Staying clean after rehab is over – staying stopped just for today
Admission to an alcohol and drug rehab is a difficult and painful process, and often a very confusing one, as it stirs both negative and positive emotions. The experience is usually accompanied by shame, guilt and fear, but also relief. The relief is felt because the client no longer has to lie to loved ones, friends, colleagues and others, or worry constantly where their next hit will come from. However, what exactly does life after an alcohol and drug treatment facility promise?

Treatment is available in Primary Care, Extended Primary Care, Secondary Care and Tertiary Care, each being a little less contained than the previous, with Primary Care being very contained and Tertiary Care being relaxed. Different clients leave the treatment cycle at different stages. Some may only complete four weeks in a Primary Care rehab due to financial constraints or work obligations, and some clients remain in the treatment cycle for over a year, completing Primary, Secondary and Tertiary care. The success rate of clients who remain in treatment for three or more months has been found to be far greater than those who complete the minimum stay necessary.

Clients who transfer from a Primary Care Centre through Secondary and Tertiary Care have an even better chance of remaining abstinent from addictive behaviours. This is mainly because they have received appropriate counselling and time to process their addiction, and they have been slowly re-integrated into society and able to return daily to a safe base.

Addiction is a disease
Rehabs that offer the Minnesota method of counselling believe that addiction is an incurable and progressive disease, and offer clients a Twelve Step programme for continued recovery.

The disease of addiction can only be arrested and managed by remaining abstinent from all addictions and by following a daily programme of recovery. No amount of clean time or experience in recovery will give an addict the ability to control their addiction due to the disease being incurable and progressive. A frightening truth is that cross-addiction – for example, an alcoholic abstaining from drinking, but then bingeing on food uncontrollably instead – will often lead addicts back to relapsing on their drug or addiction of choice, and using as chronically as they did previously.

The Twelve Steps are the same steps used at various addiction meetings. Many different fellowships dealing with addictive behaviours such as drugs, sex, gambling and eating disorders exist. A fellowship is a term used to describe the members of a Twelve Step programme.

South Africa has growing fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Eating Disorders Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. These fellowships not only provide a strong support structure and a new network of friends, but also a daily programme of recovery to assist an addict in coping with day-to-day life. Membership to these fellowships is free – they are not monitored and are fully self-supporting.

These fellowships have absolutely no affiliation with any rehabilitation centres, but many drug and alcohol rehabs send their clients to meetings as these fellowships are crucial in remaining abstinent. Stopping drug use is difficult. Staying stopped, however, is the true challenge.

What a Twelve Step programme offers
A Twelve Step programme offers recovery meetings with fellow addicts, Step work (written work to guide an addict through the process of ‘working’ the Twelve Steps) and literature concerning the Steps and the recovery programme. Members are also encouraged to participate in service and take on some responsibility within a Twelve Step fellowship, seek the advice of a sponsor and their experience with the Twelve Steps, and explore a spiritual way of life under the guidance of a Higher Power.

Using the Twelve Steps and the spiritual principles that the programme encompasses will help an addict to remain abstinent. A healthy and self-nurturing lifestyle will also help. Those addicts that ensure that they eat healthily, sleep well, participate in regular exercise and have clean fun, as well as participate in a Twelve Step programme, will begin to enjoy a greater freedom from their addiction.

Many addicts are afraid to enter a treatment facility, as they fear having to face what they are running away from when they use addictive behaviours to escape. Life will always present times of difficulty, yet it is only addicts who cope with uncomfortable feelings by continuously abusing their bodies. Recovery does not need to be a prison sentence as many using addicts worry it may be. The prison sentence is addiction to drugs, not recovery.

Recovery can be a happy, rewarding and fulfilling way of life. Negative occurrences are bound to happen to everybody, and the Twelve Steps can help any addict remain abstinent through tough times. It is always the first drink or drug that leads an addict down the road of addiction once again. If an addict is working a programme, they will have the strength to stay away from the first drink or drug, and will maintain faith in their recovery.

An addict’s life will become normal once again, the longer they remain abstinent and work on their problems. They will be able to lead a normal life of working, having fun and establishing romantic and platonic relationships. When they have the Twelve Steps as the foundation of that life, and they continue to work the steps, they will be able to enjoy life to its full.

Find out more about a Twelve Step recovery programme and how it can help an addict after time in an alcohol and drug rehab.