Holistic Drug and Alcohol Treatment

Holistic drug treatment has become more popular in the last few decades, as holistic medicine itself becomes more widely accepted. Often shunned by the mainstream medical community for years, a holistic approach to treating a patient has in some cases become the mainstream treatment for certain ailments. Often, people suffering from psychiatric and psychological disorders benefit from a more holistic approach to treatment. Because of addiction’s strong ties to mental disorders, a holistic drug treatment approach can be an excellent choice for treatment.

Many people, after trying traditional rehab therapies more than once, try a holistic drug treatment program as a last resort, or because they know that traditional programs didn’t work for them in the past and they don’t believe they’re likely to work in the future, either. Holistic drug treatment has advantages for the person who’s tried several different programs that follow traditional methods but failed to stop using the drug.

Because holistic drug treatment is so different from traditional treatment, it can give the person who’s been through rehab hope that the difference in treatment will be what makes the difference for them. They might pin their hopes on one aspect of the treatment like spiritual counseling, massage therapy, ayurvedics or meditation, and think that maybe that was what was missing for them during previous attempts to overcome addiction.

While it might be a simplistic view to think that one particular thing could make that much of a difference, that very view makes the difference from some people. In other cases, it’s the variety of the holistic drug treatment approach that helps the person overcome their drug addiction.

Traditional treatment programs treat the physical symptoms and causes, the mental symptoms and causes, or sometimes both. But holistic drug treatment goes even further than the programs that combine physical treatments with psychiatric and psychological treatment. These programs focus on more than the physical and mental, but treat the spiritual and emotional sides of a person as equally important. Counseling and psychiatric treatments might go hand in hand with things like aromatherapy or ayurvedics designed to help alter a person’s mood and emotions, and things like spiritual counseling and meditation.

In addition, the physical parts of addiction are treated differently in a holistic drug treatment program. While Western medicine and drugs will probably still be used to manage withdrawal and physical symptoms, the physical body is treated as a whole entity. The symptoms are addressed, but the entire body is treated. Massage is a common therapy in holistic drug treatment programs, because it helps to stimulate circulation and relax the entire body. Exercise also helps overall health, and things like yoga might be prescribed for its health benefits and its mind/body connection.

While holistic can mean almost any type of alternative therapy, most programs have one thing in common: the treatment of the entire person, not just treatment of the addiction. This aspect of holistic drug treatment programs helps make them successful for some people who feel they’ve been failed by traditional Western methods.