Top 5 Reasons Addiction Treatment Fails
There are many challenges to achieving long lasting recovery. Addiction professional Keenan Diamond identified five of the biggest reasons addiction treatment fails.
#1 – Addiction Program is Too Short
Often times rehabilitation is too short. A 28- or 30-day rehab center can only go so far in stabilizing a person’s substance abuse addiction.
Our Masters Camp and Providence Women’s Recovery are 90-day addiction recovery centers based on Christian principles. The reason that the program is 90 days is that we believe anything shorter than this amount time is inadequate. It is even common for program participants to stay on past the 90 day point.
#2 – Lack of Transitional Planning
The second reason is that there is a lack of transition planning for when the inpatient or in-house treatment is terminated. Without a plan for what comes after rehabilitation, many go back to the same temptations, behaviors and lifestyles they had before treatment.
Our Masters Camp offers all program graduates the opportunity to either stay on longer at the center or participate in a transition program that is facilitated by Providence Ministries of Dalton, Georgia. Learn more about our transition programs here.
#3 – Not Utilizing 12-Step Programs
The third reason is a lack of engagement in a 12-step program. A 12-step program is essentially a fundamental maintenance program for sobriety that can be realistically applied in the “outside of treatment world.”
At Our Masters Camp and Providence Women’s Recovery, 12-step style meetings and step work are incorporated into our programs. Although it is more of an introduction at this point, the groundwork is set for when they do go back to their normal lives or into our transitional living programs.
#4 Lack of Willingness to Work the Recovery
The idea of willingness revolves around accepting your condition of being a person who struggles with an addiction and having the willingness to also accept the prescribed treatments as a way to arrest the condition. Willingness is about accepting that recovery is hard work… though it does get easier as time goes by.
#5 – The Family Doesn’t Get Treated
The fifth reason is about the family of the person struggling with addiction. As many of us already know, addiction doesn’t just hurt the addicted person themselves, it’s also extremely destructive to the friends and family members.
Our Masters Camp and Providence Women’s Recovery believe very strongly in incorporating the entire family into the recovery process if possible. Family members that truly want to help end the addiction cycle of their loved need to learn how to stop enabling their loved one’s habit. It’s a hard and unfair truth, but they need to heal too, and there are tools and meetings available to help them do that.
In conclusion, the Top 5 Reasons Treatment Fails are:
- Treatment Program Duration is too Short
- The Center or Participant Doesn’t Plan Out a Transitional Process
- 12-Step Meetings and Processes are Under Utilized
- Lack of Willingness to Work at Recovery
- Family Needs to Heal But Doesn’t Know It or Know How