30 Day Rehab vs Extended Rehab Programs

Q: “I Want a 30 Day Rehab Program. Do you offer that?”

This is part of a correspondence with a potential guest wanting a 30 day rehab program. While a 30 day rehab program may be more palatable, it is not nearly as effective as a longer program. Read our actual email response:

A:

Congratulations on reaching out for help. Addiction, when untreated, always gets worse. Seeking help is such an important first step.

You describe being able to stop your drug use for days or weeks at a time, but always end up going back and starting again. Staying stopped, for good, is what we will help you with. Your experience shows that you are able to safely stop your use of methamphetamine, heroin, or other opiates. Uncomfortable yes, but not life-threatening.

45–90 Days Rather Than 30 Day Rehab

We offer programs of 45, 70 or 90 days. You asked about a 30 day rehab. We do not offer a 30 day rehab program because it is significantly less effective. Consider that the first week is spent in a bit of a fog, People are settling in, continuing to physically detox and starting to feel safe enough to get a little bit real. The new routine becomes, well, routine.

Between the 2 and 3 weeks usually, resistance arrives. Generally, people will ‘lose’ a few days by focusing on why they don’t need recovery. Most people have been stuffing anger for decades, and this is the time anger usually surfaces. Due to this surfacing and misplaced anger, there will often be an attempt at derailment.

Getting Ready For After Treatment

In the 4th week of a 4-week program, the focus turns to returning home. There is an aftercare plan to make and reintegration with family to face. If the plan is to go back to the same environment in which you got sick, there will be a lot of provisioning. Other options to explore are sober living residences.

Recovery is an exponential experience. It is not linear. 2 weeks more might not seem like much of a difference, but the difference is actually immense. Without exception, the longer time a person spends in primary treatment the higher their odds of long-term recovery. Witness the sad truth of the current opioid epidemic. Overdoses rates are spectacular because addiction is a fatal disease.

It is not an easy process to recover. People who are successful in long term recovery do whatever it takes. They increase every odd they can, on a daily basis, to stay clean and sober. It is not something that you can learn from a book or a lecture. Hence recovery requires a complete psychic change of mind and spirit. Recovery behaviors take practice and counsel.

The Cost of Active Addiction

Consider the amount of money you spend on drugs, including nicotine, on lost work production, on legal fees, on physical ailments. Put this ever increasing cost against the cost of a 45-day treatment. Then add the emotional cost for your family. Imagine the difference between really being there as a father for your children in body, mind, and spirit vs counting the minutes before the next dose of whatever drug you are craving. You will also be role-modeling for your family that you are willing to go to any lengths to recover.

You are not getting sober for your family, but they will benefit. Your family sounds very supportive and encouraging for you to get treatment. Imagine them trusting you to be responsible and present with your children. Put as much energy into this recovery as you have put into your addiction. Most noteworthy is that with this attitude, people do recover.

Consider the Disadvantage of a 30 Day Rehab Program

You have by now gotten a sense of who we are and why we offer the program durations we do. We will not take the ‘easy route’ of allowing people to keep smoking or take the short cut of a 4-week program. The individual care, compassion, and concern we offer should come through in our interactions. We go to any lengths to offer our guests their very very best chance of recovery, even if it includes unpopular challenges.

Once you make your decision, please let us know and we will take the next step. Keep moving forward because addiction will be working overtime right now to convince you that you don’t need help.

Respectfully,

The Serenity Vista Team