Treatment is a carefully crafted process that helps people struggling with addiction to drugs and/or alcohol. It includes medical treatment and psychotherapy. Treatment can be offered in a hospital, a residential treatment facility, or outpatient settings. It may be a short-term program or long-term.
Some health problems have no cure, which means you’ll always need to take medication to manage them. For example, if you have type 1 diabetes, you’ll need insulin every day for the rest of your life to keep blood sugar levels in a healthy range.
Most state and federal drug treatment programs implicitly define a continuum of care through their policies, funding models and survey definitions. For example, some state programs treat identification and intervention services as part of a continuum of care along with detoxification, rehabilitation and aftercare. Other programs see these as distinct elements.
The types of talking therapies used in a treatment program can vary widely, but they all have crucial ingredients in common. These include a focus on the risks of drinking and drug use and working out ways to avoid these, typically called ‘coping skills’. Other strategies such as contingency management (CM) — rewarding abstinence with vouchers or privileges — and motivational interviewing have also been shown to be effective in helping service users become aware of what they need to change, and how to make that happen. These techniques are usually combined with other treatment modalities such as medications and harm reduction advice.