People looking for a Christian rehab normally have a fairly clear idea of what they mean by this term. There are a number of rehabs that call themselves Christian based rehabs and they have a markedly different approach to the majority of other residential clinical rehabs that exist. In this context a Christian rehab will be a residential facility, normally offering help people who have addictions to drugs or alcohol or other substances.
The length of stay in a Christian we have is normally advertised as being between six and nine months with an intensive daily programme of Bible reading, shared worship, Christian counselling and personal and group prayer. In addition there is unlikely to any involvement of any 12 step process such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, or any type of individual or group therapy that is not rooted in biblical terms or beliefs.
How successful this approach is is debatable, but the thinking and philosophy behind it is clearly advertised for being what it is. Essentially it is a belief that a fairly fundamentalist biblical approach can cure alcoholism and drug addiction in an environment where this is the only source of healing available.
Christian Rehab
Some people are looking for this type of approach and welcome it and enter a rehab on this basis. There is a word of caution that needs to be added however. A number of Christian rehabs are closely associated with huge Evangelical churches and it will be a condition of rehab that attendance at such churches and involvement with the church process is a mandatory part of the recovery process.
This can sometimes be quite cult like in its approach, given that people who have an addiction to alcohol or drugs are in a fairly vulnerable state, and their vulnerability is essentially used to commit them to these churches on a long-term basis.
The majority of rehabs that are not Christian based and do not call themselves Christian rehabs will nevertheless be very open to an individual’s quest for God and what that means to the individual, and for the individual’s freedom to explore and question their own spirituality in the context of their recovery from alcoholism.
The principles of Alcoholics Anonymous as embodied in the 12 step program are essentially spiritual principles, often described either a spiritual or therapeutic, but essentially designed to help individual find their own inner world and their own God within . For many people this is a better approach than a so-called Christian based rehab.