After Care Program

It is important, before leaving addiction treatment, to establish that our recovery is on a firm footing. Upon completion of the 8 areas of the Freedom Center program, there are still at least three additional areas that must be addressed.

Facing the Substance

Although a drug and alcohol substance abuser may have done a thorough job in facing up to his responsibilities, gaining control of his life and beginning to make up damages, there is still the issue of restimulation of thoughts of using substances through images, paraphernalia, or even the substances themselves. How nice it would be if the alcoholic could leave treatment and never again be faced with a commercial, advertisement or situation involving alcohol. But the reality is that drugs and alcohol do exist in society.

Many a substance abuser does an excellent job in treatment, arrives home and opens up a drawer and there it is. The pill or bag that he forgot was there. His heart begins to quicken, his thoughts race. Not expecting it or prepared for it sometimes he crumbles and automatically does what he has done a thousand times before.

The Freedom Treatment Center drug rehab program is one of the only programs in the world that seeks to handle these situations directly, before they occur outside of a safe environment. Often called Cue Exposure Training in cognitive therapy, this process seeks to diminish the power of our conditioning to sights, sounds and feelings that have built up over time in our using.

At the Freedom Treatment Center, the student will, before completing the program and under the careful supervision of another face the things that still may have power over him and put him in a negative effect. Confronting the substances themselves (often in the form of exact look-a-like substances), the paraphernalia, and other things that trigger him is an eye-opening and very powerful element of the program. Only until the student claims to be “flat” or no longer under restimulation, and has had a powerful realization about his use can he be said to have completed this section.

Battle Plan

One of the biggest mistakes made by substance abusers who enter into substance abuse treatment is the idea that treatment has somehow “fixed” them and they no longer need anything else. With the Freedom Treatment Center drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, our students have learned how to apply actions in the form of conditions and steps to improve in life, but ideas and thoughts without a solid plan after treatment can often lead to disaster. Learning about recovery and then going home and applying the “sitting on the couch, watching TV all day with no job and no goals” form of recovery isn’t recovery at all.

Formulating a plan or “battle plan”, under the supervision of a counselor can be just the thing needed to prevent one from falling back into complacency. Making clear cut goals for the initial days, weeks and months ahead and, in addition, formulating the steps on how to achieve these goals is part of what the Freedom Treatment Center program teaches; that we are in control of our lives and can achieve what we want through productive actions, not through complacency.

Family Follow-up

An integral part of the Freedom Treatment Center drug rehab program is the family follow-up or aftercare. An aftercare specialist contacts the family and/or client weekly for up to a year upon completion of the program. This seeks to handle several things:

• It provides a continual contact with another member of recovery who can advise or help
• It maintains responsibility
• It provides help or assistance to the family members of a former substance abuser
• It allows us to help prevent the former substance abuser from stumbling and slipping into relapse.