People who are considering going into drug rehab for the first time often want to know about the drug rehab cost. Well at Drug Rehab Tales, I cut through the crap and give you straight answers that you can count on. In order to determine the cost of treatment you are going to have to answer some questions about yourself.

The first thing you need to figure out is if you have insurance. If you have insurance the next step is to figure out if the insurance company covers any or all of a stay in a residential inpatient treatment center. In the even that you do not have insurance, you may be thinking about going to an outpatient rehab program to save money. I have to tell you I do not recommend that. While going to an outpatient center will save you some money over an inpatient rehab it will ultimately just cost you more. You see, outpatient rehab doesn’t work, or works very rarely, so to take part in one is just really like throwing your money away since it isn’t going to work anyway. Atleast an inpatient rehab program might work so you’re getting something for your money. An outpatient is probably not going to do much for you. That’s been my experience anyway.

So back to the cost of drug rehab. Let’s say that you do have insurance but it doesn’t cover drug or alcohol rehabs. So what do you do? First, let me say, don’t panic. There are many great rehabs that can work out payment plans with you so that you are not killed all at once with a huge bill that you simply can not pay. So, exactly what is the drug rehab cost? The short answer is that it varies. You can find free drug rehab in many cases, though I don’t really recommend that. Then there are middle rehabs and finally there are high end rehabs.

You can expect to pay anywhere from $4,000 to $15,000 for a 28 day stay at a residential treatment center. Now, on the high end, you can pay up to $100,000 and more for a similar stay and an executive drug rehab or a luxury drug rehab. Now, most of us are not in the position where we can afford to rehab in luxury so I think the vast majority of us are looking at something in the mid-range category.

But drug rehab cost can often vary by the rehab because of the length of stay. There are many places which extend their stay well beyond 28 days. 90 day and longer treatment centers are becoming more popular and you must realize that if you are going to stay in a treatment center for three to six months you have to consider how all those monthly bills are going to start adding up.

In a nutshell that breaks down drug rehab costs. Hopefully you have insurance that will pay for drug and alcohol treatment centers because if you don’t the cost of rehab can get pretty expensive.

A question that I have struggled with is how to quit drinking once and for all. In some ways the alcoholic inside of me doesn’t ever want to quit drinking regardless of the damage I do to myself. Even after I had stopped drinking, for a long time I fantasized about drinking again, drinking occasionally. I didn’t want to quit drinking.

Experience has taught me that this is a common thread among us alcoholics. If only I had a dollar every time I heard an addict say, “I wish I could just have one beer or a glass of wine with dinner.” It is a common lament. However, for me, I’ve never really fully identified with this form of fantasy. In my head I’ve never had the desire to have just one beer or one glass of wine. Heck, I’m an alcoholic. I HAVE wished that I could just get drunk once a week or once a month and function soberly the rest of the time.

Of course, this isn’t too different from a typical alcoholic fantasy. Heck, it may be the typical alcoholic fantasy. And it is because of this type of thinking, thinking that if I just got drunk once a week or once a month that I could functional normally the rest of the time, that requires that I do not drink alcohol anymore. For you this logic may be obvious but for me it was a long time coming.

I realized that as long as I wanted to get drunk at all I could never be free from this compulsion that is alcoholism. If I could (big if) successfully drink one night a week, how long would it be before I convinced myself to drink two nights a week. In time I would be drinking every night. Remember we alcoholics suffer from a progressive disease. Over time we always get worse, never better.

So, this formed the basis for me thinking that I needed to quit drinking. But the question still remained as to exactly how to quit drinking. And this would take some time and experimentation before I settled on an approach that worked for me.

One night I was out with friends. I had had a few too many drinks when I got in my car to head home for the night. I didn’t get very far. I got pulled over by a state trooper for a defective tail light and I suppose that in the course of talking with me this officer got the impression that I had been drinking. I never did make it home that night, instead I spent the night at the lovely county accomodations.

Because of this incident I was ordered by a judge to go to one meeting a week of alcoholics anonymous for twelve weeks. I can’t say I was pleased by this development. I never thought I was a good fit for A.A. It seemed cultish and weird and I just knew it was not for me. Never the less, with the nudge from the judge I had little choice to attend the meetings at least for a little while.

The first meeting was at a church. I was actually pretty nervous. I felt like I could use a drink. I wondered what are these alcoholics going to be like. What do they actually do at an A.A. meeting? I showed up mostly just to get my card signed. But, inside I was curious about the process for I already knew I was an alcoholic and needed to quit drinking once and for all.

After that twelve weeks of going to 12 step meetings, I congratulated myself on being finished and went back to drinking alcoholically. But the memory of what those AA’s had to say stayed with me. Nevertheless I drank for a couple of more years, my life slowly beginning to deteriorate as I missed many days of school and then work and made a drunken fool of myself countless times. It really had to get bad for me to admit I had a drinking problem.

When I realized that I needed to quit drinking I remembered my experience at those AA meetings two years before. I wondered just how do I get sober? Some people have said that in alcoholics anonymous that you often want the life that your sober alcoholics have achieved. This was true for me: The main thing I wanted was to learn how to quit drinking.

I started going to meetings but never got a sponsor. I was still, in my heart, too ashamed to ask for help even from someone who has been in my shoes. So I muddled through never really getting sober. At this point I realized that while meetings were good I might need something a little stiffer if I was really going to quit drinking. It was suggested that I go to an inpatient drug rehab. I resisted this at first, but eventually decided to go. And it made all the difference in the world.

When I got out, I continued to go to alcoholics anonymous meetings. I got an AA sponsor and began working the 12 steps. And I didn’t drink. I never really thought about it before but not drinking is not that complicated, in fact it is pretty simple. It’s just that it is not easy. Know what I mean?

I’ve been attending AA meetings for some time now and as long as I go to meetings I find myself not drinking. So what is the message in all of this, how do you quit drinking? It isn’t really that complicated so don’t complicate it. You need to go to 12 step meetings, you need to get a sponsor and you might need to go to a treatment center. It’s almost become a cliche really. But that is what works and what has worked for millions of people who are now clean and sober.

In the end that’s what kept me sober and I think that’s how to quit drinking.

Sometimes I hear that people are interested in free drug rehab. There can be many reasons that you might want to look into a free drug rehab program however it usually boils down to combination of two things: a drug problem and a lack of money.

Well this a natural combination that tends to go together more often than I am comfortable with. So, like many drug and alcohol addicts you have spent all your money and can’t afford rehab so you’re looking for a free option. Well, the news is not entirely good here but it’s not all bad either.

First, there is such a thing as free drug rehab. There are programs operated by charities and sometimes churches or the government which give you access to twelve step education and other things that you probably need if you are going to survive. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, there is some bad news in this equation as well. Free drug rehabs, having the virtue of being free, are pretty messy places. I have heard stories of rehabs run by the state or Salvation Army that are little more than flop houses for poor, often times homeless addicts. Now this is not to say that if someone is poor that they don’t deserve access to rehab or treatment. No, that’s not what I am saying at all. What I am saying however is that if you are not homeless you probably will not get too much out of a rehab that is designed to help this type of person.

However, if you are homeless then I bet that a free rehab would be better than what you are doing right now. At a free drug rehab you’ll learn the basics of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. This basis is found in the twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous, or the twelve steps of narcotics anonymous, and the many traditions and time-honored practices of that fellowship.

You can expect to learn about the twelve steps and how to take action to affect a positive change in your life. You’ll learn how to live without drugs and alcohol and how to function sober. However, a free rehab is not necessarily going to get you a job or place you in a halfway house that you can afford. Life is tough and so is early sobriety so you’re going to have to awaken to a few realities.

First, don’t expect paradise at rehab. A rehab or treatment center that doesn’t cost anything is not going to be any good in areas like comfort. Expect borderline unsanitary conditions in the restrooms, some violent and mentally ill homeless people as your peers, and terrible food. That much is pretty much guaranteed. However, that doesn’t mean that a free rehab can’t be effective. You don’t need good meals or pretty people to get clean and sober. You need people who are real and have been the same places that you have been. You can find this at a charitable drug rehab center like those run by the salvation army.

Remember to be courteous. The people who work at a free rehab are really selfless people. They are not getting rich by being there, they are helping you out of the kindness of their hearts. So treat them as such. Your counselor is probably making a very tiny stipend or salary and he has the job of trying to teach a very unteachable populace how to learn skills to prosper in life. It is a tough job and the last thing such a person needs is some drug addict acting like a diva so try to behave yourself and remember who is the homeless addict and who is the person trying to help you.

There is not any data that I have seem suggesting that free drug rehabs are more or less effective that their paid counterparts. I have only been to paid rehabs and I believe that I am biased because of that fact. I have not, to be honest, heard many good things about free drug rehabs. If I needed to go back to rehab (god forbid) I would inquire into a paid rehab long before I would look into a free one. But that’s just me.

If you don’t care too much about the things that I mentioned above then a free rehab can work wonders for you. Never underestimate the quality of the miracle that can take place if you simply let it happen. There is no need for you to be living like a degenerate on the streets as an addict. Chances are you’re better than that and this whole situation just sort of happened. The key is to get off the streets as soon as you can before you become adjusted to living that way. In that way a free drug rehab can be a life saver. It can be a place to give you three hots and a cot and some clean time to let you reprioritize your life.

There is no need to think a lot about what has happened and to get rooted in self pity. This is the time to take a chance to break out of a pattern of living that has not been working and begin anew in a life full of meaning and free of drugs and alcohol. I want to say that regardless of your financial means, sobriety is a gift that can be achieved by anyone. No one deserves to live in misery and poverty. And just because you are broke today does not mean that you have to be broke and drunk your entire life. As I said before, let the miracle happen.

Free drug rehab can truly save lives. Maybe even yours.