The day you decide you no longer need aftercare therapies, no longer need to go to meetings, no longer need to see a psychologist; that is the day that the trouble often begins. You may believe that you are ready, that you have beaten your addiction, and that you no longer need to spend so much time in therapy; but they’ll tell you you’re wrong, and they KNOW what relapse looks like.
You’re never ready in the first year
Of course there may come a time down the road when you no longer need aftercare therapy, but that time will never come during the first year of sobriety, and probably shouldn’t occur for far longer than that. Maintaining sobriety is very difficult, and just by looking at the relapse rates of even the best of drug rehabs you can see how elusive long term sobriety can be. Yet those people that do heed professional advice, and that do maintain a commitment to long term participation in aftercare, have a statistically much higher recovery rate, and are far less likely to be reenrolling in drug or alcohol rehab for another pass at the same lessons of recovery.
Aftercare isn’t a “money maker”
Drug rehab is big business, and there is no denying that these facilities need your enrolment and your admissions checks for continuing operations, but aftercare is generally different. Most better rehab facilities include a long term participating in aftercare as a part of the price of entry, and they do this knowing how important a lengthy participation in the therapies of sobriety is. Aftercare is generally free of charge to graduates of a rehab; it is not offered as a “money maker” and is offered because it is so vitally important. Whether you go or you don’t, they have already been paid, and they continue to offer therapy only out of a real commitment to your success.
You go to drug rehab because you need help, because you can’t beat an addiction on your own; few can. You enroll in drug rehab to benefit from professional advice on recovery, and if you’re serious about sobriety, you’ll listen to what’s said, and try to make a serious change in your life. But too many people, although they pay a lot to get this professional advice (costs of drug rehab), fail to listen when these same professionals stress the importance of continuing participation in aftercare.
Take the advice of other addicts in recovery
Listen to your therapist, listen to those addicts with a few years of sobriety; take their message seriously. They tell you that aftercare is important for a reason; no one makes much money off of it, and since there is little commercial motivation to get you into aftercare, you can generally believe their recommendations of aftercare as an unbiased truth.
Continuing to abuse drugs or alcohol without seeking help is tragic, but so too is ignoring the advice of those people who know about addiction, want to help you; and so strongly recommend a lengthy commitment to aftercare.
