Like other chronic diseases, drug addiction can be successfully managed. Treatment allows people to counteract the powerful destructive drug addiction effects on the brain and behavior and regain control over people’s lives. The chronic nature of the disease means that relapse to drug abuse is not only possible, but likely, with symptom relapse rates similar to other well-characterized chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and asthma, which also include both behavioral and physiological components.
Unfortunately, when relapses occur, many consider the treatment a failure. This is not the case: successful drug addiction treatment usually requires ongoing assessment and modification accordingly, similar to the approach taken for other chronic illnesses. For an addicted person, drug abuse gaps do not indicate failure—rather, they indicate that treatment needs to be resumed or adjusted or that an alternative treatment is needed.
This is the conclusion made by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs along with VA North Texas Health Care System in their addiction treatment guide. It is published to address substance use disorders to health care professionals, the best rehab in Texas, family members, and other stakeholders who are trying to deal with many challenges faced by patients in need of substance abuse or drug addiction treatment.
Postdoctoral Fellowship Training Program 2023-2024 Training Year includes a big chapter about the ways of addiction treatment in the best rehab centers in Texas and The US in general, like medication, behavioral therapy, or a combination of the two.
Behavioral therapy offer strategies to deal with drug cravings, helps motivate people to start a long process of quitting drugs, provides ways of preventing relapse and avoiding drugs. Behavioral therapy is also successful in improving relationship and parenting skills, communication, and family dynamics.
Many treatment programs use both individual and group therapy. Group therapy can provide behavioral contingencies that promote abstinence and a drug-free lifestyle. Contingency management and cognitive-behavioral therapy were also included to group settings. However, especially in adolescents, there may also be a risk of unintended harmful effects of group treatment – sometimes group members (especially groups of highly delinquent youth) may increase drug use and thereby defeat the purpose of therapy. Thus, trained counselors must be aware of that and control such effects.
The mix of behavioral therapies and medications (when available) tend to be more effective than either approach alone due to their influence on different aspects of addiction. One more aspect is that drug addicts often suffer from other health problems (eg, depression, HIV), professional, legal, family, and social problems that must be addressed simultaneously. The best programs provide a combination of therapy and other services to meet individual patient needs.
Such psychoactive medications as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antianxiety agents, and antipsychotic medications, can be a critical part of the successful treatment when patients have co-occurring psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders (along with post-traumatic stress disorder), depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Moreover, the majority of people with severe addiction usually take multiple drugs and require treatment for all of the abused substances.
The goal of any substance abuse treatment is to return people’s productive functioning to their normal life: family, workplace, and society. According to studies that track individuals in long-term treatment, most people who start and successfully finish their treatment, not only stop using drugs, but also improve their social and psychological life, reduce their criminal activity. Methadone treatment, in particular, tends to increase behavioral therapy participation and reduce both substance abuse and criminal behavior.
Of course, in individual treatment outcomes, we should pay attention to the nature of the patient’s problems and the appropriateness of the treatment used to address those problems.
Substance abuse costs our the US more than $600 billion annually, and best rehab centers in Texas along with successful treatment can help reduce those costs. Treatment is also much cheaper than its alternatives, such as incarcerating addicts. For example, the average cost of a full year of methadone maintenance treatment in the best rehab facilities in Texas is approximately $4,700 per patient, while 1 full year of incarceration costs around $24,000 per person.
According to some modest estimates, every dollar invested in drug treatment programs yields between $4 and $7 in reductions in drug-related crime, criminal justice costs, and theft. When health care savings are included, the total savings can exceed the costs by a ratio of 12 to 1. Significant savings to the individual and society are also associated with less interpersonal conflict; higher productivity at the workplace; and fewer drug-related accidents, including overdoses and deaths.
In general, in the best drug rehab centers in Texas, for inpatient or outpatient treatment, participation of fewer than 90 days has limited efficacy, and significantly longer durations of treatment are recommended to maintain positive outcomes. 12 months is considered the minimum for methadone abstinence, and some opioid addicts continue to benefit from methadone abstinence for years.
Dropout is one of the major challenges facing treatment programs; therefore, motivational techniques that can retain patients will also improve outcomes. By treating addiction as a chronic disease and offering ongoing care and monitoring, programs can succeed, but this will often require multiple episodes of treatment and easily repeat patients who relapse.
