Addiction Treatment in Chesapeake, VA

You're tired of your addiction, and you'd like to get out, but you aren't quite ready to look up addiction treatment in Chesapeake yet. Why can't you do it on your own, you wonder. You do know people who have tried and succeeded in getting through detox on their own; shouldn't you be able to do the same thing?

Certainly, some people do manage to get through detox on their own with nothing more than supplements and tips gathered off the Internet for help. These stories, however, come with serious caveats.

Every Addiction Is Different

A mild, short-lived addiction to some drugs is sometimes not very hard to detoxify from. Long-lived addictions or addictions to many drugs (alcohol and many prescription drugs are examples) tend to be much harder. Programs for addiction treatment help patients deal with the toughest and most established cases.

It Can Be Unsafe

The formation of physical dependence on drugs is one of the most dangerous effects of addiction. In a normal brain, internal systems carefully regulate the level and duration of pleasure allowed in different circumstances. Drugs and alcohol, however, are able to commandeer these systems for short-term pleasure. When the brain's control is rendered useless in these areas, it begins to take a backseat.

As drugs begin to control fundamental brain functions in this way, they assume the role of a primary brain chemical. Attempting to get off drugs, then, becomes a problem: it is as if you remove an essential brain chemical.

Getting off drugs produces withdrawal symptoms as the brain struggles with chemical imbalances and attempts to reassert control. Withdrawal symptoms can be life-threatening in many cases. With drugs such as alcohol, heroin and benzodiazepines, 1 in 20 people who attempt withdrawal without medical attention die to try.

Self-designed withdrawal can be dangerous in other ways. It is often undertaken at home, for example, where there are few safeguards in place. The addict attempting recovery can choose to end the painful symptoms at any point, by simply giving up. Often, the patient will attempt to return to use with a large dose, bringing up the possibility of a life-threatening overdose.

Some withdrawal symptoms can be dangerous even if they don't kill. Seizures are often seen in alcohol withdrawal and are able to cause brain damage in some cases, the damage that can make future sobriety all but impossible.

It Can Be Pointless

People who choose self-directed addiction treatment do so either out of a sense of fierce independence or need to save money. Neither idea makes much sense. Difficulty dealing with life's challenges leads most people to drug use in the first place; attempting to take up detox, the greatest challenge possible, to ace on one's own, hardly adds up.

Drug detox in Chesapeake is hardly the only part of the addiction treatment process that one needs to go to rehab for. Detox treats withdrawal symptoms, a product of physical dependence on drugs. Cravings, on the other hand, come from psychological dependence; they can never be completely ended.

Drugs manage to do damage to the brain's ability to understand and process the danger of drugs. Sane thinking becomes impossible in this one area. Detox doesn't restore normalcy here; the problem remains for life. Cravings can return at unpredictable times. There is only one scientifically proven way to avoid this -- relapse prevention therapy. It takes a great deal of therapeutic work, sometimes for years to ensure that relapse doesn't occur within one, two, or three years.

There is the question of psychiatric treatment, as well. Most addiction disorders come coupled with mental disorders. Psychiatric treatment is an integral part of addiction treatment in Chesapeake. Drug and alcohol treatment programs attempted without psychiatric and psychological treatment invariably fail. More than 90% of such attempts end in immediate relapse.

Since there is no DIY route to therapy or psychiatric treatment, one does need to turn to rehab for this segment of one's treatment. One might as well turn to rehab for detox, and do a good job of it all.

Finding the Best Inpatient Rehab

Outpatient rehab is a possibility presented to addicts interested in recovery. It tends to end in failure for all but with the lightest addictions, however. At home, addicts attempting recovery find themselves in familiar surroundings and close to familiar temptations. Cheating becomes all too easy.

Many have little family support, and unexpected episodes of pain that scare them off their attempt. Inpatient rehab works best, simply because it removes the patient from familiar surroundings, and makes cheating impossible. With constant access to therapists and emotional support by caring professionals, inpatient rehab offers a significant boost to those attempting addiction treatment.

Finding such addiction treatment in Chesapeake isn't hard, but you do need to look. Quality, accredited treatment does exist. There's no reason why you shouldn't succeed in reaching for sobriety. Call Chesapeake Alcohol Rehab Centers. (877) 804-1531