Types of Care at Drug Treatment Centers

Finding the right rehabilitation center can be a daunting process. Just getting started is often the hardest part, but then it might be scary to commit to one. If you’re looking for inpatient treatment, you might be spending a month or more living at one of the drug treatment centers you’re researching. How to choose?

The important thing to know is that the options for drug treatment exist on a very wide spectrum. There are a lot of options, ranging from minimal involvement to months-long inpatient treatment. If you’re considering drug treatment centers, you can absolutely find one that specializes in whatever you need. 

By the end of this article, you’ll know a little bit more about what’s all out there, and if something catches your eye, you can use that as a jumping off point for more research.

Types of Centers

Before we detail the different methods drug treatment centers use to help their patients, let’s look at the different types of rehabilitation centers. 

Specialized

Of course, there are many drug treatment centers that help a wide variety of drug users, but there are also ones that focus in on one specific substance. You can definitely find a rehabilitation center dedicated to the specific things you need help with if that’s appealing to you.

Gender-Specific

Some people would feel more comfortable with only other people of their same gender in their program and therefore only want to look at gender-specific drug treatment centers. There’s also some data to suggest that men and women tend to have different reasons for using drugs and different obstacles in their recoveries. Of course, there’s a lot of overlap, but due to the different social and cultural pressures placed on men and women, there tends to be different motivating factors and patterns of use. A gender-specific rehabilitation center might focus better on the intersection of your gender and your drug use. 

Age-Specific

Like with the gender-specific programs, there are certain rehabilitation centers that limit their patients to a certain age range. For example, some drug treatment centers might only treat adolescents. This can help people focus on the specific hardships that come with their age group. We’ll get into what group counseling looks like a little later, but being in a group of your peers in terms of age can make that process easier or better for some people.

Inpatient

This is a very broad category, and a lot of the others we’ve listed here would fit under the inpatient umbrella. Inpatient drug treatment centers are ones where you spend the night, and they have a high rate of long-term success. One way to sort inpatient drug treatment centers is by length of stay. You’ve got long-term and short-term options.

Long-Term Residential (Therapeutic Community)

To be considered long-term inpatient treatment, you would typically have to stay at the rehabilitation center for at least six months. Therapeutic communities are one of the most well-known forms of long-term residential treatment, and they last six to twelve months. That model focuses on “resocializing” someone into the whole community of the center. 

Short-Term Residential

The more common length of inpatient treatment at drug treatment centers is considered short-term. These are typically 30 to 90 days. At a short-term inpatient rehabilitation center, you’ll typically receive a mixture of individual and group therapy, which we’ll detail in a later section. Before you start those therapies, though, you might have to go through a medical detox process, since that’s one of the main benefits of a short-term inpatient drug treatment center. Again, we’ll talk a little more about detox in a later section.

Outpatient

As the name suggests, this is the opposite of inpatient treatment. You’ll come to the rehabilitation center during the day for treatment and spend the night at home. This sort of option might be good for people who have a lot of support at home or who want to keep holding a job during their treatment. It also tends to work better for people who have caught their substance use problem early. For more severe cases, inpatient drug treatment centers tend to be the better option. 

The big benefit of an outpatient program is the flexibility it provides. The extent of your treatment might be a few hours a week, or it might be multiple hours five to seven days per week. This can translate into a lower cost than what you might find at an inpatient rehabilitation center. Outpatient treatment is not for everyone, but it might be worth looking into if any of these apply to you.

Luxury Drug Treatment Centers

The amenities at each rehabilitation center will vary. You might have your own room, or you might have to share. The meals might be cafeteria-style, or they might be more gourmet. A luxury rehabilitation center will have the finest of everything, and the price will reflect that. A private suite, the finest meals, and a gym are all not unheard of. If you can pay for it, luxurious drug treatment centers are options.

Sober Living Homes

These are meant to complement an inpatient treatment. Once you’ve completed that course of treatment, a sober living home can bridge the gap between the strict structure of an inpatient program and the relative structurelessness of living on your own. Sometimes they’re called halfway houses. 

At a sober living home, you can expect lots of help getting your life set back up. They can assist you in finding a job and housing for after treatment, and they’ll help you build sustainable, healthy habits. 

A 90-day stay is fairly standard, but you should look for an accommodation that can cater to whatever you need. If you and your healthcare professionals decide a longer stay would be more beneficial, they should be able to make that happen.

Faith-Based Drug Treatment Centers

If religion is an important part of your life, a faith-based rehabilitation center might be the right option for you. Sometimes, your faith can add extra pressure or shame to your recovery process, but always remember that becoming addicted is not a moral failure. These extra concerns religious people sometimes have can make faith-based treatment a good option. There are definite spiritual elements to this kind of drug treatment, but there are also the standard stages of any rehabilitation center, like detox, therapy, and life skills training. The goal is to get healthy and to use your faith as an extra angle through which to find peace.

Types of Care and Therapy

In any kind of rehabilitation center, you’ll receive a variety of treatments tailored to your specific needs. Read on for a brief and incomplete list of the kinds of treatments you might encounter.

Individualized Counseling

Basically, individual counseling is just counseling between you and a counselor. The opposite is group counseling, which we’ll explain in a bit. This is a very broad category, which is why we’ve broken it down into some of the possible types of therapies you might encounter in individual counseling. The exact approach will be determined by what you need and what your health professionals deem appropriate. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This is a very common type of treatment for a wide variety of conditions. You’ll encounter it at a lot of drug treatment centers. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to help you identify and cope with automatic negative thoughts. CBT also attempts to help you understand why you feel and act the ways you do. If you can understand and anticipate situations that cause cravings, you can better avoid them and learn to cope with them. 

Biofeedback Therapy

In this kind of therapy, specialized equipment will track different bodily functions, like heart rate or blood pressure. These functions can indicate emotional distress or tension. If you participate in this kind of treatment, you’ll learn techniques to manage these responses. 

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

One main goal of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is to help you learn skills like mindfulness and emotional regulation that should help you stop abusing substances. 

Experiential Therapy

This particular type of therapy is a broad category that’s hard to define. Lots of traditional and newer types of therapies can be considered experiential; the term basically describes any type that involves the patient getting involved with different types of experiences that go beyond talk therapy. For example, techniques like art and music therapy fit under the experiential therapy umbrella. Animal-assisted therapies, like equine therapy, also fit in this category.

Holistic Therapy

Some types of treatment are best used as support to another, more established type of therapy, and this is one. Holistic therapy is when you focus on things like nutrition, sleep, and exercise to help support your efforts in other areas. Some types of experiential therapy are also considered holistic. That might be kind of confusing, but just remember that the point of a rehabilitation center isn’t to strictly define each type of treatment — it’s to get you healthy.

Motivational Enhancement Therapy

This one can be particularly helpful in convincing someone to engage with treatment. The therapist uses certain techniques to encourage the individual to find their own motivation and helps them create a plan for how to change their ways. Like holistic therapy, this one is often paired with other forms of treatment to see best results. 

Psychodynamic Therapy

When participating in this type of therapy, you’ll focus on self-reflection. The goal is to examine the psychological roots of the emotional turmoil and pain you might be feeling. Other therapies are focused on managing behaviors and symptoms, but this one is more focused on your inner life and how you are feeling. 

Group Counseling

In addition to individual counseling sessions, most drug treatment centers will also have you participate in group counseling sessions with other patients. One of the benefits of group counseling is that members of the group can support each other. Both giving support and receiving it from your peers can be very helpful.

Family Counseling

You don’t exist in a vacuum. Family counseling helps get all the people around you on the same page. One type of family counseling is Family Behavior Therapy, which involves you and at least one person close to you, like a partner or a parent, attending therapy together. The goal is to improve the family dynamic and the whole home environment. 

Self Help or 12-Step Facilitation

There are multiple 12-step self-help groups for different kinds of addictions. In this type of therapy, the goal is to increase the chance that someone struggling with substance abuse will become involved with one of those groups. These kinds of groups and facilitation have been proven especially effective in treating alcohol dependence. It might be helpful for use with other types of dependencies as well, but the research there is in earlier stages. 

Medication

Of course, these types of therapies are not the only methods to treat substance use disorders. Certain medicines are appropriate in certain cases, and if the medical professionals determine they would be helpful, they can be dispensed. 

Detox Program

If you require a detox period, that’s the first kind of program you’ll undergo. Inpatient programs are particularly well suited to help you as the substances you’re abusing leave your body. This process can be dangerous for some people, so it’s best to have it medically supervised in drug treatment centers. Sometimes, the use of certain medications can aid this process. Whatever support you need in the detox phase of your treatment, the right rehabilitation center can provide that help. 

This is just an overview.

So, now you’ve had a brief run-through of some different kinds of drug treatment centers out there, and the different kinds of therapies you might encounter at them. Keep in mind that this barely scratches the surface. If any of this resonated with you, do your own research, and reach out to a rehabilitation center to see if they would be a good fit. A team of health professionals can use their expertise to provide you with the right care for your specific situation.