programs.

Types of Aftercare Programs

There are different types of meth rehab aftercare programs covering a wide variety of options based on the treatment’s duration, staffing, setting, and intensity. After completing the first rehab program, the best aftercare depends mainly on the individual’s status, needs, and symptoms.

Sober Living Programs/Recovery Housing

Sober residence can be a good aftercare option for people who began treatment with aftercare programs. These residences might be best for people lacking a solid support system outside treatment or those with harmful home living situations.

Recovery housing gives people a sober, supportive, healthy environment to continue healing. If you are coming from an intensive type of treatment, it can help to transition back into the outside world through recovery housing. It can also help people avoid stressful environments that can trigger them to relapse into drug use.

Medication Management

Medication can be essential for ongoing recovery and treatment for anyone with co-occurring mental health conditions and substance use disorders. They can help you manage drug cravings and alleviate dangerous and uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms.

Suppose medications are already part of your treatment plan. In that case, you must follow up with your prescribing doctor regularly to monitor for side effects and symptoms as they make any necessary adjustments.

Mutual Support Groups

Most treatment programs encourage recovering participants to engage in mutual support groups as part of aftercare planning. These support groups are made up of people who share the same struggle with addiction and form connections about their experiences in private group settings to help sustain sobriety and abstinence.

These support groups, like Narcotics Anonymous (NA), usually follow a spiritual foundation and are based on a 12-step model. They are self-governing and led by other people who are also in recovery. Non-spiritual groups like SMART recovery usually follow a different structure and aim to help people live a healthy lifestyle while maintaining abstinence.

Trained professionals can run mutual support groups to help recovering individuals relate and connect with others in recovery and learn more about their addiction. Engaging in these support groups can be a vital part of your aftercare plan, regardless of the one you choose to attend.

Getting mutual support while in recovery has been strongly connected to positive outcomes, especially when attending regularly and for extended periods. Surrounding yourself with people who understand the difficulties of recovery might give you more access to a support network when you experience challenges in your journey.

Therapy

Including therapy in your aftercare plan can be helpful, particularly if you have been working with a therapist beforehand. Therapy is a beneficial tool for addressing potential triggers for drug use, resolving conflicts, and processing one’s emotions. Typical approaches used for therapy include:

• Motivational interviewing: This helps to identify the stage of change the client is in while utilizing the relationship between the therapist and the client to modify the latter’s behaviors with a goal towards sobriety.
• Contingency management: This approach toward substance use treatment uses vouchers or prizes to promote sustained abstinence, verified with a urine test.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): This method identifies the connections between the individual’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts contributing to their substance misuse. CBT is one of the most frequently used approaches for addressing substance use and has been proven particularly effective.

The Effectiveness of Aftercare

Addiction can be challenging to cure, just like other severe chronic conditions. There is also the possibility of relapse, which makes it even harder to determine the effectiveness of aftercare programs.

Effective meth rehab treatment reduces any possible symptoms, and a lack of treatment has been linked to an increased risk of relapse and frequency of symptoms. Relapse is even more common in individuals who lack support and suffer from a severe addiction.

However, please remember that addiction does not indicate that the treatment has failed. It just shows that the person would benefit from alternative, modified, or restarted aftercare options.

In fact, longer treatment periods have been correlated to better rehabilitation results, which suggests that the duration may be more important than the type of treatment administered. The best approach toward aftercare treatment is comprehensive and personalized to the individual’s needs to get the best recovery results.