Rehabs Don’t Work.
The 50-billion-dollar industry that for decades has presented itself as the cure for addiction recovery… isn’t working.
Inpatient Rehabilitation programs for far too long have contributed far too little to healing a country drowning in addiction.
The verdict is in. Rehabs don’t work.
And it is NOT therapy’s fault.
The problem lies directly at the feet of Rehab’s programs. Not their therapy.
In the balance they simply have the timing of their treatment programs in the wrong order. Rehab tries to rapidly detox an addict and immediately start their therapy at the time when their brain is not yet healed. Imagine that you reach to flip the light switch on in your bedroom and your car starts up in the garage instead. This is an addict’s brain.
The brain of a person in full addiction has literally rewired itself. The person you knew before addiction is no longer that person. The brain of the person you used to know has rebuilt itself into an addict brain.
Their brain has literally changed them. They went from substance user to substance abuser to substance addict.
You most likely didn’t wake up this morning and say, “I think I’ll become an alcoholic today!”
But genetically speaking, you just might be a ticking addict time-bomb.
Let’s take a look at the steps in quick succession to what happens to your brain when drugs and/or alcohol are introduced.
First few drinks.
When you drink alcohol for the first few times, it already has a profound effect on the complex structures of the brain. It blocks chemical signals between brain cells (called neurons), leading to the common immediate symptoms of intoxication, including impulsive behavior, slurred speech, poor memory, and slowed reflexes.
But you feel SO good!
The initial euphoric effects of alcohol are a result of dopamine being released from the reward center in the brain. Dopamine is known as the “feel good” neurotransmitter and it is involved in feeling pleasure. Dopamine release is also thought to be one of the mechanisms that drive addiction. In addition to dopamine, drinking alcohol initially releases serotonin which is another neurotransmitter involved in feeling happy and calm.
Ongoing and/or excessive drinking.
Over time, excessive alcohol consumption can damage the brain, causing lasting damage. Excessive alcohol consumption can have long-lasting effects on neurotransmitters in the brain, decreasing their effectiveness or even mimicking them. Alcohol also destroys brain cells and contracts brain tissue.
Taking Pain Meds as prescribed.
Anyone who takes opioids is at risk of developing addiction. Your personal history and the length of time you use opioids play a role, but it’s impossible to predict who’s vulnerable to eventual dependence on and abuse of these drugs. Legal or illegal, stolen and shared, these drugs are responsible for the majority of overdose deaths in the U.S. today.
Short-term versus long-term effects
When you take opioids repeatedly over time, your body slows its production of endorphins. The brain no longer needs to work as hard because the pills you are taking are doing all the work.
The Tolerance Catch 22.
Over time, that prescribed dose of opioids by your doctor slows or stops triggering such a strong flood of good feelings. One reason opioid addiction is so common is that people who develop tolerance may feel driven to increase their doses so they can keep feeling good.
Why can’t you just stop!?
Asking you to overcome your fear of heights by stepping off the top of a building doesn’t make sense to you, right? Telling an addict to just stop taking the pills or just stop drinking the bottle literally doesn’t make sense to them…because their ability to reason and make rational decisions has literally been wired out of them.
What makes sense to an addict is to get their next hit of dopamine.
And this is where most addict’s brains are just as they are placed into their 30-day rehab program with very well-intentioned therapists who immediately start working on the reasons for why the addict is an addict in the first place.
The therapy might be great, but the timing of it isn’t.
This is all too common in the rehab industry. The undertaking is to “fix” the addict in 30 days from what took years or even decades to develop.
White Tree Medical is NOT an Inpatient Recovery facility. We are an Outpatient Detox Medical Center. The difference is that we focus on a longer-term program to detoxify you from your drug or alcohol addictions. We focus on medically healing your brain, first, while you stay in your family and in your life.
As a final statistic, we have achieved a 12-month sobriety success rate with our patients 84 percent of the time from the FIRST treatment program.
Rehabs are not working. White Tree Medical isn’t rehab. Call us today. 801 503 9211.