How to Find the Best Alcohol Rehab Centers Near Me

4 min read · 12 sections

How Will I Know I’ve Found The Best Alcohol Rehab program?

At the very least, alcohol rehab programs should provide medical detox, followed by therapy conducted by a licensed professional. The best programs will customize their treatment programs to meet your needs, and they will assist you long after the program is complete, so you can avoid relapse when you return to your community.

The recognition of an alcohol abuse disorder or addiction problem is a huge step for a person struggling with either issue.

Once this realization is made, the next steps can often seem challenging, confusing, and discouraging. One of these steps is beginning the process of finding a rehab program that is most likely to help the individual achieve and maintain recovery.

Knowing what to look for in the best alcohol rehab programs can help remove some of this confusion, making it easier to begin the process and find the program that offers the right methods, treatments, and tools to motivate and manage continued recovery for the person who is ready to enter rehab.

Why Rehab for Alcoholism?

Addiction Treatment Therapy OptionsStudies have shown that people who get professional help in treating their addictions are more likely to be able to maintain long-term recovery than those who try to handle it on their own. In fact, a study in the journal Addiction shows that this is overwhelmingly true – not only did 62 percent of people who had professional help in treating their addiction succeed in maintaining their recovery for three years, but another 60 percent of those who had made it three years avoided relapse up to 16 years after treatment.1

Another reason to select a professional rehab center is the fact that alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous, and even deadly. As demonstrated in a study from the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, more than 6 percent of people who were treated for alcohol withdrawal symptoms in the hospital died from those symptoms.2 Responses to withdrawal can include seizures and a condition called delirium tremens (DTs) that may result in death if professional medical treatment is not administered.

How to Find Alcohol Rehab Near You

Does Insurance Cover Rehab for Alcoholism?

Health insurance is frequently able to help you with the cost of rehab treatment. Find out instantly with our online form below. All information provided is confidential and your personal information is protected by HIPAA.

Residential Treatment for Alcoholism

The first thing to look for in an alcohol rehab center is inpatient or residential care. Experts agree that residential care provides the types of treatments and therapies most likely to help an individual struggling with addiction reach and maintain recovery.

Residential or inpatient programs provide an ability to focus fully on treatment that is not available through outpatient or mutual support group treatment programs. Each day, activities and therapies are offered that help build the tools the person can use to achieve recovery from alcoholism and maintain sobriety after treatment is complete.

Best Customized Alcohol Treatment

The best alcohol treatment centers provide customized, focused care that is designed to meet the specific needs of the individual rather than a generalized program that treats everyone the same. Individualized treatment is seen as the best way to encourage an individual to complete the rehab program and maintain recovery after treatment is complete.

Part of this is simply due to the fact that people need to be motivated to complete the program and continue the practices they have learned afterwards in order for the treatments to have a positive effect.

Psychological Treatment for Addiction

While medical detox addresses the physical aspect of addiction, psychological treatment is needed to understand and manage addictive behaviors. These therapies make it possible for a person recovering from alcoholism to recognize mental and emotional patterns that occur before an episode of drinking, enabling the person to formulate alternative responses and implement strategies that can help them avoid drinking alcohol.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of these therapeutic treatments. In this therapy, individuals learn to recognize and understand certain behaviors and analyze their potential response before they do it. This additional consideration can give them needed time to implement strategies and tools that they devise to help them change their behavior pattern. Individuals effectively reprogram their thought processes to lead them away from the decision to use alcohol in response to these situations, instead redirecting themselves to more positive behaviors.

A study in The American Journal of Psychiatry showed that CBT is not only effective during and immediately after treatment, but that it also is likely to result in a continued and even increasing capability to maintain recovery in the long-term after treatment is complete.4 Programs that use this type of research-backed psychological treatment tend to be those that prove more successful in extending recovery, compared with those that do not provide this type of training.

Other psychological treatment options that can augment a customized treatment program include:

  • Trauma-focused therapy for those who need it
  • Therapy to build relationship support structures and self-esteem through interpersonal therapy
  • Family therapy to encourage familial support
  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy, especially for co-occurring conditions, to support change in thought processes

Take Our Substance Abuse Self-Assessment

Take our free, 5-minute substance abuse self-assessment below if you think you or someone you love might be struggling with substance abuse. The evaluation consists of 11 yes or no questions that are intended to be used as an informational tool to assess the severity and probability of a substance use disorder. The test is free, confidential, and no personal information is needed to receive the result.

Treatment for Co-Occurring Disorders

Alcoholism often co-occurs with other psychological disorders; these conditions can either precede or result from the alcohol dependence. They are challenging because they may become interconnected with the addiction, making it difficult to treat one issue without also treating the other. In addition alcoholism can cause or be accompanied by other physical ailments that may need to be treated at the same time as the addiction.

When it is a possibility that the alcoholism is accompanied by an underlying or co-occurring psychological issue, it is important to seek a rehab center that has the ability to treat these additional disorders. Many experts, including the National Institute of Drug Abuse, agree that a principle of effective treatment for a person struggling with substance addiction is to treat that person’s specific needs, and that no single treatment is going to work for all individuals who need treatment.5

For these reasons, it’s important to consider whether or not the selected treatment center has the ability and experience to customize the program for the individual needs of the client, including considerations for any co-occurring disorders, as well as other medical, social, and environmental concerns.

Maintaining Sobriety after Alcohol Treatment

Perhaps the most telling sign of a treatment program’s quality is its ability to provide strategies and tools that will help the person in treatment avoid relapse after treatment is over. This can be provided through techniques taught throughout the rehab program, and also through sharing resources that are available to the person after rehab is over.

Actions such as Motivational Interviewing, given through phone calls at follow-up intervals after treatment, can remind individuals of their commitment to recovery, so they can avoid slipping back into old habits. An article from Alcohol and Alcoholism shows that this particular form of treatment can be helpful in reducing alcohol consumption. Introducing individuals and their family members to peer support groups and fellowship programs can also provide this regular motivation.6

With client-focused care and research-based practices, these centers are the ones that are most able to motivate a person to complete the rehab program and move forward into a life of continued recovery from alcoholism. Learn more about alcoholism treatment through alcohol recovery and sobriety stories.

Alcohol Rehab Ratings & Reviews

See our treatment center’s ratings and reviews to help you find the best alcohol rehab for you.

Ways to Get in Contact With Us

If you believe you or someone you love may be struggling with addiction, let us hear your story and help you determine a path to treatment.

There are a variety of confidential, free, and no obligation ways to get in contact with us to learn more about treatment.

Sources

  1. Moos, R. H., & Moos, B. S. (2006). Rates and predictors of relapse after natural and treated remission from alcohol use disorders. Addiction (Abingdon, England)101(2), 212–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2006.01310.x
  2. R. Monte, R. Rabuñal, E. Casariego, H. López-Agreda, A. Mateos, S. Pértega, Analysis of the Factors Determining Survival of Alcoholic Withdrawal Syndrome Patients in a General Hospital, Alcohol and Alcoholism, Volume 45, Issue 2, March-April 2010, Pages 151–158.
  3. American Family Physician. (2005). Medications for Alcohol Dependence. 
  4. American Journal of Psychiatry. (2005). Behavioral Therapies for Drug Abuse.
  5. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2019). Treatment Approaches for Drug Addiction DrugFacts. 
  6. Eirini I. Vasilaki, Steven G. Hosier, W. Miles Cox, The Efficacy of Motivational Interviewing as a Brief intervention for Excessive Drinking: a Meta-Analytic Review, Alcohol and Alcoholism, Volume 41, Issue 3, May/June 2006, Pages 328–335
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