Are you drinking too much and do you want to stop? Or do you care about someone with an alcohol problem? Do you wish they would get help to get it sorted? Is alcohol rehab treatment an option you are considering?
Residential alcohol rehab is expensive
You will almost certainly be concerned as to whether or not alcohol rehab will work. It will not take long for you to become aware that you are unlikely to get help from the NHS and will need to pay for private alcohol addiction treatment. This is likely to cost around £10,000 (a little under this at The Haynes Clinic). It is a considerable sum and therefore, for many people, there is an added concern that the treatment must work as, financially, it is a once only option.
How do you get someone to agree to go into rehab?
Most people with an alcohol problem will resist going to residential alcohol addiction rehab for as long as they possibly can. They will promise time and again to cut down or stop – and time and again break those promises. They will say that they will go to counselling – or Alcoholics Anonymous – but still carry on drinking. In reality, they will only be doing these things to ‘tick a box’ or get people who are nagging them about their drinking ‘off their back’. They may even be telling you they are going to an AA meeting but not actually going – instead going off for a nifty drink while you think they are at an AA meeting.
To some extent, there is nothing you can do to get them to accept help. They need to be ‘at rock bottom’ in order to agree to go to alcohol rehab as it is a daunting commitment. As someone who cares for an alcoholic, you can help them to get to this point by not enabling their drinking in any way. That said, you cannot stop them drinking, however much you try – they will usually find a way to get alcohol even if you try to deprive them of access to money, for example.
Although you cannot stop them drinking, you can decide what behaviour you are prepared to tolerate. You may decide that they have to leave your home – or, if it is not your property, you may decide that you will leave. These are tough but sometimes necessary decisions. Some alcoholics have to lose everything before they are ready to stop. Some sadly do lose absolutely everything, ending with them losing their lives. It is a killer illness.
No treatment is likely to work if the individual is not ready to stop drinking.
A thorough addiction treatment programme and good therapy is essential
Of course, it is important that the therapy and counselling is appropriate for the addiction side of things and that there is a thorough programme, but if the individual is resistant then the chances of this being effective are just about zero. It is possible to get someone to change their minds in terms of getting them from a position of not wanting to stop through to being ready to stop during treatment, but this takes a lot of energy and valuable treatment time. Sadly, it is not an uncommon part of the treatment process, as few people come in entirely ready to stop drinking. It takes a lot of work from the counselling team, aided often by background information from the family, to break through the denial. Sometimes the individual comes in for treatment desperate for help – but as soon as they feel physically better, they start to go back to their denial and old way of thinking, that they are OK and can control their drinking.
This means that the counselling can be tough and challenging – to break through the lies the alcoholics tell us (sometimes not even realising that they are lying as they are even convincing themselves that lies are truths).
The Twelve Step Programme
The Twelve Step Programme has proven success in getting alcoholics well and is probably the most successful treatment for alcoholism in the world. However, many alcoholics are resistant to the Twelve Step Programme which was developed by the founders of AA. They will describe it as a religious programme in order to justify their resistance.
In fact it is not a religious programme at all – though it is a spiritual one. Most alcoholics are physically and mentally depleted when they decide they need help. Spiritually they are at a low ebb too. An example would be feeling like they are existing, not living, feeling that they would rather die than carry on with the same feelings every day. We need to be spiritually uplifted and the 12 Step Programme can help with this.
So does alcohol rehab work?
Yes it does
- If the individual is really ready to stop drinking (or becomes so during treatment)
- If they are challenged around all their denial including what they have done and how it has affected them and their loved ones; and what could happen if they continue along the path of drinking towards losing everything
- If they are open to new ways of thinking and change in their lives, including the 12 Step Programme
- If they are willing to deal with the past and old resentments
- If they are willing to carry on working on their recovery as a lifelong commitment
There are hundreds of thousands of us living sober and full lives today who can testify to the fact that alcohol rehab works