Reminder: You Can’t Outsmart Addiction

All too often, smart people wind up in our Suboxone addiction treatment program because they believed that their high intelligence would ultimately protect them from addiction. But no one is too smart to be an addict. In fact, research suggests that smart people are more prone to addiction than people of average and low intelligence – according to one study, people who have higher IQs in childhood are more likely to drink heavily as adults.

Very intelligent people may be more likely to use drugs, and they’re also less able to assess their own risk of winding up in a program like our Suboxone addiction treatment program. When they do develop a problem, they’re less likely to admit it and get help. They’re also harder to treat when they do find their way into a program. Let’s take a look at some of the ways high IQ actually holds people back in our Suboxone addiction treatment program.

You Assume Your Intelligence Protects You

Very intelligent, well-educated people often assume that their intelligence and education protects them from the addictive effects of drugs. They think they know more about themselves, the drug in question and addiction in general than people of lower intelligence, so they talk themselves into believing that they won’t get hooked.

Highly intelligent addicts intellectualize; they spend their time over-analyzing meaningless details of their drug use and picking apart logical flaws in the treatment approach in an attempt to show that they don’t have a problem. Because very intelligent addicts are often well-educated and high-functioning, they are able to persist much longer in the belief that they have their addiction under control.

You Will Refuse to Follow the 12-Steps

It’s said that the 12-Step program isn’t for everyone, and it’s also said that that’s because some people are too smart for it. Very intelligent addicts struggle in treatment – whether it’s a 12-Step support group or our Suboxone addiction treatment program – because they don’t want to accept the knowledge and wisdom of others. They see themselves as intellectually superior to the other recovering addicts in their program, and they use that perspective to justify not taking the recommendations sponsors, treatment professionals and other addicts give.

Because of this, very smart people in recovery have to learn hard lessons – like avoiding old partying friends, for instance – for themselves. They must experience multiple relapses before they can accept that the recommendations they’re receiving in treatment are valid.

The very intelligent people we help in our Suboxone addiction treatment program over think every aspect of addiction. Because they are accustomed to relying on their own intelligence, logic and willpower, they really struggle with concepts like humility, which are necessary for recovery to occur.

Suboxone Addiction Treatment Helps the Intelligent Addict

None of this is to say that there’s no hope for the intelligent addict in our Suboxone addiction treatment program. These addicts can benefit from the support and fellowship of other professionals like themselves – people who they can respect and admire. Intelligent addicts need feedback from intelligent peers in order to recover.

Intelligent addicts can succeed in our Suboxone addiction treatment program by developing emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. These are often lacking in addicts, whether they are intelligent or not. Emotional intelligence helps improve relationships and interactions with other people, lowers stress levels, and protects against depression and addiction. Emotionally intelligent people are much happier with their lives in general.

No matter how smart you are, your intelligence alone can’t protect you from addiction. The most an intelligent addict can hope for is to maintain a high level of functioning due to his or her intelligence and advanced professional training. But addiction isn’t a disease you can think your way out of – you have to feel your way out of it, and that involves developing some emotional skills and being open to the wisdom and experiences of others.

If you or someone you love is struggling with opiate addiction, our Suboxone maintenance program can help. We offer affordable drug detox solutions that can get you back to living a normal life within days.

Call us now at 888-699-5679 now to learn more about our program and how it can help you, or someone close to you, reclaim a normal life.


Addiction Does Not Discriminate

Addiction is a disease that knows no boundaries. While every one of us would like to believe that addiction could never happen to us, the truth is that it can. Every single person we help in our outpatient detox Delray Beach program believed at one point that they, too, could never succumb to addiction. But addiction affects people of all ages, backgrounds, professions and social classes. No one is immune.

Addiction Creeps up on You

Especially in its early stages, addiction has a way of creeping up on you. You can abuse substances regularly for weeks, months, or even years, but it’s not until you try to stop that you realize you’re addicted. Some people in the early stages of addiction will even test themselves, telling themselves that they will stop for a few days, a few weeks or a few months just to prove that they aren’t really addicted to their substance of choice. In the early stages of addiction, you may not even feel any withdrawal symptoms, even after abusing a substance regularly for a period of time.

Many substance abusers think that they are immune to addiction because they have a naturally high tolerance for the effects of drugs and alcohol. While it’s true that some people have a naturally high tolerance for substances, that doesn’t mean they are immune to addiction. In fact, these are the people who are most likely to find themselves in need of our outpatient detox Delray Beach program. Folks with a naturally high tolerance for the effects of alcohol and drugs drink the most and drug the most, thinking that since they don’t feel their effects as strongly and don’t experience physical withdrawal symptoms, that means they don’t have to worry about becoming addicted.

In the end, it’s the people with a naturally high tolerance for drugs and alcohol who become the most heavily addicted. Of course, that’s not to say that anyone could find themselves in need of our outpatient detox Delray Beach program.

Address More than Your Substance Abuse Habits with Outpatient Detox Delray Beach Program

A big part of our outpatient detox Delray Beach treatment program is helping recovering addicts to understand that addiction is about more than just your substance abuse habits – it’s also about your attitude toward substances. It’s true that a small percentage of people who become addicted were born with brains naturally prone to addiction. But that natural predilection accounts for only about five to 10 percent of people who ultimately succumb to drug addiction.

What about the other 90 to 95 percent? Those people develop addictions because they believe that addiction couldn’t possibly affect them, or because they turn to substances as a coping mechanism when times get tough.

That’s why so many addicts are able to give up their substance of choice for a few days, weeks or months without experiencing significant psychological or physical withdrawal symptoms. These addicts know that their self-imposed abstinence from drugs or alcohol is only temporary. Knowing that there’s an end in sight makes it easy for some addicts to exercise the self-control necessary to abstain from using drugs or alcohol for a short period of time. However, just because you can manage to not get high or drink for a week or two doesn’t mean you don’t need help from our outpatient detox Delray Beach program or other addiction treatment.

In order to truly recover from addiction, you need to address the underlying emotional and psychological issues behind your addiction. This is known as “emotional recovery” and it is every bit as important as abstinence from drugs and alcohol. Emotional recovery helps you learn to acknowledge, accept, manage and deal with your emotions – all of your emotions, even the scary, painful ones. When you recover emotionally from addiction, you learn how to function as an adult member of society, take responsibility for yourself and become independent. When you enter our outpatient detox Delray Beach program, you will receive intensive counseling aimed at helping you achieve a full emotional recovery from addiction.

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction, you’re not alone. Millions of other Americans also struggle with substance abuse issues. Our outpatient detox Delray Beach program can help.

Call 888-699-5679 today to learn more.


Six Tips to Resilience in Recovery

A problem we see again and again amongst the addicts who seek help from our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program is a lack of resilience. Resilience is a term psychologists use to describe a person’s ability to bounce back from stress. All too often, people slip into addiction because they lack the coping skills that allow them to be psychologically and emotionally resilient, and recover more easily when things get tough.

As you recover from addiction in our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program, you will need to build your coping skills and develop more resilience. You probably learned unhealthy, negative survival skills when you were growing up, like disconnecting from your emotions, dissociating and abusing substances. The good news is that it’s more than possible for you to replace those negative survival skills with positive ones.

The key is to forge connections between yourself and others. You also need to take good care yourself and give yourself the chance to appreciate life – make your happiness a priority. Here are some tips from the team at our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program to help you get started.

Care for Yourself

You won’t be able to accomplish much, in our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program or in life, if you’re not taking care to see that your basic needs get met. Your ability to stay clean and manage stress depends on your commitment to good self-care. Eat right, exercise often, make time for the things and people that make you happy and get plenty of rest each night.

Cultivate Your Support System

Social support is the strong person’s secret weapon. A person who copes well with stress and hard times is a person who has many friends, loved ones and peers to turn to for support. This is why it’s important for you to develop social skills as part of your addiction treatment program. That’s also why 12-Step or other recovery support group meetings are so highly recommended.

Peers in recovery can offer you valuable support and experience as you get back on your feet. They can empathize with your struggle to resist cravings and offer advice about things that have helped them. Friends, family and loved ones can help you learn to enjoy life without substances, and learn respect, trust, empathy and appropriate behavior.

Set Goals for Yourself

Goals give you something to strive for and help you feel more confident when you accomplish them. Staying clean is a goal you’ll share with others in our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program. Taking your recovery one day at a time will help you learn to break larger goals up into manageable chunks.

Find Purpose in Suboxone Treatment Delray Beach

Having a strong sense of purpose will help you stay strong in the face of sense and keep you from taking yourself too seriously. You might find a sense of purpose from working towards your goals, sharing your strengths with others, helping the community, pursuing professional or academic achievement, helping other addicts or building a connection with your higher power.

Build Problem-Solving Skills

As you go through addiction counseling in our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program, you’ll start to develop your problem-solving skills. Problem-solving skills allow you to tackle challenges without taking actions that might make them worse, like using drugs. When you develop your problem-solving skills, you’ll be able to hold yourself accountable and take the steps you need to take to improve your own life. As you learn to anticipate the consequences of your actions, avoid the lure of instant gratification and solve your problems, you’ll become more confident and feel better about the future.

Embrace Disappointment

No matter how hard you try, you can’t escape disappointment. An important part of your addiction treatment will be learning to remember that challenges and setbacks are normal, and that they can be overcome. Instead of exaggerating setbacks and treating each challenge as a life-ruining catastrophe, embrace them as learning experiences. It’s when you find the lessons in adversity and persevere through the tough times that true strength and resilience appear.

Opiate addiction is one the rise, but our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program can help you overcome addiction and return to leading a normal life. Don’t become another statistic.

Call us today at 888-699-5679 and find out how Suboxone maintenance therapy can help you or someone you love.


Relapse Prevention Strategies

No matter how hard you work during your time in our addiction treatment Delray program, you still run a high risk of relapse after you leave us. Preventing addiction relapse requires a plan, and we work hard to give you the tools you need to succeed. 12-step programs and recovery support group meetings are useful, but they’re far from your only option when it comes to relapse prevention.

Long-Term Recovery Counseling At Addiction Treatment Delray

Our addiction treatment Delray Beach program lays the foundation for your long-term recovery from addiction. But if you think that residential addiction treatment is going to cure your problem in just a few weeks or months, you’re mistaken. Addiction is a chronic disease, and it requires ongoing care.

That’s why many people who leave inpatient rehab in Delray Beach enter a local sober living facility. These facilities provide a substance-free, supportive environment for addicts in the early stages of recovery. When you first graduate from our program for addiction treatment in Delray Beach, you will continue to need recovery support and comprehensive treatment to avoid relapse. If you’re one of the many recovering addicts who doesn’t have a supportive, substance-free home environment to return to after rehab, spending several months, a year or even longer in a sober living facility could be essential for helping you adjust to your new drug and alcohol free life.

Even if you don’t choose to enter a halfway house, you’ll still need ongoing addiction treatment in the form of an outpatient program, recovery support groups and individual counseling with a therapist who understands addiction issues. The longer you stay in treatment, the lower your risk of relapse.

Mental Illness Treatment

Around half of people who struggle with addiction also have another mental health disorder, like depression, bipolar disorder or anxiety. These dual diagnosis patients often find themselves going back to rehab over and over, as their untreated and often undiagnosed mental health symptoms mean they will almost certainly experience a relapse after treatment. If you are suffering from a mental health disorder in addition to your substance abuse disorder, you need mental health treatment in order to experience real and lasting recovery from addiction.

At our addiction treatment Delray program, we understand the special needs of dual diagnosis patients. We are prepared offer you the treatment you need so that you can recover from both your mental health disorder and your substance abuse disorder.

Emotional Regulation Training

It’s easy enough to tell a recovering addict to avoid the people, places and things that remind him or her of drug and alcohol use. It’s a little harder to give that recovering addict the skills necessary to put that advice into practice.

Addicts often have trouble regulating their emotions – that’s why they turned a substance abuse in the first place, to cope with difficult feelings that they don’t know how to control or manage. But, in order to succeed in recovery, school, work and life, you need to be able to not only regulate, but manage and control your emotional responses. You also need to be able to ask for, and give, help.

Our program for addiction treatment in Delray Beach offers recovering addicts the life skills training they need to learn to regulate their emotions, and manage their feelings without acting out. We go beyond the mere educational approach to offer recovering addicts hands-on experiential therapy. This treatment allows recovering addicts to learn new emotional and interpersonal skills by interacting with others, in a safe and supportive environment.

Maintenance and Anti-Craving Medications

Modern medical science has given us a number of medications that can be used to prevent addiction relapse. Naltrexone, for example, can be used to negate the effects of alcohol or opiate drugs. Acamprosate is another prescription drug that’s used to reduce the desire to drink in alcoholics, and to help restore the brain to normal functioning in sobriety. In addition to helping manage cravings, these drugs make it easier for recovering addicts to bounce back from possible relapse, regain control of their substance abuse, put into practice the skills they learned in our addiction treatment Delray program and return to recovery.

For opiate addicts in particular, maintenance medications like Suboxone can be useful to help recovering addicts avoid withdrawal while they get the treatment they need. Once on Suboxone, recovering opiate addicts are able to return to a normal lifestyle pretty much right away.

It’s never too late to recover from addiction for good, no matter how many times you’ve suffered a relapse.

Call our addiction treatment Delray program today at 888-699-5679 to find out how we can help you achieve a lasting recovery.


Coping with Depression after Alcohol Detox

It’s normal for alcoholics to experience a grieving period when they first enter recovery. An alcoholic who is not also suffering from depression will grieve for the drink itself. If you are suffering from a dual diagnosis of depression and alcoholism, the normal feelings of grief that most alcoholics experience when they enter an alcohol detox Delray Beach program will be exacerbated. Your addiction treatment program will need to include treatment for your depression symptoms, and you will need to manage your depression carefully in order to avoid relapse.

It’s not uncommon for people with alcoholism to also suffer from depression – in fact, there’s some evidence to suggest that drinking alcohol may exacerbate feelings of depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, many people who are already experiencing mental health symptoms abuse substances in order to cope. When substance abuse goes on heavily enough for long enough, addiction is inevitable.

Old Feelings Coming to the Surface

Alcoholics drink in order to escape from unpleasant feelings. When an alcoholic with a co-occurring disorder stops drinking, all those painful, depressive feelings that he or she has been suppressing for years bubble up to the surface rapidly. For dual diagnosis alcoholics in our alcohol detox Delray Beach program, this can lead to intense psychological discomfort.

Finding Depression Support in Recovery

If you’re like many of the dual diagnosis alcoholics in our alcohol detox Delray Beach program, you may feel that you don’t fit into the normal 12-step program. Often, people in the 12-step program frown upon the use of psychiatric medications for people in recovery, even though a recovering alcoholic who suffers from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or another mental illness needs these psychiatric medications in order to be well.

But that’s not the only reason why you, as a dual diagnosis recovering alcoholic, may feel out of place in the normal 12-step program. All too frequently, people who have never experienced mental illness for themselves do not understand the thoughts and feelings that a person with depression, anxiety, or another mental illness struggles with from day to day.

You need the support of others who can relate to everything that you are going through, both with your recovery from alcoholism and your mental illness. During and after your time in our alcohol detox Delray Beach program, you need to seek out a 12-step support group specifically for people with dual diagnosis issues, or an alternative recovery support group that caters to people struggling with dual diagnosis issues.

Tips for Recovering Alcoholics Coping with Depression in Alcohol Detox Delray Beach Programs

As a recovering alcoholic struggling with depression, you could be at a higher risk of relapse if you don’t seek the treatment and support you need to manage your mental illness. To some extent, the steps you take to manage your dual diagnosis are very similar to the steps a non-dual diagnosis graduate of our alcohol detox Delray Beach program would take to avoid addiction relapse.

You will need to work on building a sober support network. Choose sober friends who support your recovery, and who understand what it’s like to suffer from depression. Include other dual diagnosis recovering alcoholics in your sober social support network. As a person suffering from depression, you may find it hard to open up and reach out to make new friends. Start with the friends you make in our alcohol detox Delray Beach program and in your recovery support groups, and move forward from there.

Just as if you were a recovering alcoholic without a dual diagnosis, avoid relapse triggers. You may have to work harder to avoid these triggers, since you will be avoiding not only places, people and situations that make you want to drink, but also those that aggravate your depressive symptoms. This could mean limiting your time at family functions, holidays, weddings, birthdays or other events, or even avoiding these events altogether in your early recovery.

Do not be afraid to take psychiatric medicines to manage your depression symptoms during and after you leave our alcohol detox Delray Beach program. Using these medications does not count substance abuse, since you have a medical need for them. You should also work with a therapist, preferably one who understands dual diagnosis issues, to not only manage your depression symptoms, but also learn how to set healthy boundaries that can help you avoid relapse.

Here at The Delray Center for Healing, we specialize in treating dual diagnosis patients. Call us today at 888-699-5679 to start your journey towards recovery from addiction and mental illness.