You have an addiction when you do not have control over the drugs and alcohol you are taking. It’s that simple. Don’t try to pretend you are not like other people who are out of control because you are. No control equals addiction.
Most addicts are confused about what recovery is or is not. If you have an addiction recovery requires you to become a different person because the person you are now is not working. Recovery requires you to become totally honest.
Many addicts will spend thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a year on your addiction. If you add it up over the years you could probably have bought a house.
Reasons recovery fails:
- You don’t accept you are an addict.
- You want to cheat on the cost of recovery so you look for the cheapest options. Big mistake because you get what you pay for in life.
- You expect to go into rehab but don’t do what you are asked to do and don’t want to change who you are. The residential relapse post-rehab can be up to 60%.
- You find a therapist and expect them to do all the work in changing you.
- You get angry with the professional helping you because you think you know better than they do but you don’t because you are the addict.
- You fail to take responsibility for your own life and want to stay acting like a small child – dependent.
Going into a government rehab may get the costs paid for you but there may be a waiting list for years. Also, unless you on the verge of psychosis you may not qualify for the funding.
You may have health insurance that might pay for the rehab stay but again recovery will fail if you are doing one of the reasons recovery fails.
If you cover the cost yourself you can expect to pay minimum of around $12,000 to $15,000 for twenty-eight day stay. Some rehabs charge up to $50,000. If you stay for 60 days then the costs are pro rata.
Add to that the cost of loss of income from not being able to work and pay your bills. This should include the strain that will put on your family, work colleges or the damage to your business.
So, you may decide to take none of those options and remain in addictive behaviors for years until your health fails and you become sick with cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, kidney failure, brain damage, heart failure, cancer and early onset senile dementia. And it is not if but when you get ill and you probably won’t see it coming.
You may decide recovery is not that important and you have more important things to do – wrong. If you have addictive behaviours they are damaging your body and life now, not just in the future.
The better management of costs for recovery can be to find a therapist who is an expert in addiction recovery. Pay the fees, without complaining, and do exactly what they tell you to do – when, how and where.
Specialists have trained for years and probably seen hundreds if not thousands of addicts helping them recover, during their career. It is what they do day in and day out. You might not even like everything they ask you to do but you do it anywhere.
You don’t try to teach the driving instructor how to drive so don’t try and be smarter than the therapist
As therapists our job is to get you clean and sober ASAP. Stay in therapy until the job is done because you also need to learn to remain clean and sober.
Recovery can be fast with the right treatment, particularly hypnosis, that teaches you and does not do it for you. You have to learn to do it for yourself. Engage 100% and the cost of recovery will be dramatically be reduced. Also, with the money you save not being an addict might even buy you a house.
You can visit Dr O’Keefe in the clinic in Sydney or connect with her from anywhere in the world by zoom.
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