No alcohol treatment center can help a patient who refuses to be helped. That should be obvious. Alcohol treatment centers don’t work miracles, after all. Alcoholism is a uniquely personal problem. It can only be overcome by virtue of a profoundly personal effort. If you’re going to get better in an alcohol treatment center, it’s going to be because you commit yourself to the healing process, and resolve to win the fight. Even the most exclusive alcohol rehab program in Los Angeles can’t help you if you refuse to do that much.

The good news is that alcohol treatment will allow you to rediscover life as you used to know it, and yourself as you used to be. The only catch is that you have to make the process work. The decision to check into an alcohol treatment center is never easy. But it will be the most important one you ever make. Please, for your own sake, don’t wait another day to start learning the truth on your own terms.

You can’t get sober without drug and alcohol rehab. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t understand the nature of substance abuse itself. Addiction is a disease, not a choice. No one ever “decides” to be a drug addict or alcoholic. By the same token, no one can ever simply “decide” to stop using. Like all diseases, addiction can only be eradicated by competent clinical treatment. You wouldn’t expect a diabetic to get sober without a doctor’s help. The same goes for an addict. If you’re a victim of drug or alcohol abuse, drug and alcohol rehab is the last best chance you have to get healed. Please, for your own sake, don’t wait another day to learning that truth for yourself.

Remember, drug and alcohol rehab have to start with you. Even the most exclusive luxury rehab center in Malibu can’t help a patient who won’t walk through the front door. You really can get better, provided you find the strength to entrust your care to substance abuse treatment experts. Given the stakes, any other course of action simply isn’t acceptable.

Alcoholism is a 24-hour disease, that’s right.. a “disease.” Says who? Says the AMA (American Medical Association.) When an alcoholic takes a drink, all they want is more. When they eat chocolate, watch TV, spend money, smoke a cigarette all they want is more. Ask an alcoholic. Ask me. I know. It can be a miserable existence. And, with the proper tools, it can be a wonderful existence. The solution, the key, to living with alcoholism for this addict is recovery. Recovery can be found in a number of places. The most popular one is an Alcohol Treatment Center. The one I went to was a high-end residential alcohol treatment center in Malibu, CA, near Los Angeles. But, there are rehabs all over the place, for all shapes and sizes. Now, after I left rehab I wasn’t cured, Ill never be cured of my alcoholism. I live with it every day of my life. BUT, with the tools, the experience, the strength and the hope I received in rehab, every day I have a shot. Every day I have a chance. Every day I can have fun. Because every day I have hope.

It’s a question every alcoholic asks himself, eventually: When did it really fall apart? When did social drinking become chronic drinking? When did a night at the bar with friends become a night at home with a bottle?

When did alcoholism become, well, alcoholism?

For me, the through-the-looking-glass moment came when I couldn’t stop thinking about it: about that first sip of that first drink, and the long slow tumble into the haze. That’s what alcoholism is, really: that obsessiveness, that compulsive need that won’t and can’t and doesn’t ever go away. Alcoholism is alcoholism when, and because, it haunts you. If you’ve been there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

There’s nothing easy about alcohol rehab. The fight against alcoholism will rake you over the coals and back again…and I’d be lying if I told that getting sober is anything other than one mother of a fight. But seriously: What’s the alternative? Alcoholism? Thinking about booze twenty-four hours a day, before you drink and after you drink and of course most of all while you’re drinking? No thanks.

You can beat it, if you want to. That’s what someone told me on my first day of alcohol rehab, and that’s what got me through the darkest moments. You can beat it if you want to. Remember that, as you go forward: You can beat it. It’s not easy, it’s not certainly not fun…but, yes, You can.

If you want to.