It’s often said that recovery from addiction is a lifelong process. This is true. The journey to recovery starts when you admit that you have a problem and take appropriate steps to get the help you need to overcome your addiction.
Once you are admitted to a rehab center, you undergo different treatment therapies to help you turn your life around. You receive individual therapy to help you identify personal issues that led to your addiction as well as help you set and work on individual goals. You also undergo group therapy where you get to interact and learn from others struggling with addiction.
As part of your recovery treatment in rehab, you’ll also learn how to identify and manage your triggers, how to deal with your cravings as well as how to develop healthy relationships. All this involves a lot of work and will keep you busy during your duration in rehab.
But what happens after you complete an intense rehab program?
Continued Care in Addiction Recovery
Continued care or continuing care is used to describe the phase that comes once someone finishes addiction treatment. It is also similar to aftercare.
When going through addiction treatment, you generally step down from a more intensive treatment program to a less intensive one. This means that after residential treatment, you may step down to a partial hospitalization program or an intensive outpatient one. Once you complete these, you may proceed to an outpatient program or aftercare.
Continued care or aftercare is an important component of the treatment process. This is because once done with more intensive forms of treatment, you have to go back to your life. You’ll likely encounter the same conditions that drove you to use drugs or alcohol and having some support and structure during this transitional period can make a huge difference in your recovery journey.
Here at Evolve Indy, we like to keep in touch with our clients, especially when they’ve recently left our programs. Our aftercare program helps ensure that you:
- Continue with the healthy routines that you developed in rehab including healthy sleep patterns, better nutrition, and regular exercise.
- Strengthen the recovery skills you developed including learning to cope with the various stresses of life, work, and family without reaching for alcohol or drugs.
- Have the support you need to stay on your recovery path. Joining a sober living home, a support group or one of our alumni programs ensures that you can keep interacting and learning from your sober peers. Interacting with others in such groups also keeps you accountable and motivates you to remain sober.
- Rebuild your relationships. We encourage clients to continue attending family therapy sessions so that they can continue rebuilding and healing bonds that were shattered by the addiction.
Remember, recovery from addiction is a lifelong process. To give you the best chance at success, choose a facility that emphasizes aftercare or continued care after rehab.