We have heard the sentence above uttered thousands of times.
People that finally give up, get help, but then aren’t ready to follow through with the plan laid out for them. We think it is safe to say that almost everyone that has sat in a 28 day treatment program has thoughts of leaving early.
When we eventually get to treatment we are pretty beat up and broken. The treatment center that we go to is “the last house on the block” for us. When we first get there most of us are put on a medical detox program to minimize the withdrawal period. Then in a few days our heads clear up and we feel better physically. This is usually the time when the mind starts talking to us and tells us that we can leave now. One of the thoughts that goes through our brains is “I just needed a little help with the detox, I’ll be ok now. I don’t want to use and I know what I have to do.”
In our opinion that is addiction 101. Addiction talks to us in more ways than just the compulsion to pick up our drugs of choice. The disease floods our minds with so many different lies that we can’t differentiate the true from the false. Then you have the patient that just can’t fight that nagging voice in their head that says to get high. A myraid of excuses will be thought of to justify leaving treatment. The trouble is that we believe them.
Some of the issues that arise when people leave treatment early is they may not be fully rid of the chemicals in their systems, we haven’t learned any new life skills, and we are still making decisions by ourselves. The decisions we’ve made before we got to treatment were our own ideas and they usually didnt turn out so great. Staying in treatment for the time determined by the clinical and medical staff is very important to follow through on. In that time, someone can begin to learn new habits, begin to earn trust from their families and loved ones, and get some semblance of hope in their life.
If we act out on our own treatment plan, 99% of the time it ends in utter disaster.
