Author: Jim Sugel

Does Insurance Pay for Couples Drug Rehab?

a lovely couple in treatment at a drug and alcohol rehab center in riverside california

Does Insurance Pay for Couples Drug Rehab?

If you and your partner are struggling with substance abuse, rehab is an important step in recovery. Rehabilitation or substance abuse treatment services use therapy, counseling, and complementary skills like emotional management, building coping skills, stress management, and building healthy routines to help people overcome not just their substance abuse but also the underlying problems that resulted in it in the first place. If you’re with a partner who also has problems, getting couples drug rehab means you go together and often receive relationship and family therapy alongside drug addiction treatment to ensure you can rebuild your relationship on a healthy basis.

At the same time, drug addiction treatment is expensive. You want your insurance to pay for as much of it as-is possible. The question is, does your insurance pay for couple’s drug rehab? The answer is; that depends. We’ll go over the factors involved and how you can work to ensure you’re getting coverage for your program of choice – and what you need to do to ensure you get that coverage to begin with.

Your Insurance Covers Rehab

Your insurance plan is required to cover drug and alcohol abuse treatment. That’s the law under the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare). You are legally entitled to rehabilitation or substance abuse treatment care under Federal law. This means that your insurance plan covers rehab. However, coverage offered can vary significantly per plan.

The good news is that, no matter what, you’ll get some coverage for your drug rehab. If you take a quick look at your plan, you’ll also see roughly what is covered. Usually you can expect 40-90% coverage depending on plan, although many providers have caps and custom options for inpatient treatment. Increasingly, insurance plans are rolling rehab under general clinic visits or specialty care, which means it might not always be straightforward to find rehab or substance abuse treatment on your plan. If you’re not sure, you can always call your provider for straightforward answers. That will also help you figure out if you have to go through a provider-sponsored treatment plan or assessment before you can get help – as some plans do require this.

What Your Insurance Plan(s) Cover

Insurance plans cover different things depending on the plan. Often, that’s equitable to the physical health coverage you have. For example, with a bronze plan you can normally expect to cover about 60% of total costs yourself and with a platinum plan that drops down to about 10% of total costs. That should remain roughly equivalent no matter what kind of treatment you’re looking for. Therefore, many insurance plans won’t care too much what kind of treatment you start, providing you pay the associated costs.

You’ll want to look at:

What type of treatment is covered. E.g., inpatient or outpatient? Some plans require you complete an outpatient program before it will pay for an inpatient program
Some plans have deductibles per day some plans have deductibles per treatment type
Maximum coverage
Maximum covered
If deductibles change for inpatient vs outpatient care

For example, if you have a bronze plan, chances are very high that your insurance plan will attempt to cover the bare minimum. This means you might not get coverage for extras like couples’ rehab, unless that’s explicitly incorporated into mental health treatment and coverage.

You’ll also want to check whether:

You both have the same insurance plan. If you’re both on the same plan, it will be easier to align treatment and get joint coverage. If you’re not, it may be much harder to do so.
If you have different plans, your providers may work with a different network, which means it will be basically impossible to both get coverage from the same organization
Couples rehab may be treated as “joint” therapy or as individual therapy for two people and the difference will matter a lot depending on your rehab program

Essentially, if you have to align two separate insurance plans, you may have more trouble getting insurance coverage. However, if you’re on a family plan together, it may be much easier.

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What Your Doctor(s) Recommend

It’s always important to start out any visit to rehab with a trip to your doctor. This is important because you’ll need a doctor’s recommendation into treatment in order to get coverage for your rehab at all. Here, you’ll also want your doctor to specifically recommend couples rehab to you. This will greatly increase your chances that the rehab center covers the treatment without making a fuss.

Research why you want to go to couples’ rehab, what are the benefits, what do you get out of it over individual treatment
Check if treatment is broken down into rehab + mental health treatment or listed as one treatment. In most cases, with deductibles, a single treatment session is better. However, splitting them may make it easier to get coverage if you have a basic plan

In most cases, if you can present your doctor with a case as to why you want couples’ rehab, your doctor will be more than happy to recommend it. Those reasons can be as simple as:

We want to learn how to support each other in staying clean and sober
We want to undo the harm of substance abuse on our relationship and that means getting help together and getting family therapy alongside substance abuse treatment
It’s important that we have perspective on the treatment the other has received so that we can live with and work with that in a healthy way after treatment

Essentially, there are plenty of reasons why couples drug rehab can be beneficial over both of you going to separate programs or even both of you going to the same program with no extra support for couples. Talking to your consultant about it and then taking that discussion to your doctor can mean you very easily get a recommendation into that treatment from your doctor. That’s also important because, without that recommendation, your insurance may not offer coverage.

Will Everything Be Covered?

Almost no insurance provider will cover every part of rehab. If you’re going to an inpatient program, you can expect higher deductibles, limits on coverage, and reduced coverage. If you’re going to an outpatient program, you can expect relatively low deductibles and copays. However, in most cases, you can expect a maximum coverage of about 90% even with the best plans. Basic plans usually won’t cover more than about 40% of your treatment – although that does vary quite a bit. The best option is to look at your plan, see what it covers, and figure out what your best option is within your insurance plan and budget.

Confronting your mutual substance abuse can be difficult. Sharing the burden, learning how to be better together, and learning how to support each other in that can be a powerful part of recovery. Getting couples rehab can very much be the right choice for many of us. Hopefully, you can easily get that treatment without worrying too much about what your insurance provider covers. However, the fastest and easiest solution is always to call your insurance provider, ask what their options are, and take steps from there. Chances are very high that a significant portion of your couples therapy will be covered by your insurance. Good luck getting treatment.

Holistic Ways to Get to Sleep in Recovery Without Drugs

Holistic Ways to Get to Sleep in Recovery Without Drugs

Today, an estimated 48.7 million Americans aged 12 or older have a substance abuse problem or “addiction”. Further studies show that almost 1 in 10 Americans is in substance abuse recovery at any given time, even if it’s part of quitting drug or alcohol abuse themselves rather than seeking out treatment. For many of us, substance abuse recovery means significant problems with sleep. In fact, sleep disturbances including insomnia are often seen as a symptom of addiction, with many patients continuing to experience problems sleeping long after quitting.

While many people can benefit from sleeping pills and medicinal aids to get to sleep, most people struggling with substance abuse do not want to take on the risk. Sleeping pills are very often highly addictive and having a substance use disorder in remission puts you in the high-risk category for abuse and dependence on the pills. This means that for most people in recovery, looking into non-medical ways to improve sleep is critical to maintaining recovery.

Talk to Your Doctor

It’s important to keep in mind that you should always talk to your doctor about your mental health decisions and interventions. Your doctor may also be able to help you get into programs that help you with your goals of improving sleep without medicine. For example, they may refer you to treatment or therapy, they may help you get into free exercise or yoga programs, they might get you into support groups where you can talk to others and learn how others are handling similar issues. Most importantly, they can help you to track the issue over time, can help you to assess the severity of the problem, and can help you to respond appropriately to it so you can act if things start to get worse than you can manage on your own. Sleep deprivation does increase stress which does mean you’ll be at higher risk of relapse, so it’s important to balance your needs and make sure you’re getting the help you need.

Establish a Routine

Most of us have heard the adage that we should get up and go to bed at about the same time every day as much as possible. Why is that? If you have a bedtime routine, your body will be more prepared for sleep when you go to bed than if you don’t. For example, after getting into bed at the same time every day for 2 years, you’ll find that you have a lot easier time falling asleep at that time than you would if you went to bed at random times. Unfortunately, it takes a long time.

Routines are important for most people because once you adapt, you’ll have a rhythm to fall back to. Here, you want a rhythm where you:

Have a loosely defined bedtime. E.g., in bed by 10 PM most days
Have a loosely defined wakeup time: E.g., out of bed at 6 AM
Do the same things before bed to prepare yourself for bed. E.g., close the curtains, clean up a bit, read for half an hour, move to bed.

Having these kinds of rhythms will help, even if it can take a long time for that to happen. It’s also important to take 30-60 minutes out of your day as part of “wind down”, which means taking time to prepare for bed. Many people use this time to slowly set up clothing for the next day, to do small cleanup rituals, to water plants, or to read. Others prefer tasks like meditation that aren’t engaging, because the more you engage your brain, the more likely it is to keep you awake, especially at first. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to do so the first few times you do it, so you’ll have to be prepared for that. Here, you’ll want to pick simple things, stick to them, and keep doing the same stuff. In addition, having a wind down ritual means you’ll be stepping away from screens and input like TV which does keep you awake – meaning that eventually you’ll have a healthier ritual that will support you sleeping.

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Exercise During the Day

Exercise is well known for helping people wake up and stay alert but did you know it can also help you sleep? The reasons are two-fold. The first is that the more physically tired you are, the more likely you are to be able to fall asleep easily when you go to bed. That’s a simple matter of having physically tired muscles. That sensation of physical tiredness will help you sleep. The second is that exercise produces neurotransmitter and hormone production, both of which can help to reduce anxiety, can help to reduce racing thoughts, and can help to increase feelings of calm, which will also help you sleep. Exercise does boost energy for about 2-3 hours after you do it. This means it’s generally better to exercise either in the morning, so you’re alert and refreshed for work or immediately after work, so you’re alert and refreshed for your time off.

Watch What You Eat and Drink

Most people know that you shouldn’t have caffeine before bed. In fact, for most people, stopping caffeine intake at around 3 PM or sooner or limiting caffeinated beverages to 1-2 per day is a smart plan for quality of sleep.

At the same time, did you know that simple things like snacking, having a lot of sugar, or consuming carbs at night can also keep you awake? Some dieticians actually suggest moving your biggest meal to the middle of the day, so you have your largest source of energy at a point in time when you’ll actually use it. Then, you can switch to a smaller meal later in the day, so you have less energy by the time you want to go to bed.

Make Sure You’re Awake Enough During the Day

Most of us are aware of the phenomenon where we go through the day in a tired haze and then suddenly get home and go to bed and are awake. Preventing this will help you sleep better. Here, you can use a series of techniques to help you be more awake during the day so you are more tired by the time you go to bed.

Bright light is one of the most important. Here, you make sure you have bright light in your morning routine and your home environment. That could mean going outside to have your morning cup of coffee. It can also mean making sure the lighting in your office or workspace is bright and full spectrum.

You’ll also want to use tactics like eating a good meal early so you have more energy, getting a small amount of exercise in as early as you can (E.g., take a 20-minute walk to start your day) and then paying attention to where you have energy dips and using walks or other strategies to compensate. The more you stay awake during the day, the more you’ll be capable of falling asleep when you get to bed.

Get Treatment

It’s important to take sleeping problems to a medical professional so you can get therapy and treatment. Treatment might mean you get counseling and support while you wait for your body to heal from substance abuse. It might also mean getting therapy for anxiety and managing thoughts that keep you awake. It might also mean getting behavioral help with things like routine, going to bed on time, managing habits, exercising, etc.

Millions of Americans have sleep problems. They overlap so much with substance abuse and substance abuse recovery that insomnia is considered a symptom of substance abuse. Getting that under control and getting back to a healthy sleep routine can take time and you may eventually need temporary sleeping aids. Hopefully, you can make enough progress with holistic methods that you don’t need them, but it’s still important to talk to your doctor and get the ongoing support you need as you work to build routines and support for a good night’s sleep.

Does Insurance Pay for Pet Friendly Drug Rehab?

a female client sitting on a grass with her pet

Does Insurance Pay for Pet Friendly Drug Rehab?

If you’re struggling with a substance abuse disorder, worries like who’s going to take care of your pet can actually stop you from going. Today, an estimated 66% of American households have a pet, and if you’re alone, making sure your pet is taken care of is critical. Still, the vast majority of rehab centers don’t accept pets, citing distraction, extra care, and safety concerns like allergies and accidents. As a result, “pet friendly” rehabs or those that do take pets are often specialty institutions with kennels and pet daycare options that you have to pay for as part of treatment.

The big question is, will your insurance provider pay for it? And, if so, how much will they cover? The answer depends on your insurance plan, the rehab center, and what they are charging for, so figuring out the answer will require a bit more research on your part.

Your Insurance Covers Drug Rehab

Your insurance provider is required, by law, to cover drug rehab. The Affordable Care Act classifies substance use disorders as a temporary disability, meaning you are legally entitled to coverage. Your actual coverage amount will range from about 10% for some inpatient treatment to 90% for most outpatient treatment depending on your plan level. However, no matter your plan, your insurance provider is required by law to cover treatment.

Still, most place significant restrictions on care:

The provider has to be in-network/approved
You’ll need a recommendation into treatment
You may have to go through preliminary treatment such as an outpatient treatment program first
You may pay higher deductibles or copays for outpatient treatment
There may be caps on the coverage provided (E.g., some insurance providers cap coverage at about $25,000)

So, your insurance provider will always cover rehab but how much they cover and what specific institutions are covered can vary a great deal.

What Kind of Treatment Are You Going To?

If you’re going to outpatient treatment it’s almost always going to be easy to get coverage for your pets. If you’re going to inpatient treatment, you’re probably going to have a harder time getting coverage to begin with. For example, most insurance providers will cover outpatient treatment to the extent of regular mental healthcare. You might have a deductible per day/per visit or a deductible for the first visit. However, you’ll always get coverage and usually the standard provided by your plan with 40-90% depending on the level of Bronze-Platinum. That means that for outpatient treatment, coverage is normally relatively predictable.

If you’re opting for inpatient treatment, coverage is less clear. For example, some insurance providers will cover 40-90% of treatment costs minus significant deductibles and co-pays. For example, you might have a $200 per day copay. You might also have a 50% copay. These plans will typically all cover plans with pet care or pet friendly arrangements – but it does mean that the more your treatment costs, the more you’ll pay for it.

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What Pet Services Are Provided?

“Pet friendly” drug rehab can translate into a wider range of services. For example, your pet friendly rehab can include:

Pet daycare facilities like kennels and people to watch pets
Pets allowed in rooms
Pets incorporated into treatment and therapy
A mix of the above

So, pets allowed in rooms will normally come with a deposit or surcharge, much like hotels. This means you’ll pay a fee to cover any damage your pet might do in the space and can then bring your pet. Your insurance will almost never cover this fee as it’s not related to mental healthcare at all.

If you’re paying for pet care facilities that aren’t included as part of the base service, you’ll also expect to pay for that out of pocket. However, pet care will typically cost about the same as you would pay for having your pet in a kennel at home – which means you’ll pay about the same while having access to your pet during treatment.

Finally, if your pet is incorporated into treatment, you might get coverage from your insurance provider. Pet therapy and animal-assisted therapy are increasingly common – although this might require trained animals, it more often incorporates taking care of and bonding with an animal as part of the treatment. There’s no reason why that can’t be your own pet.

Here, it’s also important to pay attention to what’s offered as part of a pet friendly rehab. For example, if your rehab is only offering a kennel service, you might want to check if you’re allowed to see your pet at all. After all, some people might have allergies, your pet will have to be checked to ensure they can safely socialize with other patients, etc. Those create risks for other patients and for your pet.

What is Your Doctor’s Recommendation?

It’s important to start out your search for a pet friendly drug rehab by talking to your doctor. Here, you’ll want to discuss your reasons for wanting to take your pet with you, lack of pet care as an obstacle to getting treatment, and any emotional or support benefits you get from having a pet. The more strongly your doctor recommends you to a treatment center offering pet care, the more your insurance provider is going to be obligated to offer some coverage for the pet care as well. In addition, you’ll always need the recommendation to treatment to get care at all.

Here, it’s often a good idea to look at your provider’s network and figure out which treatment centers (if any) are in-network, so you have specific options to bring to your doctor before you start the discussion. And, of course, that discussion will almost always start with whether you need treatment at all – but chances are at this point you’ve already had that discussion.

Talking to Your Insurance Provider

The final say on whether your insurance provider covers pet friendly drug rehab is always going to come down to the provider. For example, most providers require that rehab institutions be:

Part of their network. Many plans simply do not offer coverage for out of network facilities. However, many do, so check your plan construction to be sure
A doctor’s recommendation to the facility. Most insurance providers want your doctor to send them a request for treatment and to refer you to that facility. You’ll always have to talk to your doctor.

You’ll also want to call your insurance provider to ask what coverage options are, what extra services are covered, and what the specific rules are. You might find your provider has a whole list of extra services like pet care that are partially covered. You might also find they don’t much care what’s included – so long as you stay within caps and pay everything over that. However, calling and understanding the rates and what the rules are will help you a great deal.

Eventually, finding a pet friendly drug treatment center can make it more accessible for you to get the treatment you need. Not having to worry about a pet means you’ll be better able to focus on treatment. Having the company of a pet can offer a lot of support as well. And, treatment centers are increasingly offering pet care and facilities, so you have more options than ever before.

Does Cannabis Really Help with Hangovers?

If you drink often enough to deal with hangovers, you’ve probably heard all sorts of tips on how to get rid of them. Often, from raw eggs to drinking more in the morning, those cures range from the gross to the outright dangerous. While it’s true that taking an ibuprofen in the morning will help with your headache, very few “hangover cures” are actually cures. Instead, you get, at best, a short-term solution with painkillers.

That’s also true with cannabis, which is touted as a way to help hangovers. You’ll see people all over Reddit claiming to cure hangovers with weed – and that unfortunately often means self-medicating with another drug while you should likely be at work and sober.

Of course, there are truths behind the concept that cannabis can help with hangovers. We’ll look at those, as well as what’s really going on, and give you the information you need to make the healthy decision.

First, What Causes a Hangover?

Most people are aware that a hangover is a result of drinking too much alcohol. But, you can get a hangover from any kind of drug abuse. In fact, hangovers are a combination of dehydration and congeners, or built-up chemicals left over from metabolizing drugs and alcohol. These alcohol byproducts stick around, sometimes for as long as two days, leading to fatigue, headache, light and sound sensitivity, and sometimes even nausea. And, the more you drink the worse they get.

What else? Alcohol and many other drugs are inflammatory, which means they cause inflammation across the body which can lead to muscle and joint pain and fatigue.

Finally, as a diuretic, drinking a lot of alcohol can mean you’re short on liquids and electrolytes.

That’s a lot to go wrong for a single night out.

Where does Cannabis Come In?

Cannabis isn’t completely useless at helping with hangovers. In fact, cannabis has been shown to be an anti-inflammatory drug – much like paracetamol, although it’s less good at being an anti-inflammatory than paracetamol or ibuprofen. However, this result is entirely linked to CBD and CBG and not to THC. This means that if you smoke a joint, you’re primarily taking in something that does not actively help with your hangover. What’s more, the anti-inflammatory effects of cannabis are comparable to those of garlic, meaning you could just eat a lot of garlic, or take an Aspirin.

What’s worse, is that cannabis can actually cause a hangover. If you take in enough THC< you’ll experience hangover effects. That normally means hangover, cotton mouth, and delays in functioning.

However, Cannabis can also help with nausea. In one study, THC was actually shown to have greater nausea reducing effects than CBD. 96.4% of users smoking joints reported reductions in nausea. This means that many people use cannabis to try to reduce or get rid of nausea after a hangover.

What else? Cannabis is a muscle relaxant, which means it can help you go back to sleep. That’s one of the reasons it’s not safe to use if you’re driving or going to work. However, it can help patients to relax and to go back to sleep, which can “help” with a hangover.

Finally, a lot of people get downright cranky when they have a hangover. If you want to improve your mood, there’s nothing like drugging yourself to get that result. Cannabis is calming and soothing, meaning that crankiness and irritability can disappear, making you much more tolerable to be around for your family, friends, and coworkers. It’s not a cure, and you’ll probably feel worse when it wears off, but it will prevent you from snapping at people.

Cannabis can also help with hangover in some unexpected ways. For example, if you have a variety that causes the munchies, it can encourage you to actually eat food, which will generally just help with the nausea. Once you get something in your stomach, the rest of the symptoms seem much less pressing, and cannabis can help you do that.

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Does Cannabis Cure Hangover?

Cannabis can temporarily relieve head pain and muscle pain by relieving inflammation. However, cannabis only tackles one of the causes of a hangover.

Hangovers are caused by:

Inflammation
Dehydration
Chemical buildup
Electrolyte imbalance

So, can you drink a Gatorade with your joint and be fine? Yes and no. Once you’re suffering from a hangover, taking steps to restore hydration and electrolyte levels are important for feeling better more quickly. You can also use anti-inflammatories to reduce head pain and improve focus if you’re struggling.

However, in most cases, unless you’re staying home, it’s not recommended to use something intoxicating, like weed. Instead, over the counter anti-inflammatories are cheap, safe, and effective.

Some people refer to cannabis as helping the headache, killing the nausea, and putting them back to sleep. Unfortunately, that might be effective on a case-by-case basis, but mixing cannabis with alcohol can cause worsening nausea in many users.

What Helps with a Hangover?

The best cure for a hangover is prevention. That means:

Eating before you start drinking
Drinking plenty of water alongside alcohol. A glass of water per 2 beers is a good rule of thumb.
Managing your alcohol intake

If it’s too late for that and you’re already suffering from a hangover while you read this article, try some pain relief options:

Take an over-the-counter pain reliever, like an aspirin or two
Drink a sports drink, like Gatorade, to rehydrate and rebalance electrolytes
Go for a walk and engage in light activity to help your body speed up metabolization
Eat something. Even if you start with fries or leftovers, getting food in your stomach will help with nausea.
If you have nausea, Pepto Bismal or a similar product can help a lot

If you don’t have to go to work, consider going back to sleep and sleeping it off, after you drink some water. If you do have to go to work, don’t forget your sunglasses, extra painkillers, and maybe an apology to your coworkers.

Eventually, if you’re drinking to the point of needing a hangover cure on the regular, chances are, you should be cutting down on alcohol consumption. There’s nothing wrong with drinking to the point of having a hangover a few times a year. And, if that’s the case, you can try self-medicating with cannabis the morning after to see if it helps. It will mostly help you relax and go back to sleep and you’re probably better off with Aspirin. But, you can safely try it. Just make sure you’re not still drunk, because cannabis and alcohol can mix badly together. However, if it’s more than a few times a year and you’re looking into hangover management as a normal part of your life, you probably want to step back, talk to your doctor, and look into getting help with managing alcohol consumption. Looking into regular drug use is not the solution and cannabis will result in further headache and hangover, especially if you’re stacking it on top of alcohol use.

What’s the verdict? Cannabis can help your hangover symptoms in a variety of ways. At the same time, it’s not a cure. It’s also dangerous to smoke before work or driving a vehicle. And, you can often get the same or better results by drinking something, getting some food, and going for a walk.

Supporting a Loved One Coming Home from Addiction Treatment

If your loved one is in treatment, they’re taking the steps to change their life for the better. Whether that’s after a long and hard battle to get them there or a sudden decision on their part doesn’t matter. Chances are, you want to support them and to provide the kind of help and support they need to continue to get better at home. That can mean taking steps to get therapy yourself, to change how you talk about and see substance use disorder, and to provide the kind of support they need.

It’s natural that you want to help. Chances are, offering support will also make a lot of difference to your loved one and how they feel coming out of addiction treatment. At the same time, they need to be in charge of their recovery and that means they set the pace. You can’t decide things for anyone, instead, you can only provide the emotional support they need to keep moving forward. Sometimes that will be difficult, especially if your loved one is struggling, appears to be backsliding, or is too caught up in dealing with their own problems to notice the help.

Addiction Treatment Doesn’t Mean Complete Recovery

In an ideal world, your loved one would go to treatment and come back completely recovered, with no more substance use disorder. Unfortunately, nothing ever works that way. Even if you were to send your loved one off for surgery for a broken bone, they’d still have months of recovery to follow – and you’d have to support them as they struggle through healing. Addiction treatment is the same, as you’ll have someone who’s been handed tools and a means of changing their life, but who still has to figure out how to apply that and if that application fits their life or if they need further support.

They will still experience cravings, they will have mood swings, they will revert to behaviors from addiction, they may even relapse a few times. The important thing is that they always stop and recognize negative things and get back on track, because healing is very rarely linear. If you need extra help with that, going to support groups like Al-Anon can actually help a great deal.

It’s also important to keep in mind that nothing is bringing the “old” them back. Most of us send our loved ones off to treatment expecting to get the “them” they were before addiction happened back. That’s never going to happen, and setting expectations for it will only lead to disappointment. You’re going to have to get to know your loved one as they are now, with the impact of everything that’s happened since they started using, with the impact of substances on their brain, and with the impacts of therapy and treatment. They won’t be the same as before – but chances are, you’ll like the new version of them just as much as you did the old one.

Understanding what Support Looks Like

It’s also important to consider what supporting your loved one actually looks like. That means stepping back and looking at which factor. In most cases, that means:

Having the ability to make informed decisions to support physical and emotional well-being
Having a stable and safe place to live
Having a meaningful and independent life with resources to participate in society
Having support, love, friendship, and family through relationships and social networks

You can often help with that in several ways. For example, you can help by listening, by providing a stable place to live, by offering respect, and by continuing to engage with them even when they are struggling. Support can look different depending on your relationship and for example, will take dramatically different forms depending on whether your loved one is living with you or not after treatment.

Committing to Healing Relationships

It’s important to keep in mind that substance use disorders often very significantly damage relationships. Often, you will build patterns of negative behavior and responses that can carry over, even after your loved one is in recovery. This means you may have to deal with your own negative emotions and being bitter, angry, or disappointed. Your loved one is not going to tackle those right away and may not even realize it has to be done. Putting the focus on their recovery first and working to build a relationship so you have the grounds to talk about the past is an important part of commitment.

It’s not about you, their focus on their recovery should be the most important thing for the first months out of recovery
It’s critical to set healthy boundaries and to say no when you cannot or do not want to do something or be involved with it
Setting guidelines on stepping out of situations where either of you is behaving or responding in a negative fashion is important.
Deciding to actively acknowledge and work around past behavior and patterns will be important, especially if you find yourself easily fighting, dismissing each other, etc.

Setting good boundaries can also help you to ensure that you behave in a healthy manner around your loved one. E.g., by ensuring that you aren’t enabling them or pushing them back into a pattern of substance abuse.

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Create a Safe and Welcoming Environment

It’s important that you take steps to create a safe and welcoming environment for your loved one. That means:

Practicing acceptance of who they are now, with all faults and problems
Accepting that they aren’t recovered and are instead in recovery
Making space for mental health problems
Accepting that they will not be fixing your relationship right away
Accepting that substance use disorders are a behavioral disorder or an illness and not a personal choice

It also means taking steps to make your loved one feel like they are accepted, welcome, and wanted. That means:

Treating your loved one like a member of the family even when they can’t contribute to the family
Involve them in plans, events, etc.
Plan around their obligations and needs. E.g., having parties that are alcohol-free, taking their therapy or 12-step obligations into account when making plans, etc. Simple things like going “We can’t go out to dinner at Thursday at 5 PM because X has their 12-step meeting then, why don’t we do it Wednesday instead?” can make a lot of difference to people feeling like their needs are being taken into account.

A history of substance use disorder can mean there’s a history of avoidance, negative emotions, and not including people in plans. Changing that is one of the easiest ways to show that you accept they are trying and that they are part of the family.

Talk and Listen

Going into recovery and treatment often means that you’re basing your entire life around treatment. At the same time, your loved one is changing as a person. They’re learning new things, picking up new skills, picking up new hobbies, and making new friends. They’re in a state of enforced change and that can be difficult and traumatic. Making space to talk about that, about what they are learning, about what they are doing, about life goals, etc., is more important than talking about addiction, cravings, and getting better. Why? It makes your loved one feel supported, like you see that they are trying, and that you acknowledge they are a person beyond their substance use disorder and recovery from it.

Seek Out Family Therapy

In many cases, it’s going to be important to go to therapy and treatment yourself. That’s either by yourself or with your loved one. Family therapy can help you to improve your relationships, to undo old patterns, and to build new behavioral patterns with your loved one. It can also allow you to get support in figuring out how to be there for your loved one. That also often means having third-party insight into what your loved one is saying and what that means for you and for your family.

Family therapy can help you to work on healing relationships, to understand how your negative behavior patterns impact each other, and to see your relationship from their perspective as well as your own.

Building a Relationship

Moving forward from addiction means putting in a lot of work. It means accepting your loved one for who they are and as imperfect. It also means giving them autonomy, freedom, and privacy to make their own decisions. That means building trust and rebuilding a relationship based on who they are now. That can be difficult, especially if the past hasn’t given you the grounds to do so, but will give you a baseline to have a healthy and positive relationship with your loved one moving forward.

Rehab or addiction treatment gives your loved one the tools to move forward and to fix their life. It’s what they do with it as they leave rehab that counts. The most important thing you can do to support that is to make them feel loved, like part of the family, and like they are being seen for the effort they are putting in.

7 Characteristics of a Good Drug and Alcohol Rehab

mental health expert at a drug and alcohol rehab

7 Characteristics of a Good Drug and Alcohol Rehab

If you or a loved one is struggling with a substance use disorder, getting help and going to rehab is the best way to get started turning your life around. Unfortunately, even choosing a rehab center can be a challenge. In 2022, there were 17,353 registered substance use disorder treatment facilities in the United States. This means you’ll have to navigate a large number of options, look at different treatment methods, and put in work to find the treatment center that works for you.

Those facilities also vary considerably in treatment options, luxury, treatment type, and treatment delivery. For example, you can go to a simple outpatient program where you visit the clinic daily. You can also go to a high-end luxury resort that looks and feels like a vacation with therapy on top. There’s also a large range of options in between, which is the best fit for most people. Whatever you go to, the following 7 characteristics of a good drug and alcohol rehab are crucial for your treatment.

1. They Accept Your Insurance

Substance abuse treatment can be extremely expensive, especially if you’re going to an inpatient treatment facility. Having the surety that your program is covered by your insurance allows you to get the help you need without adding on extra financial stress. In addition, if your treatment facility accepts insurance, that means it’s offering medically recognized treatment, has gone through the process of being locally licensed and certified, and meets the standards for quality set by whatever region it is in.

Of course, that’s not always the case. Some insurance programs simply won’t cover inpatient care. Others require that you go to outpatient care first and only cover inpatient care if you relapse after an outpatient program. So, your rehab center not being covered by your insurance provider may be about policy rather than about the rehab facility being part of an established medical network. However, in general, it’s best to work with rehab centers that work with medical providers, that are part of your network, and that can share data and medical files to your doctor and vice-versa, so you get the best possible care.

2. The Facility and Staff are Licensed

It’s important to check who you are working with and who is providing treatment as part of your rehab program. For example, are you working with registered nurses for your detox program? Are counselors licensed? Is there a psychologist or psychiatrist on the team? How much interaction will you have with those people?

Depending on the drug and alcohol rehab team, you’re likely to work with a mix of counselor, nurses, and doctors. You’ll want to see what staff are like and how qualified they. The best programs largely rely on skilled specialist counselors with therapists and doctors to back up those programs, so you get a mix of treatment.

3. The Facility Offers Personalized Treatment

Whether it’s called personalization, trauma-informed care, or a program that’s adjusted to your needs as you move through it, you want to look for personalization. This means that the facility adapts your treatment to you and your needs. This is important because many people going into addiction treatment struggle with unique problems like trauma, co-occurring mental health disorders, and behavioral problems. If you’re having trouble motivating yourself to believe in therapy, therapy should adapt to offer you a motivational program. If you’re struggling to commit to treatment because you’re feeling suicidal, therapy should adapt to address that first.

Personalized treatment means you get the care you need, when you need it, instead of being forced through a cookie-cutter program. That will improve your outcome and will ensure you get the support you need as you need it. However, it can also mean programs last much longer, as you might have to delay treatment to address other symptoms or slow down treatment to your pace.

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4. Low Patient to Staff Ratios

The more one-on-one time you get with staff and counselors, the more value you’ll get from the treatment center. Of course, you also benefit a great deal from interacting with your peers and from group therapy. That’s why basically every treatment option incorporates group therapy as a baseline. It’s good for you to see and experience how others are going through and have gone through addiction, it’s good for you to understand your peers, and it’s good for you to be able to see which aspects of your personality and behavior are you and which are “just” addiction. At the same time, the best drug and alcohol rehab centers maintain a low staff to patient ratio.

In general, ratings are:

14+ patients per staff member – High
4-14 patients per staff member – Average
4 or less patients per staff member – Low

It’s also important to keep in mind that the lower staff to patient ratios are, the more you’ll pay for treatment. However, you’ll also get more direct attention, more personalization, and more insight into your own personal needs. And, that can be extremely valuable, whether you’re going to an inpatient or an outpatient program.

5. Diverse Treatment Options

Most people are aware that there are dozens of ways to treat substance use disorders. Here, you want to look for a program that uses multiple treatment options so that they can adapt your treatment and your program to your needs. For example, if your treatment center is only offering counseling, it might not be a great resource for you.

A good mix of treatment options looks like:

Diverse behavioral therapies like CBT, DBT, and EMDR
Counseling
Group Therapy
Motivational Therapies like ACT
Complementary therapies like music therapy, nutritional therapy
Exercise and fitness programs

Essentially, you want a program that uses a mix of resources, so it can offer you what you need, when you need it.

6. Aftercare Programs

The dream is that you go through rehab and you walk out the other side, a new person, ready to recover. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Most people end up needing aftercare including ongoing therapy and counseling. Sometimes that’s to give you the support you need to stay clean and sober. In other cases, it’s to give you the support you need to go back to recovery after a relapse. However, any good rehab program will realize that you need this aftercare. Aftercare can mean sober homes, ongoing support and counseling, telehealth support, fast-track readmission in case of a relapse, an outpatient program, checkups and key dates, etc. The important thing is that it’s there, that you discuss with your rehab center what you need and why, and that you have the tools to get that ongoing support.

7. Support for Co-occurring Disorders

More than half of all people with a substance use disorder also have a co-occurring mental health disorder. Many of those include disorders that require medication and treatment. You need to ensure that your facility has the tools to help you manage co-occurring disorders, to help you treat the symptoms of substance use disorders around mental health disorders, and that address how substance use disorders impact your vulnerability to substance abuse and to relapse.

There’s a lot that goes into choosing a drug and alcohol rehab program. Often, you should start by talking to your doctor, decide what you’re looking for, and then figure out where you’re looking for treatment. From there, it’s easier to narrow down treatment options – and you may find that there are only a few that meet the criteria you’re looking for. Hopefully, you can find a great rehab center that meets your needs and helps you take the next step towards recovery.