Addicted? Do You Need Inpatient or Outpatient Drug or Alcohol Treatment?

The first step is always the hardest, and admitting to a problem and making a commitment to change and professional help takes courage and great personal strength.

But even after the decision to get help brings the potential of a better life, you still are left with a great many options, and it can so easily overwhelm those unsure of what type of treatment best suits their needs.

At the core though, a fundamental choice you need to make is between outpatient and inpatient therapy, and in making this choice you need to evaluate the level of your abuse problem, as well as the benefits of both types of treatment and the likelihood of success and sobriety as offered by both.

There are of course certain advantages to both.

Advantages of outpatient therapy

Outpatient therapy does not demand the same level of disruption from work, family and other responsibilities, and as such those people who may benefit from outpatient therapy should consider it as a valid option towards recovery.

Staying in the home while recovering, and continuing to work and support a family through treatment lessens the obstacles to recovery, and since outpatient therapy on average costs only a fraction of that inpatient rehab does, you also benefit from enormous cost savings.

Disadvantages of outpatient therapy

Outpatient therapy will not likely assist those people with lingering and entrenched addictions better their problems.

Although people consider staying in the home, at work and with family to be advantages, they can also decrease the likelihood of eventual success. When you remain immersed in the challenges of daily living, you remain immersed in the temptations and triggers to continuing abuse and since the initial days and weeks after achieving abstinence can be very difficult, when confronted with continual temptation, it can be tough to avoid relapse.

The advantages of inpatient drug or alcohol rehab

Although far more expensive and disruptive, a period of residential rehab offers the best chance at sobriety for people with serious addictions.

The enforced period of sobriety and month or more of intensive therapies give recovering addicts a great opportunity to break cleanly away from substance use and abuse, in a temptation free facility, away from access to drugs or alcohol.

With a month or more of intensive therapies and education, recovering addicts can focus all of their energies on getting better, and need not worry about outside responsibilities, that can detract from the power of therapy.

Which is right for you?

If you have a relatively new substance abuse problem, and have never yet attempted any form of therapy to better your problem, you may want to consider starting off with less disruptive and cheaper outpatient therapy. If you have tried outpatient therapy and continued with abuse, if you have a long history of addiction, and if you have an accompanying psychiatric disorder; a period of residential rehab likely offers more hope for an end to the problem.

Any therapy, outpatient or inpatient, is far preferable to no therapy and continuing abuse, and every person needs to make a considered judgment on what is possible, and what offers the most hope of sobriety, better health, and a future free from the pains of abuse.