Addiction recovery is not easy. That might seem like a statement that everyone can agree on, but there are tons of people, places, and institutions that seem to take a dismissive attitude towards kicking a drug habit. Anyone who has dealt with addiction knows the truth though.
Addiction is a monster of epic proportions, and to defeat it you need help. And that is not a comment on you personally. This is the “you general”. There is no one, living or dead, who does not need help getting over addiction. It is just that steep of a climb up to recovery.
But since it is so difficult, it pays to find the right recovery center. Not all of them work the same, and most of them have access to different resources and treatment styles. So, to help out with your recovery journey, let’s go over the 10 steps to choose an addiction recovery center.
Determine Your Dependency Level
This is the obvious first step, as it essentially boils down to figuring out how hands-on the help needs to be. Do you need medical care? Are you expecting to go into serious withdrawal? Are you weaning yourself off your vice or going cold turkey? All of these mean different things.
You can really only take any other steps once you know how much attention you need.
Decide Between Inpatient or Outpatient
The difference between inpatient or outpatient is not as drastic as you might think. Inpatient treatment means that you are staying somewhere to make your treatment easier. Outpatient treatment means you are still living at home. The decision here is basically whether or not you trust yourself to be autonomous from your treatment.
Prepare to Detox
It is hard to believe, but the longest detox periods never last more than a week. Even for people who have been addicted to drugs for decades will pass the waste out of their systems in around a week’s worth of time. That week will feel like a year though, so be ready for it.
Plan Out Your Withdrawal
Dealing with withdrawal is the main reason people look for addiction recovery centers in the first place. The intensity of the withdrawal depends on how dependent you were on your vice in the first place. So, pick a recovery center that is adequately prepared to handle it.
Have a Work Plan
One of the hardest parts about fighting through an addiction is dealing with real life on top of it. But recovery centers need to keep the lights on somehow, so you need to be thinking of how to pay for them. Luckily, if you do not have a job, many offer job placement services.
If you do have a job, you will have to make a plan for working through withdrawal, taking a break from work to deal with withdrawal (which requires savings), or some other means of payment.
Contact Friends and Family
It might end up being some of the worst conversations you have with them but be sure to contact anyone you believe might be affected by your recovery. Dealing with withdrawal is the hardest part of recovery physically, but this is by far the most difficult thing to do emotionally.
The reason is that it is what keeps people from starting the recovery process. They do not want to go through withdrawal and inconvenience their loved ones. But here is the thing: Yes, they might have to take time out of their day to take care of you. But that is better than you dying.
Get Into Therapy
This is part of the recovery center selection process even if you go to a recovery center that does not have therapy. Why? Simply because if your recovery center of choice does not have therapy, then you need to get into therapy elsewhere.
Therapy is critical to recovery, full stop. If you are not getting into therapy to help you with the emotional component of recovery, then you are only going through half the process.
Figure Out Medication
Not every addiction recovery medication will work the same, or even be equally effective, on all people. This is the most true with anti-depressants, which are incredibly common in addiction recovery due to how common depression is in people who are dealing with withdrawal.
If your medication makes you feel like a zombie, speak up about it. That is not supposed to happen. Try something new until you find a medication that actually works.
Work to Find Stability
The ultimate goal of fighting addiction is to be able to live a normal life free of dependency. The worse your dependency was, the longer you will have to travel to get there. This makes it critical that you work to find a clear image of what that normal life looks like and how to get there.
Don’t Give Up
Is this a bit on the nose? Well, we hope so. If you look back at all the steps we mentioned, you will find that there are reasons to give up at all of them. Maybe you think you can’t work and recover at the same time, or that you do not want to be a burden to others.
Maybe you think therapy or anti-depressants won’t work on you, or that resources would be better spent on someone else. It is all too easy to decide to give up due to some strange, strained view of “logic” For that reason, you need to abandon logic on this one front.
Make the decision to never give up. Make it regardless of what is logical. Get ready to exhaust everyone’s patients and steal every resource you need to recover. Because if you put barriers around yourself, you might be keeping yourself from every recovering.
Like we said, recovery from addiction is never easy. But there are places that can help. Take a look at this handy article if you want to know more.