Addiction is a complex disease. There are no simple solutions, such as telling people with substance abuse disorder to simply stop what they’re doing. People develop addictive behaviors for a variety of reasons, altering their brain chemistry as the disease takes hold.
Like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, this is a chronic condition. Although effective addiction treatment helps people control it, there is always the potential for relapse. Long-term success requires vigilance and resolve.
So, what is the most common treatment for addiction? The specifics will vary from person to person. But generally, a holistic approach grounded in psychotherapy and medications is the best course of inpatient and outpatient treatment.
What Does Psychotherapy Involve?
Psychotherapy is also referred to as “talk therapy.” It is designed to uncover root causes of substance use disorder. It delves into a person’s unhealthy emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that contribute to addiction.
One type of psychological intervention is cognitive behavioral therapy, which has proven to be an effective treatment for substance use disorder. This therapy focuses on the motivation of addicted people to willingly undergo treatment and adhere to it. It explores replacements for substance-use rewards and potential adaptive behaviors that help control abusive tendencies.
Cognitive behavioral therapy also helps limit relapse by helping people recognize situations that increase risk of resuming the abuse. That recognition is a first step. It’s followed by helping people identify ways to avoid or cope with situations that trigger drug abuse for them.
For example, patients may be triggered to use drugs in social situations with certain people. This type of therapy helps them understand why those situations may promote relapse. They may learn how to make better choices in threatening situations or the rewards of avoiding them entirely.
Talk therapy may occur in individual settings with a trained therapist. However, it’s also a technique used in group and family therapeutic sessions.
Families are a highly relevant dynamic in addiction. They can contribute to the root causes of why someone develops a drug addiction. They are also victims of the person with the substance abuse disorder. But at the end of the day, family may be one of the best support systems the abuser may have for long-term recovery.
Support groups are undeniably effective in addiction treatment, both in the short term and for the long haul. They provide a safe environment for substance abusers to talk to one another about common experiences and challenges to sobriety. The success of groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous is evidence of the value of this type of support.
How Are Medications Used to Treat Addiction?
Recovering from drug addiction isn’t just an ability to put mind over matter. Because drug abuse alters the chemicals in the brain, people may need pharmaceutical intervention to help bring them back into balance.
The brain’s reward center becomes addicted to the feelings of euphoria or sedation caused by substance use. It’s a primitive brain function that encourages recurrence of actions that release dopamine. Those include activities as basic as eating food, exercising, or listening to music. The addicted brain remembers the substances that make it feel good.
Effective addiction treatment will use medications to relieve physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms and normalize body chemistry. Moreover, by reducing cravings or reversing overdose, appropriate medications can save lives.
For example, naltrexone is a non-opioid, non-habit-forming medication used to treat opioid and alcohol addiction. It attaches to and blocks receptors to reduce cravings, which may help people from using again.
Other medications that have proven effective in the treatment of alcohol use disorder are acamprosate and disulfiram. For opioid use disorder, buprenorphine and methadone are commonly prescribed. And others, such as the FDA-approved naloxone and nalmefene, actually reverse opioid overdose, and in doing so, save lives.
Medication is also used in addiction treatment for people suffering from a co-occurring mental disorder. Disorders include such conditions as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or bi-polar disorder. These disorders may have led to the substance abuse or may be the result of the abuse. In either case, they must be treated along with the addiction itself.
Comprehensive Treatment Offers Hope
Addiction treatment isn’t for the fainthearted. Once substance abusers are addicted, they face a lifelong challenge of staying clean and sober.
Moreover, addiction treatment can’t be administered effectively from a psychological distance. Substance abusers must be willing to reveal often painful and frightening truths about their lives.
The hallmark of effective drug abuse rehabilitation isn’t just a discontinuation of drug abuse. It’s also designated by the improvement of abusers’ physical, mental, emotional, and social health and wellbeing. It’s helping people return to their families and friends, and to be productive members of society once again.
Facing the prospect of finding the right inpatient rehabilitation provider can be stressful. The lives of those entering rehab will be surrendering themselves for the time it takes to undergo treatment. But comprehensive psychotherapy and medication therapy are the keys to long-term success.
