Holistic Drug Treatment

Holistic drug rehab offers an alternative to traditional drug treatment methods. Is holistic treatment right for everyone, especially teens? No one method of drug treatment works for everyone, not even the ones with the highest success rate. But with holistic drug rehab, one gets the benefit of having several issues addressed at once. For teens, a holistic approach is worth looking into because it might be able to help them with other issues besides the drug addiction and give them a much stronger sense of self and well-being than a program that focuses on only the physical symptoms of drug addiction.

Some drug treatment programs follow the philosophy that drug addiction is primarily (and sometimes only) a neurological problem. These focus on treating the physical symptoms and chemically suppressing the urge to use the drug. A program like this doesn’t really address a person’s feelings or desires, or any psychological issues at play. Treating teens for drug addiction this way, for instance, would focus on the physical symptoms but not the reason the teen turned to drugs to begin with, like peer pressure or fear of failing in school.

A holistic drug rehab, however, takes steps to address the physical issues but doesn’t stop there. The person’s mental state is addressed; their emotions, urges and feelings are dealt with as having the same level of importance as any physical part of the addiction. Most holistic medicine, whether drug treatment or other treatment, also focuses on a person’s spiritual self, or soul, without any kind of religious affiliation. Each person’s individual spirituality is addressed to the degree with which he or she is comfortable.

A drug treatment center that takes a psychological approach toward addiction combines treating the physical symptoms with things like group counseling and talk therapy. These programs believe that the addiction is physical, but that it sprang from psychological issues like codependency, depression, feelings of inadequacy and other problems. The belief is that once the underlying cause is treated the addition can be overcome. Holistic drug treatment programs go one step further than these programs by treating the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of people and their addictions as having equal weight in the equation.

While physical treatment and talk therapy may also be part of a holistic drug rehab, alternative therapies like meditation, hypnosis and massage might also be used. The focus is treating the entire person instead of just symptoms or one disease or addiction.

Spiritual counseling might go hand in hand with focused meditation to help the person really experience what it’s like to be alone with his or her own thoughts and feelings, away from the effects of the drug, perhaps for the first time in years. Massage might go hand in hand with a specific diet designed to promote overall health and stop mood swings, cravings and depression. Holistic drug rehab can even go beyond treating the addiction into helping people realize that they can control their own health and well-being overall.