Rehab Treatment in Harrisonburg, VA

The prospect of signing up to rehab can be scary. Not only do you fear that life will be dull without access to your favorite substance, you also resent the fact that once you finish with treatment, you will probably have no friends, considering that all your friends use. It can help, however, to think of rehab as an incredible journey. You don't just go in there to become a sober version of who you are right now; you go in there to become a different person altogether. Most people don't know this about rehab; they believe that it only gets them off their withdrawal symptoms. Real rehab programs, however, help you get to the root of the reason you turn to drugs, and they help you rebuild your mind from the ground up. It can be a very exciting time. When you look for rehab treatment in Harrisonburg, this is the kind of experience that you need to find.

Why Do You Need Rehab Treatment?

When you are addicted, there are different contributing factors. One part of the addiction phenomenon is physical -- exposure to drugs changes the brain's internal chemical makeup -- it becomes unable to chemically function without drugs. In detox, you come off drugs, and you give your brain a chance to chemically readjust. Doctors and addiction specialists give you medications to help keep you safe and comfortable through this high-risk process. At the end of the month (it could be longer), your brain regains normal chemical behavior. There is still psychological dependence to deal with, however.

Psychological dependence is the other half of the addiction phenomenon -- it comes about because drugs change the way the brain works. They create a form of permanent emotional attachment to drugs by acting on specific parts of the brain that control such attachment. It is the reason why it tends to be as hard for people who are addicted, to see the harm caused by this habit.

The emotional attachment puts down very deep roots into the psyche. If you don't address this problem, you are likely to be assailed by cravings, unexpectedly at some point past detox. Before you know it, they cause you to plunge headlong into addictive behavior all over again. The only way to keep yourself from succumbing to such a fate is to accept treatment under psychological drug addiction treatment programs.

How Do Rehab Treatment Programs Work?

Once drug detox in Harrisonburg concludes, you will probably need to accept psychiatric treatment for mental disorders that you may suffer from -- most people addicted do suffer from conditions such as anxiety, schizophrenia, or bipolar. The psychological programs that rehab treatment in Harrisonburg may want to put you through will usually only begin once your psychiatric conditions begin to settle.

There are two basic ideas to offering psychological treatment to recovering addicts. To begin, it's important to understand that attachment to addictive behavior that drugs cause in addiction is irreversible. The only way to keep such attachment from asserting itself is to keep it from surfacing.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can be of tremendous help in this area. It helps recovering addicts analyze the ways in which they are reminded of their addiction from time to time. Many people respond negatively to stress and emotion, and turn to drugs as a way to deal with these mental states, for example; at such addiction treatment therapy programs, they learn to find ways to avoid these challenges entirely.

Other ways to help keep the mind away from thoughts of addictive behavior may include cutting off any friends who use, and, in general, staying away from every environment that may take the mind back to memories to do with such behavior.

CBT Can Be Tremendously Useful in Other Ways

CBT aims to help recovering addicts look closely at harmful behaviors, and change them. People who suffer from addiction tend to struggle with many of these. They return to addiction because of anger issues, because of thought distortions that make it hard for them to resist impulses, or because of problems with self-reproach or guilt. A mental life of guilt, anger and self-loathing can be hellish and drive a person to drugs. It happens in millions of cases of addiction.

With CBT, you learn to recognize how exactly these flawed thinking processes work, and to assert control over them. It can be a life-altering experience to learn ways to gain control over one's own mind.

Many Other Therapeutic Approaches Exist

Motivational addiction treatment therapy helps recovering addicts gain a sense of engagement with their own treatment; moral reconation therapy helps them develop a sense of moral or ethical objection to the state that addiction reduces them to; art therapy helps recovering addicts get in touch with their feelings so that they may better deal with them. Each one of these approaches is important to rebuilding one's psyche.

It can take work to find rehab treatment in Harrisonburg that does justice to such complex therapeutic needs. When you find the right rehab and therapists, however, you can be that much more confident of never having to return to addictive behavior ever again. Call Harrisonburg Drug Rehab Centers now at (877) 804-1531.