Long Term Addiction Recovery

I was with a group of people in recovery or who work in the addiction or mental health fields, or just concerned citizens, for a get together at Lake Mayer basically to celebrate recovery. One of the main ideas discussed was ongoing recovery and community resources that support addiction and mental health recovery.

Sadly, there is lack of resources in most cities needed to address long recovery. Long term, residential recovery houses are sorely needed, but the question is how they’ll be funded. Before the question of funding is answered, though, the problem of understanding addiction and mental health must be resolved. Since I specialize in addiction, that is what I’ll discuss.

The activists in our community in Savannah, Ga. who promote recovery and try to spread knowledge about addiction are certainly committed, but they are few. You would think in 2015 that everyone has a good understanding of addiction, but that’s not the case. Even many people who have degrees related to healthcare lack a full understanding of addiction.

The old ideas about alcoholism and other drug addictions die hard — the moral weakness aspect still influences even very smart healthcare workers, or the idea that only people in the lower class are affected. Universities don’t teach addiction in a comprehensive way, except in some very specialized courses. Even in the specialized courses, addiction can be taught from the bias of psychology, subjugating addiction under mental health, rather than teaching addiction as a chronic brain disease which is basically medical in nature. Yes, addiction causes psychological problems, but the addiction is not caused by psychological problems — at least there’s no evidence of addiction resulting from psychological disorders. All the research points to a biological cause that then creates psychological complications.

If healthcare workers still treat addiction as either a moral weakness or a reaction to depression or anxiety, they’ll mistreat addiction, and the problem will fester and grow. Addiction has to be treated as a chronic brain disease that requires long term recovery management. The disease can go into remission, and with counseling, family support, community support and group support, a person can become happy and whole in recovery, but the addict is not cured in the sense they can drink and use drugs again moderately.

Long term recovery management is based on the idea that the recovering person will be drug free, although with some cases of dual problems, certain drugs are used that are low risky to addiction. The point, though, with recovery is to use all the available resources, and if a drug is needed to deal with depression or anxiety, the recovering person should seek out a doctor who understands addiction and recovery. This is called recovery management. All aspects a recovery person’s life has to be considered in relation to the problem with addiction. It sounds hard, and it can be hard, but the rewards are great, very great. Long term addiction recovery relies on recovery management.