Drug and alcohol rehab centers always have several balancing acts to achieve while assisting drug abuse clients to find sobriety. One is between dealing with the past, present and future. Helping people dealing with the realm of the past is primarily a counseling issue. Moving past our histories and old behaviors many times is best handled by competent and caring counselors. Even in a luxury residential drug abuse treatment center it is not possible to be all things to all people. It seems that some drug detox and drug rehabilitation centers are trying this, but how can this make sense? What I am talking about are drug abuse treatment programs that profess to be both 12 step and cognitive based at the same time. How can this be?

If you follow the 12 steps you must at some point come to accept that you are powerless over drugs and alcohol. You then are to turn it over to a higher power, whatever you believe that to be. This may seem like an over simplification, but these are part of the foundation of 12 step.

When is the best time to get your loved one suffering from drug addiction into a drug addiction treatment center? That question can be answered with another question… When does an intervention take place? Ideally this has less to do with the family schedule and more to do with getting them into drug detox and a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center. It also has to do with what’s going on in the addict’s life. Even if they are not willing to go to a drug addiction treatment center, the best time to perform an intervention is just after a major event. Such an event would be that the addict got arrested, or when he/she has wronged (lied, stolen, cheated etc.) a family member and would show remorse or guilt. Another good time would be if his /her spouse is leaving, if they are about to lose custody of the kids. Yet another would be after an overdose, which, if they don’t die, is a form of detox. Although you obviously don’t want to risk the addict’s life by postponing forever, an intervention will be more effective after such events when the addict is down and feels like his/her world is coming to an end.

Even in the absence of these situations, an intervention can be successful especially if the family is close to the addict on a daily basis so that every little situation is known by the family. An addict’s life can be a major roller coaster and the only way an addict can deny their problem is to successfully hide these problems from those who love him.