Addiction Treatment in Harlingen, TX

If you are addicted, you need to take steps to end your habit -- not eventually, but as early as possible. Even if you are in denial about it right now, if you know you will need to stop one day, you might as well do it tomorrow. It'll be easier, and you'll suffer from fewer long-term aches and pains, and complications of the liver and heart. At our center for addiction treatment in Harlingen, we see each day how hard it is for addicts to accept drug and alcohol rehab, because doing so would be an admission they've messed up.

You should know that such reluctance is merely the doing of the drugs in your brain, though. They are capable of changing the way your brain functions and thinks. You simply need to go out there and get started.

Drugs Change the Way You Think

Drugs act on several key brain systems in the process of producing feelings of pleasure. These are areas responsible for everything from positive emotion to learning, memory and motivation. While pleasure and euphoria are the immediate effects of drug use, there are slower, deeper effects that go on in the background.

When you use drugs, they affect the area of the brain responsible for the creation of motivation for life-sustaining activities such as food-gathering and sex in their attempt to create pleasure. These brain areas then latch on to the connection between drugs and pleasure, and create a new deep-seated instinct that sees the drugs as positive.

When your brain crosses the line into instinctive drug use, you become psychologically addicted, and experience cravings for drugs the way any normal person would feel cravings for sex. Just as it would be hard to convince anyone to abstain from sex, it's hard to convince yourself of abstinence from drugs.

Drugs change your brain in this way. While you may learn that it's important to stay away, the cravings can be very strong.. Stronger than cravings felt for natural activities. All resolve simply melts away.

Physical Addiction

When drugs repeatedly interfere with the brain's systems, they overwhelm its ability to deal with them. Rather than attempt to resist the changes caused by drugs, the brain simply adapts to them over a period of months. When you need to get off drugs, it can become exceedingly difficult.

Your brain has adapted to the presence of drugs by this time, and cannot function without them. If you still try, a number of brain disruptions occur, which are called withdrawal symptoms. These manifest as severe psychological disturbances, mood disruptions and physical effects. Hallucinations, cardiac irregularities and seizures appear in a sizable number of addicts attempting to quit.

Finding Addiction Treatment in Harlingen

Drug and alcohol addiction treatment isn't simply a matter of ending the use of drugs, and using the willpower to the stay sober. The brute force of the willpower route cannot work against the natural force that cravings constitute.

Addiction and the tendency toward substance abuse are complex forces, and need a multifaceted approach that addresses each one of the forces at play. Leaving even one out will usually result in a return of addictive behavior.

When you go to rehab, then, you need to make sure that you are offered a treatment plan that is built from the ground up with the right components, just for you (everyone has different needs), and delivered with competence and compassion. Both are vital to successful recovery.

The Components of the Average Addiction Treatment Plan

Dual diagnosis treatment: Much of the time, addictions appear out of a background of mental disorder. In these cases, the mental disorder can be said to cause substance abuse. If you have a mental disorder, treating it is key to ensuring an ability to stay away from substance abuse in the future. At our center for dual diagnosis treatment in Harlingen, we are able to deal with such addictions.

Detox: Going off drugs or alcohol produces dangerous withdrawal symptoms that need to be carefully managed by qualified medical staff. It's important to ensure that is the rehab that you approach treats detox on a residential basis, because otherwise, the complications of dual diagnosis, poor motivation and cravings can lead to poor outcomes.

Relapse prevention: Detox can help. It gives the addict a breather -- enough time away from cravings and withdrawal symptoms to regroup and get a plan together to stay away from substance abuse before the cravings return. They always return, because they are a phenomenon caused by changes in the physical brain, and permanent psychological changes. T

hey are part of you now. Detox does not fully cure. It takes a detailed and expertly deployed program for relapse prevention in Harlingen course that runs several months. It mostly consists of therapy of various forms to help address different problem areas.

Our center for addiction treatment in Harlingen is one of the best places to come to for scientific, evidence-based treatment offered with compassion. You should come and give us a try. You can see for yourself what effective drug rehab really looks like. Call us now (877) 804-1531.