Addiction treatment success

I’m often asked about NewDay Counseling’s addiction treatment success rate. It’s hard to give a good answer. First you have to define success. Is success when a person goes through treatment and never again drinks alcohol or uses some other drug? Is success measured by whether tangible areas of a person’s life improve, such as keeping a job, managing a budget, improved relationship with family, better health? If a person’s drinking every day before they come into treatment, then after treatment they have several short bouts of drinking lasting a few days each during the last 5 years, is that success?

Then there’s the problem of getting good information to determine addiction treatment success. We can call clients after they’ve left treatment and ask them certain questions, but are they telling us the whole story? If they say things are fine, are they embarrassed to say they’re still using drugs? Some research firms have stated results of 60% success rates if the treatment’s comprehensive. Some have reported lower rates of “success”. Again, it depends of what’s considered success.

I prefer to take a more individualistic approach. Each person coming through treatment is motivated by different factors. If NewDay Counseling as a treatment provider provides comprehensive addiction treatment and gives the client a comprehensive after treatment recovery management plan to continue the recovery process, then NewDay’s successful. If the individual listens, learns, and does the work to deal with their addiction and the consequences of their addiction while in treatment, then follows the after treatment recovery management plan, then that individual’s successful. This is the only way to honestly measure “success”, and even then we’re back to definitions of “comprehensive” and so forth. 

I can say from simple observation, that all clients who put forth a good effort in treatment, and commit to giving recovery a chance, and who follow up with after-treatment recommendations do well and have a very high addiction treatment success rate — I see these people years after treatment and they appear to look healthy, they have good jobs, and just appear in general to be “successful.” There are some thing that can affect success — one is choosing a treatment facility that provides quality treatment, and another is support after treatment. Recovery is a major lifestyle change that’s over the long haul, not just a two month program then leave it to chance.