What Experts Say about Long-Term Addiction Recovery

Experts in the fields of substance use disorders, alcoholism, and public health agree: long-term residential recovery care is essential to successful and sustained rehabilitation from addiction.

Acute care or short-term models of addiction intervention, while attractive to healthcare insurers, do not provide the ongoing supports so necessary for success in recovery.

In fact, some experts suggest that acute care and short-term treatments might actually threaten lives; persons with addiction discharged without ongoing support after short-term treatment leave facilities with a lowered drug tolerance, putting them at risk for overdose upon relapse. (source: DETOXIFICATION FROM ADDICTIVE DRUGS AND ALCOHOL)

Persons with addiction leaving short-term care are at greater risk of suicide as they face the bleakness of life without mind-altering substances or viable alternatives.

The dynamic programs offered during long-term residential recovery care at Riverbank House immerse men in the joys and satisfactions of clean living in recovery, the natural highs that out-compete drug cravings, the joys of summiting a mountain at sunrise, the satisfactions of fellowship with other men, the hard-earned accomplishments of inner soul-repair and accountability for one’s past.

While medically supervised detoxification is often a necessary and wise beginning, it is merely the first of many steps in the journey. The work of recovery takes time. The gift of time.