Anyone entering a rehab who has had a problem with alcohol and/or drugs is at risk from withdrawal symptoms that could be extremely serious medically, potentially life-threatening. For this reason it is absolutely crucial that a rehab has qualified medical staff who are able to assess and monitor the withdrawal symptoms of the individual concerned and assess whether a medical detox is needed or not.
The majority of rehabs will have their own clinically qualified medical staff who are able to assess and perform and oversee any medical detox that may be needed. If a rehab is not qualified in this way, then it should have access to a local clinical facility who can either assess or perform a detox on behalf of the rehab.
The ability to assess whether an individual needs a detox that is medically supervised or not is actually crucial to the future well-being of the individual concerned. Many individuals do not need a supervised detox, but some do and it is crucial that the rehab is able to assess this adequately.
Some rehabs offer what they term an holistic detox, which is likely to be a significantly different process to a supervised medical detox that should be undertaken on admission to the rehab. The term holistic detox can mean different things and should be taken with a degree of caution. It sounds very appealing as a concept, and some rehabs exploit this sense of purification as a means of attracting people into the rehab in the first place.
Detox and Rehab
The majority of rehabs take an approach that an individual is essentially an addictive personality, whatever that means, and that they effectively can choose what drug they become addicted to. This is a controversial approach and not all people agree with it, but it does suit the majority of rehabs as it allows them much wider access to a potential client base that they can draw on.
What it also means is that some rehabs take this to an extreme where they say that any type of stimulant be it caffeine or nicotine or anything else is dangerous, and that the individual should refrain from all types of stimulant whilst in rehab.
This approach can verge on the extreme and be seen as a sort of purification process, and in this context is sometimes referred to as an holistic detox. The danger with this approach is that it misses out on focusing on one or two major problems such as alcoholism and drug addiction, and puts the individual in an extreme black-and-white situation. For many people this is simply too extreme and the process can fall down.