If there is someone with a chemical dependency problem in your family, you will be definitely researching for treatment options on the Internet. In the process, you might come across several terms that you do not know the meaning of. Here are somewhat detailed meanings of some of the terms you will encounter.
Denial and Intervention
Denial happens when the person under the chemical addiction refuses to believe that he or she is addicted to the substance. Quite obviously, such a person will not want to go through any treatment for the problem. In fact, people who are in denial will make the problem more drastic for themselves by shunning treatment because their dependency will only become more and more well-settled in their bodies if they delay the treatment process.
Intervention is the process when an external agency takes stock of the situation and tries to convince a denying patient to get into treatment. In recent times, the scope of intervention has changed. Now, intervention does not mean just motivating the person to enter into treatment, but it also means getting them throughout the program and until final recovery. Intervention also deals with providing a relapse prevention strategy for the person in question.
Family intervention is the most common type of intervention. Other forms of intervention are provided by educational institutions, employers, religious and faith-based institutions, the treatment centers themselves and even the law.
Codependency
Codependency is a negative aspect of addiction treatment. In fact, when there is a codependent party involved, the patient will be kept away from the treatment. It can be defined thus: when an external party helps in a knowing or unknowing manner to keep the patient away from receiving treatment, the external party is called as a codependent.
A friend who knows about the addiction of the patient but keeps it a secret form everyone else is a codependent in the addiction. In a similar fashion, families are codependents if they try to hide the patient’s addiction fearing social ridicule or for some other reason.
Teaching people to come out codependency is a very important aspect of the counseling program in almost every state that has an addiction treatment program of its own.
Detoxification
Basically, detoxification means the purging of all unwanted and un-metabolized substances from the body of a person. In the context of substance abuse treatment, detoxification (most times shortened as detox) is the removal of the addictive substance from the body.
Detoxification has many uses. Of course, the freedom the body gets from the toxins in it is the best benefit. Also, it prevents some health complications from happening. This risk is reduced because the person is completely cleansed from the substance of addiction. Also, detox helps in increasing the pace at which the recovery can take place because when the addictive substance is completely removed from the body of the person, there is a much greater chance that it will forget the urge for using the substance.
Rehabilitation
This is probably one of the most common words you will encounter if you are researching on solutions for substance abuse treatment. But most people are not clear what it means. In the context of the substance abuse treatment in the US, rehabilitation means to remove the dependency on the substance completely from the person’s mind and then try to make the person involved in social activities. This readjustment process is a part of the rehabilitation treatment. Most people think it is the rehabilitation process that’s the most vital to the addiction treatment in the state.
Relapse Prevention
This is another very important part of the treatment. This happens after the person’s inpatient part of treatment is over. During the relapse prevention phase, the patient as well as the family of the patient will be taught how to deal with the situation. The family, especially, will be trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of an impending relapse and what they must do if a relapse were indeed to occur. They are also counseled on what they must say to the patient so that they do not feel sidelined anymore.
During this part of the treatment program, the centers will train patients on methods such as Yoga, breathing exercises, relaxing and meditating methods, etc. If the families have used an intervention specialist, they will guide them on what they must do to speed up the recovery process.
Finally, you will find answers to all your queries by making particular searches on the Internet. Or, you could schedule an appointment with a counselor on substance abuse treatment in the state the patient and you live in.