Alcoholic Treatment

What is alcoholic treatment like?

Do I need to attend daily groups or consider myself an alcoholic to get treatment?

Treatment for an alcoholic is generally thought to be designed for the most severe type of alcohol abuser and for those who have completely lost control over the time and amount of alcohol they consume.

Unfortunately, some programs providing alcoholic treatment are recommended by courts and uninformed physicians for people who are not at the severe end of the spectrum.

Alcoholic treatment is therefore the most intensive of all approaches for alcohol abusers. There is a strongly held assumption that alcoholic treatment needs to focus on alcoholism as a disease or with a strong biological component.

Alcoholic treatment is usually longer and more intensive. It typically involves or requires a structured hospital inpatient program or rehab clinic stay of a minimum of 30 days but it is not unheard of for rehab to last years.

The first phase of alcoholic treatment must be followed by an even longer period of time in some sort of supervised living environment, which typically includes regular urine testing.

Alcoholic treatment programs are generally thought to be better the longer they are, and could be a life time activity in which most alcoholics never recover completely. “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” is part of the conventional treatment philosophy.

Based on the assumed severity of the problem, it is generally believed that alcoholic treatment could include many components such as:

• Life management skills classes
• Developing job skills
• Craving control
• Lifetime daily attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings
• Sponsoring newcomers
• Dissociation from old friends
• Building a support system with active members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

At HabitDoc our alcoholic treatment approach is designed to lead to better control of your life, with more control of your drinking problem or addictive behavior.

Dr. Kern has helped both moderates and addicts. While some clients succeeded in moderation attempts others learned how to stop drinking entirely, without needing to go to a drug or alcohol rehab center or attend daily classes.