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Being treated for a drug dependence has had a lot of false starts in the past. While some methods are known to work fairly well, there is always going to be room for improvement. To start with, the average time an addicted individual spends in a rehabilitation facility has shortened greatly over the past few decades. This has not necessarily resulted in any notable improvement in the most effective measure of a treatment’s success — that the addicted individual may carry on a healthy, happy life.
While the treatment methods used can be wildly varied by medical professionals, their impact is largely dependent on the patient to continue to implement them after treatment is complete. As every addict who has been in a twelve step program knows, theprocess of recovery is lifelong and requires at least some effort almost every day. Unfortunately, the medical community is not set up for this type of concept, and medical facilities are run as businesses. The 12 steps don’t provide enough shareholder value to be especially interesting to medical facilities.
However, there is hope beyond simply locking up people who suffer from an addiction. While the physical confinement of a rehabilitation facility is enough to keep an addict from their drug of choice, it is nowhere near a perfect solution. In many cases, this merely gives the addict a false sense of security which is promptly shattered when they return to their normal lives, and encounter the same issues that initially drove them to their vice of choice. So long as the wrong people and hopeless feelings remain, no treatment has a chance to work.
