Drug addiction treatment centers are residential facilities dedicated to treating addiction to drugs and/or alcohol. Drug addiction treatment centers can help with addiction to illegal drugs such as cocaine as well as addiction to prescription drugs such as OxyContin and Xanax.
Drug addiction treatment centers that are dedicated specifically to addiction treatment are a relatively new phenomenon – part of the evolution in the 20th century of our understanding of addiction as a disease. Before that, alcoholics and addicts who were not “managed” by family either became homeless, were put in jail, or were committed to psychiatric wards.
Modern research helped those in the medical field realize that addiction could not be stopped by simply piling on consequences. The addict needed therapy and a strategy for recovery that involved more than just will power. Over time, addiction treatment has become significantly more sophisticated. Treatment centers offer a wide variety of therapeutic methods to help those addicted to drugs detox, rebuild physical health, and begin the path of emotional and psychological repair.
One of the biggest shifts in perception about drug addiction, and hence, shifts in treatment focus, has been the movement away from a “moral” model of addiction to the “disease” model of addiction. It became clear to doctors treating alcoholism and other addictions that just asking people to hang in there and use will power simply didn’t work over the long run. The founding of Alcoholics Anonymous did give an indication that long-term recovery was possible with continued support and personal work. The early success of AA may have guided the early addiction treatment programs because it became clear that recovery was an ongoing process and had little to do with simple will power.
Today addiction treatment is highly sophisticated and may involved specialized treatments such as EEG Biofeedback and EMDR (a treatment for underlying trauma). The understanding that many people with addiction are self-medicating underlying problems has allowed treatment centers to develop much more effective approaches. If someone has chronic pain, depression, anxiety, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or other psychological issues, these must be addressed in treatment so that the addict does not simply start self-medicating again in the future.
The drug addiction treatment center of today gives those with addiction a much better chance of achieving long-term sobriety than they had in the past. As the approach to treatment has moved away from punitive and toward compassion and healing, more people have been given the opportunity to rebuild their lives and become productive, happy members of society.