Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers are much more commonly thought of or referred to as a rehab or a treatment center, even if people don’t readily understand these terms are or what they mean. Most people have differing views of what a rehab is, ranging from a celebrity rehab to a fairly grim notion of what they might have seen or read many years previously about the process of detoxification and the nation of different types of sanitariums that were often referred to as rehabs.
Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers or rehabs are clinical settings designed to help an alcoholic focus on the reality of where their life has got to, in terms of their drinking and in terms of their behaviour and in terms of their alcoholism generally.
The focus of the clinical programs and treatment methods that will take place in rehab are likely to focus on a broad range of emotional issues that have probably been a major part of the make up of the alcoholic for most of their lives. There will be a broad range of different emotional issues, that will differ from person to person, a common one of which will be the sense of an overwhelming need to feel that the alcoholic belongs somewhere.
This need to belong is perhaps one of the most basic human needs there is, and it is a common voice of many an alcoholic once over who says that they spent most of their life feeling that they did not belong, that they did not fit in, that they felt that they were adopted (when they were not). Whilst all these expressions do not fully match the experience, the sentiment behind them is the important issue.
Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers
This vocalisation by the alcoholic that they do not feel they belong, or have ever felt that they belonged, is the expression of them feeling ill at ease with themselves internally. That their inner world is somehow out of control, is somehow disjointed or distorted.
Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers cannot hope to do any real therapeutic work that can seriously address this issue in a short period of time available to them whilst in rehab. There is likely to be a degree of what is thought of as traditional therapy or counselling, either on a one-to-one basis or in group therapy.
This is likely to open up some of the underlying issues. Perhaps one of the main benefits that the time spent in the rehab can bring to a client is that of validating their experience and their felt sense that they do not feel they fit in or belong anywhere. A drug and alcohol rehabilitation center that can achieve this will have gone a long way to helping an alcoholic begin the process of getting sober.