The realization that an addiction to drugs or alcohol has taken over your life is one that can hit hard and stop your life in its tracks – or at least it feels that way. Like it brings the spin of the earth to a halt.
In reality though, life around you does go on. Your responsibilities to family and friends carry on and the job you managed to maintain continues to require doing.
Depending on the severity of your addiction, it may be in your best interest to opt for inpatient care, where you live at a treatment center. In that case, you’re fully pulled out of that life – your former world – and focus 100% of your energy and attention on rehabilitation.
For those with the most severe issues with substance use, that could be the right way to go but what if your addiction isn’t that intense? What if your work or family life absolutely requires your presence? What is after you finish inpatient you still need help?
How do you square that circle and make it work while getting the care for addiction you genuinely need?
What Is Outpatient Treatment?
For starters, let’s quickly discuss what inpatient treatment is because one informs the other.
As previously stated, inpatient rehab requires you to live at the facility where you’re being treated. Any reputable recovery center will create a highly structured and personalized plan that is suited to your particular needs.
Though the methods and modalities will vary from rehab to rehab, the foundation of most programs is in psychotherapy, or talk therapy. Here at Principles Recovery Center, for example, we utilize cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, dialectical behavior therapy and more – in both individual and group settings – to help you work through the mental aspects of addiction during our outpatient programs.
That’s in addition to complementary and holistic treatment options that work to create a well-rounded path to recovery.
How does that relate to outpatient care?
Well, rehab at an outpatient treatment center encompasses the same things and it uses the very same tools to aid you in your journey towards lasting sobriety. The key difference is that with outpatient rehab you are not required to live at the facility.
The quality of care isn’t any less than that of inpatient care, it’s simply designed and intended for a different subset of the recovery population. Someone suffering from the most severe, heavy addiction wouldn’t necessarily be an ideal candidate for outpatient treatment because they genuinely need the 24/7 support, guidance and supervision that inpatient rehab provides.
However, just like addiction itself, there are different degrees of outpatient care.
Intensive outpatient program (IOP), for instance, is one of these degrees. Somewhere between partial hospitalization and more run-of-the-mill outpatient treatment, patients undergoing intensive outpatient care spend substantially more time in treatment, often in the neighborhood of 20 hours a week or so – but still go home at the end of the day.
Who Should Go to an Outpatient Treatment Center?
Outpatient care, the standard kind, is the type of treatment that requires the least time and is, therefore, the most accessible.
For those who have work, school or familial responsibilities that must be fulfilled, outpatient treatment offers both the flexibility and structure to allow you to do what you have to while still getting the critical support for recovery that you need. It’s a treatment option that you can incorporate into your schedule.
Additionally, rather than jumping straight back into the grind of daily life, outpatient rehab is also especially useful as a transitional tool for those who have completed an inpatient program. Offering something of a safety net as you reintegrate into your day-to-day. To find out if outpatient treatment is right for you or a loved one, get in touch with us at Principles Recovery Center. We’d be happy to give you more information and tell you about our South Florida outpatient program.
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