subject: 30 Day Rehab Centers: The Beginning Of A Lifelong Journey [print this page] For one whose life has begun to spiral out of control as a result of drug and alcohol abuse, 30 day rehab centers offer a safe and sheltered space to undertake the first segment of the voyage into a better life.
Understanding Alcoholism and Addiction
The disease of drug and alcohol addiction is often stigmatized - incorrectly identified as the result of poor decision-making and lack of moral fiber. In reality, addiction is a chronic disease which affects its victims both mentally and physically.
Addiction can be described as a disease of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body. Addictive thinking causes addicts to continue to drink and use when the consequences are obviously detrimental to their lives. The physical allergy is the reason that addicts and alcoholics react differently than normal people when they ingest a drink or drug. When even the smallest amount of an intoxicating substance enters the body of an addict, a trigger goes off in the brain. Once that trigger is pulled, all scope is lost - the only thing that matters is getting high.
The result of these mental and physical phenomena is the loss of things that the addict truly values. Addicts lose careers, homes, families and friends, not because they choose drugs over these things, but because their disease makes the choice for them.
The same thinking that keeps addicts high and drunk even as their lives crumble beneath them causes them to make similarly unwise decisions with regards to other behaviors that allow them to escape themselves temporarily. Sex, love, eating, not eating, exercise, self-harm, and any other means of getting outside of ones self are potential problems for an addict, especially in early sobriety when the preferred method of escapism has been eliminated.
Seeking Help
Once an addict comes to the conclusion that the using and drinking must stop at all costs, the time is ripe for treatment. Residential treatment centers separate addicts from places and situations they associate with using drugs, taking much of the struggle out of the initial phase of sobriety.
Many people are familiar with 30 day rehab centers as the protocol for coping with drug addiction, but most do not understand that the first 30 days of sobriety is barely enough time to clear drugs from the system, let alone enough to relearn healthy life skills. In order to truly recover from drug and alcohol addiction, treatment must present a new design for living, a set of tools which addicts can carry with them in recovery long after leaving their 30 day rehab centers.
Safe Harbor: A New Home
For women facing the disease of addiction, it is wise to select a single-sex treatment center. So many of the core issues that motivate women to use in the beginning relate to sexuality, abuse and body image, all topics which cannot be openly discussed in a coed setting. In order to heal as people, female addicts and alcoholics need to address the repressed pain that has resulted from these issues, and they need to feel secure and comfortable while doing so.
Safe Harbor Treatment Center for women, located in Costa Mesa, California, aims to create a nurturing community that separates it from standard 30 day rehab centers. Safe Harbors treatment program is comprised of structured therapeutic groups, individual counseling, 12-step meetings and uplifting social activities. Where most 30 day rehab centers see themselves essentially as detoxification facilities, Safe Harbor Treatment Center aims for nothing less than the genuine rebirth of every woman who walks through its doors. The disease of addiction eats away at the soul as well as the mind and body, and only by nourishing all three can a woman cultivate a full and healthy recovery.
Women need a nurturing recovery community in order to have the best chances at success. Safe Harbor Treatment Center for Women is proud to offer a loving home to any woman who wants to recover from addiction.
