How Does Counseling Help Treat Drug Addiction?

How Does Counseling Help Treat Drug Addiction?

By: Rhea Rosier, Palm Partners Recovery Center

January 31st. 2012

Counseling helps treat drug addiction in multiple ways. Counseling is usually the core of every program that helps treat drug addiction.  Counseling helps treat drug addiction during a drug addiction program through the therapeutic approach of just “talking it out”. The trained counselors that are in charge of counseling to help treat drug addiction know that the use of drugs and alcohol were merely a symptom of the problem.

Counseling helps treat drug addiction by not only addressing the drug addiction or drinking but by also addressing the mental or behavioral disorders. These disorders can range from depression to eating disorders. A lot of times these mental health issues can cause an addict or alcoholic, struggling with drug addiction, to end up relapsing. A relapse is when an addict or alcoholic has been clean a certain amount of time and begins using again. Counseling helps treat drug addiction in this way and it is actually more than paramount in a person’s recovery.  Counseling helps treat drug addiction because a lot of the time the person struggling to stay clean is very unaware of themselves, what has caused them to use, and why they continue to use despite negative consequences. The counseling allows these same people to get an outside perspective in order to work on issues that may hold them back from achieving lifetime sobriety. Knowing everything you can about yourself and about your disease can really help in the journey that is recovery.

I’m going to be frank now and share some of my own experience. While self-knowledge can be given through counseling and this counseling can help treat drug addiction; self knowledge usually avails the true alcoholic or addict absolutely nothing.

Drug addicts and alcoholics suffer from a spiritual malady that even counseling can not help treat when it comes to their drug addiction. This spiritual malady, as I know from personal experience, can only be treated through 12-steps and then helping others. It is never a bad thing though to utilize counseling to help treat a drug addiction. Counseling is beneficial for anyone and we as alcoholics and addicts should take advantage of all the positive things that are handed to us through drug addiction programs. Counseling in order to help treat drug addiction has to consist of a lot of honesty on the alcoholic or addicts end, along with the willingness to change. Good counselors know that counseling to help treat drug addiction cant fix the problem for good, that the solution for these types of drinkers and users must have depth and weight.

For those of you who have worked a 12-step program you are hearing me use a lot of program talk right now. That is because I know what worked for me and while counseling made me a better person and that helped to treat my drug addiction; counseling infact did not keep me clean and sober every day for the past year. A spiritual solution for my spiritual malady is what has allowed me to stay sober. Counseling can help treat drug addiction in the sense of awareness though and by giving addicts and alcoholics tools on how to live life again once they stop using and drinking. It wont keep them from relapsing for good though. The only  thing I have found that will work in that respect is a 12-step program. That’s just my experience though. Take it as you will.

If you or someone you know wants and needs counseling to help treat their drug addiction please don’t hesitate to call 877-711-HOPE(4673) or go to www.palmpartners.com

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