In AA, each alcoholic is not only encouraged to see how they are like their fellow alcoholics, drug abusers and addicts, but they are actively dissuaded from thinking that they are different. It is said that a reason for many alcoholics’ failure to get and stay sober is that they think that the rules of the program don’t fully apply to them; that they are special. AAs have a term for this phenomenon which they call ‘terminal uniqueness’. The terminally unique are believed to have lower rates of success because they justify and rationalize their actions because they are “not like those other losers” or they might even believe that they are unlike any other human being on earth. They don’t conform to the program, and, believe it or not, accepting (conforming) to the program is pretty critical to achieving success within it.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that AA is a bit conceited in a their terminology. It is a fact of biology that all humans are, in fact, unique. This is simple science. For instance, have you ever met two individual human beings that were identical in all ways? No, because no two humans are exactly the same.

The problem comes from the fact that people have different depths to which they sink in their addiction. For some, they might have a drinking problem that is getting excessively worse, to the point that their spouse recommends (strongly) that they attend a drug and alcohol rehab. But, this person, may only drink at night, may not be suffering at work, may not have any health problems, etc. On the other hand, you can have a destitute drug addict or alcoholic, living on the street or in a shelter, dependent on charity to eat (and, of course, get high) and suffering dramatically in countless ways.

Both of these individuals can get help. Both can become more productive, healthier and happier. But to assume that the treatment model should be the same for both strikes me as foolish.

There is an old saying: They don’t want spiritual fulfillment in Ethiopia, they want rice.

It is important that you recognize where you are and where you are headed. In AA, it is usually said, that the true alcoholic will always end up on the street, given enough time, opportunity and alcohol. It is a truism, that the disease is progressive and gets worse over time, never better. In fact, it is this metric which old-timers use to decide who is a “true” alcoholic – as if this is a desirable trait – and who could have sobered up on their own.

The “true” alcoholic is a hopeless case without a program, or so the reasoning of the 12-step programs go. On the other hand, a hard drinker or problem drinker may want to stop drinking and can use the principles of the program to do so, but they are not doomed to alcoholic death if they do not.

Now, the point I am sidewinding towards is that there are many steps towards realizing that you have a problem and a lot of the process will depend on where you were when you started, where you are now and where you feel you will end up. It can be a tragedy when a mentally ill person loses years of their life living on the streets using and abusing. But it is, perhaps, a greater tragedy to see a mentally healthy person lose their career and possessions and end up on the street as a result of their addiction.

The point is that not every alcoholic, even without treatment is going to end up on skid row, regardless of what the dogma says. But every alcoholic, even every serious drinker, will suffer consequences as a result of their drinking that are serious and unnecessary — that is to say that these consequences would not have occurred if they had not been drinking or using. I don’t want to have to say something as basic as this, but I will: Drugs and alcohol are bad for your health, wealth and happiness. In short, drugs (alcohol is a drug) are bad.

So, when does one decide to seek help for their problem with substances? The answer is simple actually. I would recommend that one seek help for their addiction the moment that they realize that they have a problem. But this does not happen, so I propose an alternative. Try getting help when the suffering of using exceeds the suffering of not using.

As a final word, there is no point in reaching your potential as an alcoholic or drug addict. You do not need to destroy your health, career, become a prostitute, become a criminal, become destitute, etc. before you decide to do something about the problem. In fact, the earlier you are able to intervene on your own behalf and attempt to achieve sobriety, the more likely you are to achieve success.

Nobody gets a prize for hitting the lowest bottom.

In fact, nobody ever gets a prize when it comes to alcohol and drug abuse. It is simple equation: abuse + time = consequences. Of course, given enough abuse and time the consequence is always the same, that is death. Which will occur whether you abuse drugs or not, but it is likely to happen at a much later date with the intervening time being more productive, rewarding and pleasurable for you.

This post, has been a bit of a rambler. The thing about addiction recovery is that the solution is not linear. There will be good days and bad and sometimes a bad week will follow a good week. But over time, things get better, there are more good days, and life improves.

In a way that is what I do with this blog. I do not write a step-by-step guide to getting sober. There already is one of these (hint: there are twelve steps). I just write about issues that people considering drug and alcohol rehab might be thinking about. I try to share my experience as a person who is very experienced in this world and try to put things in perspective, especially for the newcomer. As a result, many of my posts are disorganized. I am going to try to make my posts a little more focused in the future because I think that they will be of more benefit that way.

For now, in the beginning, it is important that you become willing to consider the idea that your life doesn’t have to be the way that it is now. There is a way out. But the choice is yours alone and, sometimes, you need to think about it for a while.

Doing drugs is a tough business. Sure, it’s all fun and games at first. But, in time, it becomes a lot less fun and a lot more of a nightmare. There were times towards the end of my using days that I would actively hope that the cops would bust in arrest me. I was that miserable. I just needed something to happen, an event, that would allow me to break out of the lifestyle that was destroying me. I’ve been there. I get it.

So, there are a couple of options for those seeking drug addiction help. There is the most pressing, immediate need to get you off of drugs safely and then the more long term goal to provide you with an environment that supports your recovery. In my opinion, the best option to accomplish both goals is to check yourself into a drug rehab center. The reason that I can recommend rehab so wholeheartedly is because rehab will both get you off of drugs safely and with minimal discomfort and provide you some sort of framework to help ensure that you don’t wind up back on drugs when you get out.

If you are searching for drug rehab information, a good site to check out is drugfree.org which can provide you with a lot of baseline information about what type of services are available in your area. Drugfree.org can start to give you a glimmer of hope back. And rehab will really come through in this department. When I was in the midst of my active addiction, life seemed hopeless and meaningless. One of the great virtues of rehab is that, in very nearly every case, you are able to re-discover your hope and begin to think that life is worth living again.

I recognize that at this moment, if you are just beginning to look for addiction help, that life is probably not very rosy. I just want to remind you that your current feelings are not facts. No matter how bleak the situation looks right now, you will find that if you give yourself a chance to get some distance from it, gain some perspective, that you will start to see why life is worth living. I don’t suggest that this is likely to happen. Regardless of your present circumstances, life will surely get better if you take the steps to better yourself. Again, this is a guarantee.

But, there are those for whom rehab is simply not an option. Sometimes the cost of treatment is prohibitive and, for whatever reason, they don’t want to head off to a state subsidized rehab. First, of all, I want to reassert that even if you have to go to a free rehab center you chances are better than if you simply try to combat the beast on your own. Rehab separates you from the environment and circumstances that are killing you presently. If it has to be a free rehab, so be it.

Now, for those who simply refuse to enter rehab, I have a couple of suggestions. The first thing I would advise is that, regardless of the consequences, that you separate yourself from the present environment that you find yourself in. The fact of the matter is that your present environment contributes to your addiction. As they say is NA, you need to find new playgrounds and playmates. Therefore, if you can move in with your parents, sibling or sober friend, you should, by all means, do so.

Once you are out of the poisonous environment, you need to start inserting yourself into the solution. You need to attend as many twelve step meetings as possible. Go to AA, NA, CA… whatever. Just start to immerse yourself into the solution and the best way to do that is to surround yourself with people who are not drinking or using. You need to move in to the club. Go to at least three meetings a day. Hit a morning, an evening and a late night. Whatever. Just drink the fellowship like it’s water to a thirsty man. Find a sponsor, go to the coffee shop after the meeting, get as many phone numbers as possible. In time, you can return to your life and start to tie up the many loose ends that you have left behind.

But it will take time. You don’t want to ever return to your old, poisonous environment. You are not going to want to go back anyway. There may be a few friends or a girlfriend that you feel you can just not live without. However, I want to remind you, that you cannot only live without them, you must live without them. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but I know that if you continue to put one foot in front of the other, you will come to agree with me that a new life is the best solution.

If you find yourself in this desperate situation today I would advise you to pack a bag immediately and start looking for a rehab. Don’t worry about finding the perfect treatment center, you can almost just pick the first one that you see online. In many respects, most rehabs are the same anyway. So, don’t spend days or weeks doing research. Pick one. Call them. Drive there. End of story. You will be happy that you did.

But the thing about it is that rehab is very expensive. (I’ve written about the cost of drug rehab in a previous post.) The rehab I went to was $600 a day and they did not take my insurance. Naturally, I couldn’t afford this and it was only the goodwill of my parents that allowed me to get the treatment that I needed. I learned a lot at treatment, but one of the surprising things that I learned, that I did not know, was that there were a number of drug abuse programs already operating in my home town and, though rehab certainly helped, it wasn’t essential to check into a treatment center in order to get the help you need.

More than anything else, you will learn the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in rehab. Most rehabs are twelve step based, meaning that there methodology is derived from the AA program. And while a rehab can offer many other services, such as medication management, therapy, and treatment of a dual diagnosis, the meat and potatoes is the AA program.

What does this mean? In rehab you will learn about the twelve steps and twelve traditions as well read the Big Book of AA. You will learn the methods that have worked for millions of people and those come from the alcoholics anonymous tradition. But, now that I have been through it I can comfortably say, you don’t need to spend $20,000 to learn how AA works. You can learn this on your own for free (or a few dollars tossed into the basket at meetings.)

If you are in need of a drug abuse program, but are unable to afford rehab do not despair. If you are determined there is not reason you cannot get sober without rehab and the easiest way to do this is to get involved with a local recovery fellowship. For most people this means AA, though you could attend another fellowship such as NA or CA or, for behavioral addictions, SA, SLA, GA, etc. Just realize that it doesn’t really matter which fellowship you choose since they are all twelve step based and derive from the template that Alcoholics Anonymous created.

So, what I would recommend is that you throw yourself into your recovery with all the vigor that you used to throw yourself into your addiction. It is not difficult to find AA meetings at nearly any hour of the day. Most big cities will have at least one 24 hour club that never closes and several other large clubs that conduct AA meetings at least 5 times a day.

Therefore, free of charge, you can start hitting a morning meeting, a noon meeting, and an evening meeting. Sure, you will be completely lost as to what is going on at first, but you will be shocked at how quickly you can pick things up. In thirty days you will know just as much about how a twelve step program works as someone who headed off to an expensive drug rehab center. Also, one of the strongest traditions of AA (or any of the fellowships) is to help the new comer. For a number of reasons, AAs go the extra mile to try to make new comers feel welcome, to answer any questions they may have, get them a copy of the Big Book of AA, and help them find a sponsor. Though you may be a bit nervous upon entering your first AA meeting, you will be quite surprised how quickly you are made to feel at home.

There are other drug abuse programs that can help you for free as well, though none are quite as popular as Alcoholics Anonymous. Of these, Rational Recovery seems to have the best reputations. However, be advised that Rational Recovery, does not subscribe to the same twelve step formula as the other fellowships. But, if you feel that AA is not for you, it is another recovery program that you could try.

So, remember, that regardless of your financial situation, there are bound to be recovery groups in your area that can help provide the information and support that you will need to live your life free from drugs and alcohol. I personally, have had success with AA, but look around and find the right fit for you. Just remember, that you are going to need to use the same amount of determination and energy to overcome your addiction as you did to feed it for all those years.

Good luck to you.

Here’s the truth about the matter. Part of the disease of alcoholism has to do with self-centeredness. The alcoholic or addict cares about getting high or drunk and not much else. In the moment they don’t care about you or their responsibilites or something they said they were going to do last week. They just don’t care about those things. They care about themselves and getting their high. Usually, this type of pattern can last anywhere from days to years where the alcoholic or addict is simply doing what they need to do to enjoy the high. To the outside person however it looks like they are destroying their livers. Many simple duties like personal hygiene do not get taken care of and the addict begins to slip further into misery. So, you may have a loved one who is going on about their problems or getting into more severe problems be it legal or financial or what have you and you can barely sit by and watch this addict or alcoholic destroy themselves. Naturally the question comes up, if you are watching someone do this to themselves: You ask yourself how to help an alcoholic? It is an entirely reasonable question because you genuinely want to help. And I can tell you you are not going to like the answer, but remember it is coming from a drug addict and alcoholic myself so I know this is the right answer. Here it is:

If you want to help an alcoholic you need to speed up his or her suffering. You need to do whatever you can to expedite their process of hitting rock bottom so that they will then look for help because the suffering has gotten so bad that they, in all their self-centeredness, want to stop the thing (finally) that is causing the pain. So, wait, what exactly am I saying? I will say it again:

Here is the answer to your question how to help an alcoholic and, like I said you might not like the answer but that doesn’t change it. You help an alcoholic by increasing the rate of their decline into misery. OK, hopefully you are starting to see where I am coming from. But you may not like that answer. Well, you had better start accepting it, my friend. Alcoholism and drug addiction is a tough disease and until you start to take desperate measures to confront it then you are doing nothing but helping the problem. Remember, the alcoholic (through no fault of their own) is a self-centered creature. He wants to increase his pleasure and limit his suffering and in the process he will create tremendous wreckage in the lives of the people that he is close to. So, as soon as his life gets to the point that the suffering is worse than the pleasure is pleasurable he will begin to be open about getting help for his addiction. And I will discuss what to do at that point in a moment. For the time being you need to get it through your skull that the only way to help an alcoholic is to let them reach their bottom so that then they are willing to accept help, enter drug rehab and begin to effect some real changes in their life. So, let’s look at an example.

Your husband Jack drinks every night, misses work, beats you and steals money from you. Okay. In this situation the only way to help Jack is to stand up for yourself. Remove yourself from the situation. Stop calling into to his work and making excuses for him. Call the police and get him arrested file charges on him. Do what it takes to make his life miserable. Once he is homeless and has lost his job he might begin to see how unhappy he really is. Then, and only then, once his life is beginning to manifest the signs of hopelessness congruent to the level of misery and self pity that he is feeling, then you should begin to make offerings about going to drug rehab and beginning work in a 12 step program. Remember, that the only way to help an alcoholic is to make them accountable. The longer that you enable their drinking by providing money and assistance the longer it will take them to come to the realization that they are destroying themselves. Let’s look at another example.

Your son is an alcoholic. He lives at your house rent free, you give him money for booze and he doesn’t have a job. Well, the alcoholic is going to continue to exploit this situation for potentially years while you are wondering how to help an alcoholic the whole time. The longer you enable him to sustain his present form of living, even though it is killing you, the longer that he will suffer because circumstances will not allow him to face his alcoholism on its own terms. This is simply a mistake. You can not help an alcoholic by enabling him. You need to kick him out of the house, stop giving him money and let him fail on his own. Then let him know that if at any point he decides that he wants to check into drug rehab and do something about his alcoholism that you will help him. He simply will not want to go into treatment on his own if he hasn’t suffered enough yet. That much is clear as day to me. He needs to get to point in his life that he has hit a bottom and wants to make a change. So, I hope I have been clear about this. I know you want to help the alcoholic or drug addict in your life. And, I can assure you, that person wants help to, however they are not going to be ready to accept help until they are ready to make a change at which point I think it is imperative that you get them into a good drug rehab and let the healing process begin.

Now, if you don’t think you have the stomach or the guts to make your alcoholic loved one face the reality of the situation of their drinking then we have a problem. I know that it will take them many more years of drinking and drug use before they enter rehab if you continue to coddle them and take care of their problems. If you don’t think you can take a stand and stop enabling then I don’t blame you, just don’t operate under the illusion that you are helping an alcoholic. You are not. You are hurting them by not letting them face the consequences of the behavior that they have chosen and as a result they could be in an alcoholic stupor for many more years. I will answer this question again, how to help an alcoholic? Help an alcoholic by stopping helping them.

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.

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.

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.

Your Texas drug rehab comes in several varieties. You have a free drug rehab, a middle of the road drug rehab, and an expensive drug rehab. There are a number of options contingent upon your budget.

A major consideration will be whether or not you have medical insurance. Many types of medical insurance will cover some or all of your drug rehab in texas, however in some cases insurance will be of little or no help and you will have to pay out of pocket.

In Texas, a free drug rehab comes in two varieties. There are rehabs generally covered by the state government or there are rehabs that are operated by charities like the salvation army. The thing about a free rehab in Texas is that it will not have top facilities.

In drug rehabs, like in the rest of life, you often get what you pay for off. In a free rehab, the safety and cleanliness of the facility are often in question. Also you have the issue of the clients that are attracted to a free drug rehab.

In Texas a free drug rehab is just about the last resort of a person with a addiction or alcoholism. As a result these facilities often attract the destitute. Extremely low income people and homeless individuals make up the population at a free drug rehab.

As a result, many of the individuals that might need a drug rehab in Texas, are put off by these circumstances and don’t want to attend a free rehab because of the quality of the facilities and counselors. Never the less, people do recover in free rehabs. In Texas there are no statistics about what has a higher success rate, a free or paid rehab.

However, from my experience, I am confident in saying that a paid rehab seems to be more effective in treating addiction than a free rehab. Maybe this is because of the fact that some people often choose to crash in a free rehab because they have no place to go otherwise.

The next option up from a free drug rehab, is what I call a middle of the road rehab. You will not get the fringe benefits of an expensive rehab, but a middle of the road rehab can definitely help you achieve your goals of sobriety. But, remember in Texas, you get what you pay for generally.

Therefore, I am confident in reporting that a middle of the road drug rehab might be the best combination of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

You might expect to spend anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 for these middle of the road rehabs in Texas. You can find high quality counselors with a lot of experience in recovery and of course a personal history of overcoming their own addiction issues.

The next option, up from the middle of the road rehab, is the high end drug addiction treatment center. In Texas there are not any “resort” rehabs. However, a high end rehab will be significantly more pleasant than a middle of the road rehab.

You can have a more comfortable bed as well as more amenities such as a swimming pool, more modern facilities, better food, and more access to psychiatrists and other health care professionals.

Additionally, texas drug rehabs vary in effectiveness. However, there is no evidence that a high-end rehab is any more successful than a moderately priced rehab in actually treating addiction. The thing about it is that a top-notch rehab is certainly not any worse in addressing your chemical dependency issues.

Of course the cost of rehab can be the main determinant in where exactly you can go to get help for your drug addiction. In Texas the a rehab can cost up to $30,000 for a five week stay at a place like La Hacienda in Hunt. If your insurance is not contributing to tab then that price can become unreasonable for many addicts and alcoholics quite quickly.

You need to weigh the cost of rehab carefully when picking one out. You don’t want to develop a resentment because it may lead you to relapse on drugs and alcohol down the road and that is the last thing that we would want.

I have also found that a Texas drug rehab can have some strange rules. While you must get access to a phone in a rehab in Texas there can be some funny rules about how you can use it. In some rehabs you only get a short time in which to make phone calls.

I’ve seen as little as fifteen minutes a day be set aside for making phone calls. Other rehabs will allow you to make phone calls at your own leisure so long as you are not required to be in group or a lecture at that time.

Other amenities can include sports equipment and how often you get to leave the facility, if at all. I have found that some Texas drug rehabs, will allow you to leave the grounds of the rehab with some regularity while others will completely prohibit you from ever leaving during your stay. This simply varies from rehab to rehab.

Often times, and nearly in every case or circumstance, even if the treatment center does allow patients to leave the rehab facility you will not be allowed to leave until you have spent a significant amount of time in the facility. In other words, the day that you arrive at the rehab, you should not expect to be excused to go to an outside alcoholics anonymous meeting.

There are a great many treatment centers to choose from. When choosing a Texas drug rehab it is important that you do your homework.

I’d always thought that I could dip my toe into the pool of illicit drugs. I, of course, never wanted to become an addict. I thought, maybe I can just use drugs occasionally. I’ll be a weekend warrior, I thought. And for a while I was able to contain my use.

I was slow in some ways to develop full blown addiction symptoms. I didn’t become an addict overnight and I sure wasn’t going to admit my problem that quickly either. For me, it was a slow progression from regular drinking to occasional marijuana abuse to heavy marijuana use to sampling harder drugs. Once I got to the street drugs it actually didn’t take too long for my world to begin to unravel. It was the getting there that took a moment however.

For me it was cocaine that eventually wrought havoc on my life. But it really doesn’t matter what your drug of choice might be. The progression generally follows the same path into greater despair and unmanageability.

Before cocaine I had been able to hide my bad behavior quite well I thought. I was drinking a twelve pack or more of beer a day and smoking marijuana about as often. I could sense, in all the little ways, that things were getting worse. There had been the DWI, the semesters I had to withdraw from college, and of course the frequent nights riddled with embarrassment. But I was just having fun, I thought.

But, if I was to be honest, I needed help for drug abuse before I even started abusing cocaine. I had become the picture of unmanagibility, but I wondered if anyone else had noticed.

Shortly before I first sampled cocaine I went to a meeting with a psychiatrist who himself is a recovering alcoholic/addict. I’d never discussed my binge drinking, pot use or general mismanagement of life with him. Still, he knew something was wrong. He asked me pointed questions about my drug and alcohol use and I answered half honestly.

He was alarmed. He recommended that I check into a treatment center, a drug rehab, for treatment of my addiction. But, it was too soon. I was not ready to listen. I calmly turned down his offer of rehab. I may need to quit, I thought to myself, but I certainly don’t need to check into rehab to do it.

Within a couple of months, while on vacation and at an inebriated moment, I was presented with the chance to try powder cocaine. I had this feeling that things had already gone to hell and I figured what do I have to lose?

As it turns out, I had a lot to lose. Though my drinking and pot use had progressed to the stage that professionals were suggesting that I enter rehab, I was still holding it together pretty well. I had even quit drinking and using altogether on my own for a short stretch. My finances were holding up and, though I felt terrible, I thought that I was managing just fine.

Everything changed when I first tried cocaine. Within a few short months, I had picked up a serious coke habit as well as nearly drained my bank account. I had found new “coke” friends with whom I had little in common and my behavior was becoming very erratic.

Within eight months of that first vacation use, things had completely flown off the handle. I was in a serious financial hole. I had lost weight and was beginning to experience concerning health problems. I was getting desperate.

But I was still too stubborn to accept help for drug abuse.

Looking back it was indescribable. I was miserable, I mean really suffering. However, I held on to my ego with both hands. If I couldn’t do this myself what kind of man was I?

Things got quite a bit worse and finally I called my psychiatrist and asked him about rehab. I felt so humiliated, so defeated. But, I was contemplating suicide I was so miserable. Things had truly hit rock bottom.

With my heart in my throat, I asked my shrink for help for drug abuse. I realized that somewhere, deep in my heart, I wanted to regain my hope for life. I knew that I could find it if I just gave myself a chance, a break from the three day binges, thousand dollar nights, and strip club ridiculousness.

He recommended a top treatment center and I packed a bag and made my way there. I was too defeated at that point to find my hope yet. I was simply hoping that if I could get away from the disaster that I drugs and alcohol had made of my life that I might give myself the chance to want to live to again.

What happened was remarkable. It wasn’t overnight and it wasn’t without work, but I found my hope at that rehab in Texas. Away from the hectic life I had been living, I got a break from the insanity. Within a couple of weeks I came to realize that my life had not always been a panicked hell.

There had been moments of serenity in the past. I had simply lost my way. It was a refreshing feeling that I obtained, learning once again that life can be worth living. I had regained my hope.

Going to rehab, actually turned out to be the best thing I had ever done for myself. It’s funny that I had needed it for several years before I finally got there. I was somewhat upset with myself that I allowed myself to waste so much of my life drowning in misery.

But, for me, it took what it took. I needed to fall down to the point that I was defeated, that I was willing to accept the help that was being offered me. Once, I got to that point I had nothing left to gain from holding onto my pride. I was ready to make a change.

First of all, alcoholics, and basically recovery people everywhere, believe that alcoholism and drug addiction are progressive diseases. Over any significant period of time alcoholics and addicts always get worse, never better. Therefore you may be wondering how a functional alcoholic might even be possible. If we are always getting worse than a functional alcoholic is just a few drinks away from failing to function. We’ll return to this thought in a minute.

In the meantime let’s address just what it means to be a functioning alcoholic. Do you think that someone you know and love might be one? Or perhaps you are worried that you yourself fit the bill.

A functional alcoholic is a person who has built alcohol into the routine of their everyday life. This person definitely drinks regularly, probably everyday and probably at a set time. However, believe it or not, the fact that a person drinks frequently, or even everyday, does not make that person an alcoholic.

An alcoholic is different from a hard drinker. A hard drinker may consume alcohol at what seems like proportions reserved for only the harshest of alcoholics. However, this person, the hard drinker, can often moderate on stop their drinking if presented with a serious enough reason to do so. This is a key point. The alcoholic can not do this on their own.

So, let’s say that you get off work everyday at 5:00 and by 6:00 you are working on a bottle or twelve pack that will carry you late into the evening. This is your routine and you stick by it religiously. You’ve never been to drug rehab or attended a 12-step meeting. Sure, your drinking may have caused you to get into a few scrapes but you haven’t had any serious consequences.

Then one day a serious consequence does present itself. Maybe your health begins to fail or perhaps you are faced with some sort of legal consequence. You decide it would be best to just quit for a while. If you make this determination to abstain from drinking and are able to successfully put down the bottle then you are not a functional alcoholic. You are not even an alcoholic. You are merely a hard drinker. Congratulations you’ve just saved yourself a trip to rehab!

However, and this is where the question from above comes into play, if you are unable to quit on your own when faced when sufficient reason to do so then you are in fact an alcoholic. Despite the fact that your drinking has not cost you a job or your family, the fact that you cannot abstain in the face of overwhelming consequences indicates you are an alcoholic. Welcome to the club…

So, can you be a functional alcoholic? I’m afraid not. Returning to the point from above, we believe (and all evidence strongly suggests) that alcoholics do not hold steady in the disease of addiction. The fact that you have never lost a job due to your drinking does not mean that you will never lose a job due to this affliction. You just haven’t lost a job yet.

And, on that note, it is extremely for alcoholics to retain their jobs and, to a lesser extent, their families long after the disease has progressed to the point that their performance has been impaired. The job is the last thing to go. Always! We’re very good at maintaining the things that allowed us to abuse alcohol and, considering our immense talents at manipulation and deception, we are generally allowed to hang on to things far longer than actually does us any good.

Like I said, over any significant period of time we alcoholics always get worse, never better.

It is possible for one to graph the consequences of one’s drinking. Perhaps thus far your consequences have been minor or trivial. But look to the trend. Are things getting worse? You can be a “functional alcoholic” for years but if you are honest with yourself you will confess that things have been deteriorating over time.

Now, remember that just because someone may drink frequently it does not necessarily follow that they are an alcoholic. If given proper reason, they may be able to stop or moderate on their own. However, I must also say that in my experience the “hard drinker” is a rare bird. Most people who drink everyday are not simply hard drinkers. They have a problem with alcohol.

And this brings us back to the point of the article. If you are believe you are a functional alcoholic I have some unfortunate news for you. You will not be functioning at your present level very much longer. Not to be downer, but it simply isn’t possible. For to be an alcoholic means that you are getting worse so long as you remain in active addiction. Therefore, functional alcoholics don’t really exist. The functional alcoholic is merely an alcoholic on a pit stop on the path to spiritual and physical oblivion or he is not an alcoholic at all.

So, if you are honest with yourself and see that over time you are becoming less “functional” than you used to be, I have good news. Alcoholism is a disease that can be arrested with proper treatment. There is no inevitable path to ruin, unless you leave the disease untreated. There are numerous rehab facilities that can get you your way. You simply have to look into them.

And if you are merely a hard drinker, if you merely enjoy your drink, then I say to you: Enjoy! You’re not one of us!