Advantages Of Long Term Treatment

Treatment works

Addiction is an epidemic in the world today; almost everyone is affected by it, whether it is a family member, a friend, a co-worker, themselves or a crime committed towards them. What is the answer to this problem, treatment or jail? With a variety of available methods, treatment is the best option to help alcoholics and addicts recover from their addictions. Even with a given percentage of relapse, treatment works far better than locking people away, which does nothing to fix the problem. Treatment is the most productive way to go because it addresses why the individual uses, it gets the addict or alcoholic away from the substance for a period of time, helps to show them the damage that is actually happening to their life

Long-term treatment has many advantages. One of the benefits is it gets the individual away from the substance. Also separating them from toxic relationships, they precipitate in such as family, friends, drug users, etc. Counseling, case management, job training, substance abuse treatment, mental health care, life skills training, medical care, and follow-up are some of the other advantages. Much like the other recovery programs the environment must change as well as the way a person thinks. For it to be a permanent change, the behavior has to be changed, and behavior changes take time. Some call it brainwashing, but most people in addiction could use a brainwashing. During an interview with Sandy Watson, Executive Director of the House of T.I.M.E, which is a long-term residential treatment center for homeless women, she stated, "Of the clients that we can keep track of, 77% of patients that stay longer than one year in treatment stay clean for at least five years (we do not track after the 5th

It becomes what they know. The same goes if they are in prison with other offenders. While putting drug offenders in jail gets them off the street, it does not solve the problem. The inmate may stay sober and out of jail for a short time, but usually, history repeats its self. In the penitentiary, a person has to be tough to survive, surrounding themselves with people who are not willing to change. In some prisons, there are just as many drugs inside the penitentiary as on the streets. It is nearly impossible to keep drugs out. Inmates are always coming up with more ways to smuggle it in. A lot of criminals come out of prison with better drug connections then when they went in. Locking someone away fails to address the problem at hand. It seems to be out of sight out of mind. A study shows that after three years of release, about two-thirds of released prisoners were rearrested. Usually after five years of release, about three-quarters of released offenders were arrested, 76.9 percent of them were drug offenders (N.D.I.A