Alcohol treatment centers are clinical facilities, often known as rehabs, that offer a range of therapeutic addiction treatment programs for alcoholics, people with other addictions and some support for families of people affected.
Alcohol treatment centres are facilities that will have a range of clinical staff and admin staff who will help administer and look after the clinical programs that the alcohol treatment center offers.
An alcoholic will only really seek help when the reality of living with the pain of active alcoholism becomes too much to bear. This is not necessarily about the external confusion and turbulence that is present in the life of an alcoholic or their family.
The pressure that normally makes an alcoholic seek help tends to be an internal pressure, that for whatever reason they simply cannot carry on with the level of emotional pain that they are feeling.
An alcohol treatment center needs to understand the complexity of alcoholism as an illness, and a core or integral component thereof in terms of the thinking of the alcoholic.
Whilst it is always difficult to generalise about anyone who has an illness, it is probably fair to say that an alcoholic will believe that alcohol is the only thing that is holding them together.
This belief system is likely to have been there since the early onset of their drinking, and will have deepened over time, the worst things have got. It is important that the alcohol treatment center understands this paradoxical way of thinking and can offer help.
Alcohol Treatment Centers – Programs
Alcohol treatment centres will offer a range of of different types of therapeutic programs designed to help treat alcoholism and other types of addiction. Most rehabs will offer therapy either on a one-to-one basis or some type of group therapy that involves everyone in the rehab.
One-to-one therapy can be effective but is limited by the length of time that a person stays in an alcohol treatment center, which is normally about one month. Group therapy in an alcohol treatment center can also be effective, but can also seem fairly daunting to anyone who is new to the process.
The therapeutic programs at an alcohol treatment center will offer will normally be based upon the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The principles of the 12 step program cover areas such as an admission of hopelessness, the need for ‘s guidance from an individual’s own understanding of God, and inventory of an individuals own shortcomings, and a willingness to share this inventory with another human being.
An alcohol treatment center will normally be supportive and encouraging of attendance at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, both whilst the client is resident in treatment and once they have left and living back home.
An alcohol treatment center will see attendance at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous as an integral part of its after-care and indirect alumni program.