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Substance abuse counselors have known for years based on their experience with their patients that there is a link between childhood traumas and drug or alcohol addiction. A recent collaboration between physicians from the University of Texas and Tennessee’s Meharry Medical College focused on the connection between childhood trauma and the development of depressive disorders or substance abuse.

The study involved teens—a small group, to be sure, tracking only 19 youngsters with known childhood traumas against a control group of 13 teens with no known traumas. Their progress was documented every six months for up to five years to assess the need for drug addiction treatment or psychotherapy for depression. 

Imaging studies of the brain were performed on each of the children at the outset of the study, with repeat examinations conducted as follow-up. While only one of the teens in the control group experienced substance abuse problems and one suffered from depression, four among the traumatized group required drug addiction treatment and five of them needed psychotherapy for depression.  Results showed diminished integrity of the brain’s white matter, the inner brain material, especially in the parts of the brain that help with making decisions about behavior and also in the control of emotions.

What Constitutes Childhood Trauma?

Most people think of trauma as something injurious, something that physically injures a person. It’s true that children or anybody suffering from physical violence experiences that very common definition of trauma.

However, there are additional traumas that affect us as we grow. A physician from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, speaking to several hundred mental health professionals, enlarged the definition of trauma to include not just physical but sexual and psychological abuse, verbal mistreatment, and deprivation related to poverty. Children who witness domestic violence or see their parents being arrested or suffer from their parents’ addiction issues are victims of childhood trauma.

The much-larger Ohio study went a bit further by calculating reports of abuse according to the number of traumas experienced. Those who experienced at least three of the traumas demonstrated a sevenfold increase in alcohol abuse. They were ten times more likely to experiment with intravenous drugs. Those extrapolated figures clearly document the evidence between childhood trauma and addiction.

Looking at Treatment Options

What hope is there for people who have experienced one of more of these childhood trauma? After all, you can’t erase the past.

Substance abuse treatment professionals will tell you, however, that they help their patients to identify the traumas and recognize that they had no control over or responsibility for the traumas they underwent. For some people—someone with an addicted or abusive parent, for example—abuse continues into adulthood, and at some point they have to learn to draw boundaries so that the abuse is separated from the positive aspects of their lives.

Many people have to learn that they can’t change a negative past, and they can’t change negative parents or other family members who caused them trauma. They can, however, change themselves.  They can learn how to say, “That’s what happened, and it wasn’t my fault.” They can learn to move forward from the darkness of those days into the light of recovery.

That’s just one aspect of recovery—addressing the issues of the past that take a person into addiction in the first place. If you know someone who suffered trauma during their childhood who needs alcohol or drug addiction treatment now, or if that person is you, it’s important to find a place that will help the addict work on all aspects of himself. A residential drug treatment center offers much more than abstinence therapy: There are opportunities to face the ghosts of the past, and therapeutic options that help a person open up to the positive benefits of treatment.  Contact an admission counselor at Vista Taos Renewal Center today for more information at 1.800.245.8267.

People hold incorrect ideas that the nefarious criminals who bring illegal drugs in from south of our border are stereotypical despicable Mexican drug runners. The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) cites statistics demonstrating that 75 percent of those busted for transporting illegal drugs into the country are actually Americans. Of all border drug arrests, approximately 80 percent of them involve at least one American.

Consider these solid citizens, who are responsible for keeping rehab treatment centers busy with their dastardly deeds:

• Todd Britton-Harr, a 36-year-old graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, arrested in 2010 complete with trailer full of 1,100 pounds of marijuana.
• Laura Lynn Farris, an innocuous 52-year-old female transporting her dogs to be washed at the vet’s office, along with a laundry basket—and 162 pounds of marijuana beneath the laundry.
• A 54-year-old unemployed mechanical engineer from Texas, who admitted to law enforcement officials, under guarantee of anonymity, that he had completed 17 successful transfers of marijuana from Mexico into Texas.

Police with the Border Patrol will be redeploying their suspicions toward Americans, especially if they have the look of a young and wholesome college student or a middle-aged career professional.  

Why are so many more Americans being caught these days? For starters, the Obama administration has doubled the size of the Border Patrol in the last two or three years. There are now approximately 21,000 agents hard at work these days to stop drug trafficking. Another reason is the difficult economy. With high unemployment numbers troubling the nation for the past five years, people who can’t find work say yes to drug-running—it seems like a fast and easy way to make a buck. Some people agree to run drugs because they are, themselves, users, and instead of seeking help in drug rehab treatment centers they get a cut of the drugs they smuggle into the country.

It seems like an easy job: Pick up a car in Mexico, drive it through the checkpoint, and deliver the car to someone on the American side of the border who will take over the drug distribution process.  One Arizona attorney who has defended many of these so-called mules states that often they agree to drive the car with very little information about the operation. Recruitment takes place at casinos where it seems like a simple way to recover gambling losses.

Some of the Americans bringing drugs into the country have permission to use medicinal marijuana. Ronald Colman, who retired from the Border Patrol in 2009, says it’s not uncommon to see someone “rolling up, smoke puffing out the window” and claiming “Dude, this is for medicinal use.” That doesn’t mean, police have discovered, that they aren’t carrying in a little something extra.

How will law enforcement officials put a stop to this? Increased vigilance and targeting even those who don’t look like they would be carrying will put a dent in these figures. About half of all arrests come from routine traffic checks.

Dogs are also effective in sniffing out drugs—the lady with the laundry and the guy with the trailer both were caught by dogs. Numbers of both canine and human agents will continue to be increased.

Dealing with anger during recovery is a real Catch-22. You feel angry about the need for recovery from substance abuse, and so you’re likely to use your substance of choice as a way to assuage that anger. On the other hand, you can’t really give clear thought to handling your anger unless your mind is clear.

As you embark on recovery, you need to realize that it’s natural to feel anger. Everybody gets angry: Whether or not a person is in recovery, he will have days when he feels simply overwhelmed by annoyance, irritation, and all the other synonyms you can think of for this frustrating, negative feeling. However, anger can be very destructive, but learning about it can abate its damage.

There are three components to your anger:

• First you experience cognition, the actual thought process of knowing that you are irate, whether or not you know the reason.
• Second, you will feel a physical reaction to your anger, such as an increased heart rate, gulping in air, or even breaking out in hives.
• The third aspect of anger brings out your negative behaviors, whether you slam a door, pound a table, or shout.

It’s easy to understand why you’re riding this rollercoaster of emotions as you work on your recovery. When you were using, you were doing something that felt good—even if it wasn’t healthy for you, physically or legally. Whenever you became angry, the feelings were muted or anesthetized by the drugs you were using.  If you had things in your life that provoked your anger, you could mask those emotions by using. Now that you’re not using, the things that get on your nerves throughout the course of a normal day are compounded by the cravings you feel from not using drugs.

Many people use anger as reason for relapse. Let’s correct that: Many people use anger as an excuse for relapse! It’s easy to see why. Besides the fact that you’re missing your drug of choice as well as the partying, you also feel resentment toward the people who urged you to go into rehab. Even if you recognize that this was something you needed to do to get your life back in order, you can’t help wondering why you had to be among the percentage of the population afflicted with a challenging addiction disorder.

Now that you are changing your life by participating in treatment in an alcohol or drug rehab center, you’ve also got to find new ways to manage negative emotions.  Your rehab counselor can help you with the issues that make you feel angry at yourself. You will also need help in understanding why you bear so much hostility toward certain people in your life. Whether or not those feelings are justified, you have to learn that you can’t change the past, and you probably can’t change other people. You have to move forward from the hurts of the past, and you can only change yourself.

What are the dangers of anger? If you don’t learn how to control negative emotions, you run the risk of increased health problems, including insomnia, fatigue, headaches, nausea, and even cardiac complications.  You may end up destroying relationships or losing your job. People who live with strong negative emotions are statistically more likely to commit a crime, and they are also more likely to be the victim of a crime.

As you develop a relationship with your counselor, the two of you can discuss the anger you feel.  Your counselor will help you learn ways to combat anger so that its impact on your recovery diminishes to a manageable aspect. You will always have days when you get angry—we all do—but you will learn how to deal with anger during recovery from substance abuse and as you move forward in your life.

You’ve already learned how your thoughts can cause you to relapse.  Counselors in drug rehabilitation centers teach you to recognize the thoughts that can endanger your recovery, and you’ll find some information about that on this website.

All addicts use excuses at one time or another as justification for relapse.  Once you’re aware of these common rationalizations, you can put your knowledge to work. You can prevent relapse by developing some positive coping skills to stay sober. Try some of them, try all of them—just try them!

Call Someone

When you’re working on recovery, one of the things you do is put together a support network. The idea is to assemble the names and phone numbers of several people, so that if you can’t reach one person you can reach someone else. Another reason for developing multiple contacts is because each person in your recovery network has some kind of specific knowledge about you as a person. Call a friend. Call a counselor. Call a sponsor from your 12-step group. Just call someone.

Exercise

If you’re already in recovery, then you know the way that substances affect the neurotransmitters in the brain. One thing you can do to defeat thoughts of using is to exercise. Exercise releases endorphins and can increase levels of dopamine. One of the reasons substance abuse becomes so compelling is because it likewise increases levels of dopamine. With exercise, you are catching that wonderful wave of euphoria but it’s being generated by something healthy like exercise instead of negative, dangerous activities.  Many doctors are seriously looking at exercise programs as ways to defeat addictive behaviors and enhance positive coping skills.

Meditation and Prayer

Meditation helps because it takes you to a place where you sit back and think about placing value on yourself. But there’s more to it than that: Most cravings are rooted in anxiety and stress, and learning positive coping skills through meditation provides you with a natural outlet. You will be less likely to give in to your urges if you can leverage an emotional calmness at such times. In addition, studies are showing that meditation can increase dopamine levels and reduce cortisol production. Meditation can be a way to stop thinking about bad things that have happened to you in the past. Meditation can help you remember what a worthwhile person you are. Counselors in top-notch drug rehabilitation centers spend time teaching meditation skills; time well spent.

Journaling

Keeping a journal about your thoughts can be a tremendous way to stay focused on your recovery goals. When you were using regularly, you gave no thought to the idea of writing down your feelings because you were focused on your next high. Now is a good time to start a journal, whether you write in it daily or weekly, to keep track of how you feel. If you don’t like to write, maybe you should invest in a sketch pad, or maybe music is your thing. The recovery process helps you to relearn your natural skills, and practicing them regularly will help you move past difficult thoughts.

12-Step Meetings

No matter what substance you’ve been using, there are no coping skills more positive than a 12-step meeting. It’s true that groups like AA and NA bear a little competitive edge toward one another. It’s also true that every addict is willing to help another addict, no matter what his substance of choice is. As part of your recovery process, you will assemble a list of 12-step meetings available in your area. Go to meetings often. Try out different groups; you’ll find that you like some better than others. When you are worrying about how to prevent relapse, take time out of your schedule to visit a 12-step.  Just take it one day at a time. Easy does it.

A new study is making the rounds of professionals in recovery centers about how men behave when they reach the codependent stage of a relationship. It describes the family therapy that men should receive when their partners are in rehab treatment. Authors Dan Griffin and Rick Dauer have published “Rethinking Men and Codependency” in the online Addiction Professional journal, and they express some surprising viewpoints about male codependency and addiction.

Some Codependency Is Natural

The first posit is that codependency makes up a natural part of any relationship—that all relationships comprise independent, interdependent, and codependent interactions. However, based on the theory that men lack skills in relationship maintenance, their codependency often manifests in ugly and undesirable ways.

The authors assert that we all benefit from some level of codependency in our relationships. If codependency means that we take away a good feeling from the fact of the relationship, there is no harm in some level of codependency. The negativity of codependency comes when relationships are defined by one partner’s self-worth based upon the behavior of the other partner.

In terms of addiction, this means that the male codependent feels validated when he responds to save the addict from herself. Since addiction can be such an all-consuming force in the life of the addict—and the people around her—it’s not long before her partner gets sucked into an ever-widening spiral of codependency that obliterates the balancing forces of independence and interdependence.

The Male Behavioral Model

The next posit of the authors surrounds the behaviors that boys are taught as they grow into men: Don’t cry. Be tough. Never give way. Don’t ask for help.

Men generally do not work to sustain relationships in the same way as women.  They are not good at interpersonal skills like communication, conflict resolution, setting healthy boundaries, identifying personal needs, self-care, emotional expression, intimacy, or a willingness to ask for help.  

Codependence can generate feelings of being powerless, vulnerable, fearful, and insecure. But men express those feelings with arrogance or detachment. They are good at hollering and raging around the house. They are manipulative and controlling or even paternalistic.

When Codependency Takes Over

If you are the male half of a relationship in which your partner is using alcohol or drugs, your codependent behaviors will soon become the dominant part of your relationship. By their very nature, you are most likely to express your feelings by avoiding intimacy or cheating outside of your relationship. Your actions toward your addicted partner will involve verbal abuse and threats. You will watch her carefully and try to control everything she does. Your fear of abandonment—nobody wants a relationship to end simply because of addiction—could result in a lasting distrust in your own instincts and a cynicism toward others.

Family Counseling for the Male Codependent

The authors of this study say that a healthy relationship is one that can adapt to the needs of the partner. If your partner is in a recovery center, you should be willing to adjust your needs and schedule so that she can receive the treatment she requires. However, you are not responsible for her recovery—that’s up to her.

The professionals at the recovery center can work with you in family sessions to achieve a better level of interdependence in the relationship and less codependence.  You can develop improved skills for communicating with your loved one. You can learn fair ways to resolve conflicts and how to set boundaries for acceptable behaviors. You will need to recognize your own personal needs and allot some time for your own self growth. That’s your job: Participating in family counseling is up to you. When loved ones participate in the Family Program they gain understanding of how addiction has impacted their lives and can begin their own recovery in a sense while supporting their loved one while in treatment.  For more information on the Family Program at Vista Taos Renewal Center contact them at 1.800.245.8267.

From the NDepth Library of NewsOK, the online newspaper powered by The Oklahoman, comes the story of Reggie Whitten, a man forced to live through one of the most devastating events every parent dreads: It’s bad enough to have to bury your son, but it’s even worse when the cause of death is something senseless like substance abuse.  

The NDepth Library, incidentally, takes the fast-paced new stories we all glance through these days and slows us down for a closer look at tales that really matter. This story focuses on a man’s motivation to spread the word about Oklahoma rehabilitation centers and reasons for achieving sobriety.

Reggie Whitten had reached the pinnacle of his career as a lawyer in the fast lane. Although he grew up poor, he made it through college and law school and then got married and started a family. Even though he won a $130 million settlement at once point, he never lost track of the love he had for his son, Brandon, who succeeded at football in high school, inspired others to follow his example, and entered his twenties playing football at Southwestern Oklahoma State in Weatherford.

Then came Brandon’s long, slow slide into addiction. The wake-up call for Whitten occurred when Brandon drove himself and his girlfriend off the road, flipping their car upside down, the two nearly drowning in a creek. Brandon had been taking Valium and washing them down with alcohol—a common practice, Whitten says, among Brandon’s fellow athletes.

Brandon appeared to have the more serious injuries from this accident, but in a weird twist it was his girlfriend who died of a staph infection about six weeks afterward.  As Whitten puts it, Brandon was never the same after that.

Faced with guilt over the death of his girlfriend, Brandon sought help. His first Oklahoma rehabilitation center was a 30-day program, and it seemed like more than enough time to effectively engage in recovery. However, Brandon had his ups and downs over the course of the next three years. Sobriety is a difficult thing to maintain if you don’t work a recovery program.

In mid-February 2002, Whitten received a call from Brandon. He knew Brandon had been drinking, and in Brandon’s life where there was alcohol, there was Valium. Whitten set off to pick Brandon up in a nearby town, where Brandon said he would wait.

But Brandon didn’t wait. He hopped aboard a motorcycle and headed back home. That’s where Whitten found the emergency vehicles; Brandon had smashed the motorcycle into a brick mailbox a couple doors away from his home.  The only thing Whitten could do was cradle the back of his son’s crushed skull. Brandon, at the age of 25, was dead.

Whitten was numb for months after Brandon’s death. But when his daughter asked him to talk to a friend of hers, he found a voice, a way to speak out about rehabilitation and recovery. That was the beginning of F.A.T.E.: Fighting Addiction Through Education. Whitten speaks publicly these days about the way that drugs and alcohol changed his son from a leader into a follower, how addiction altered Brandon’s brain chemistry so that he couldn’t even fight for his own life.

F.A.T.E. is just one avenue to find an Oklahoma rehabilitation center, and Whitten has taken his message outside of the OK State as well, working in Nebraska and Utah. He works with addicted veterans and he’s even taken his message to Uganda, traveling with Pros for Africa. If you’re hoping to help a loved reach recovery, there’s a message worth sharing: Easy does it, one day at a time.

Residents of Colorado can expect a new kind of tourist spending money to fill up their state coffers: They are about to receive visits from all kinds of people who want to smoke dope. The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado puts a whole new spin on the words “Rocky Mountain High.”

In Colorado, the new law allows each resident of the state to cultivate six plants, only three of which can be mature. If this law goes unchallenged by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a husband and wife team recreationally using marijuana could own a total of 12 plants.

In addition to the growing plants, each person can possess up to an ounce of harvested marijuana and can give—as a gift—up to an ounce of marijuana to another person. Visitors to the state are also permitted to possess small quantities of marijuana for personal use.

That brings a new kind of carpetbagger to Colorado: Where some states have casinos and others offer internet betting cafes, organized and well financed businessmen are looking to cash in big time on tourists coming for recreational marijuana in Colorado. You can bet that the people who bankroll these recreational operations will keep a close rein on their interests.

Almost 55 percent of voters approved the measure in November. However, the highest concentrations of yes-votes came from tourist centers such as Aspen, Vail, and Telluride. Residents of urban areas such as Denver were less enthusiastic.

An excise tax of 15 percent will be charged on the wholesale cost of nonmedical marijuana, and establishments that want to process it or sell it must pay an application fee of up to $5,000. Facilities that are already approved for the manufacture or production of medical marijuana will not have to pay more than $500 for the license. The new amendment requires that the first $40 million raised shall be allocated to the Public School Capital Construction Assistance Fund.  There is also the promise of less money spent on prosecuting adults who possess small quantities of the drug.

The new law regulates the concentration of THC to be no more than 0.3 percent of the cannabis product. Individuals who grow it must do so behind locked doors and not in public view. Licenses, required for cultivation facilities as well as production plants, testing facilities, and retail establishments, will not be issued until October 2013.

That gives plenty of time for opponents of the amendment as well as federal officials to debate the merits of this new state law. About 20 million people smoke marijuana in a given year, and according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 9 percent of them will go on to become addicted. NIDA states that chronic users exhibit poor memory retention and substandard learning aptitudes that can last for many weeks.

Clinicians who treat addicts express additional concerns about their patients in substance abuse treatment who have used marijuana regularly over extended periods. Typically they suffer from panic attacks or anxiety attacks, and they lack motivation to do positive things with their lives. Now they will be told this drug is legal.

If you have concerns about a friend or family member who is already using marijuana—even as Coloradoans wait to see how the federal government will respond to this law—contact a substance abuse treatment center. Recreational marijuana in Colorado or in Washington, where it has also been approved, instigates serious repercussions that will need to be addressed.

Whether you’re seeking help from a drug abuse treatment center or you’re the family member of someone who is using, it will help you to understand the connection between the addict and her drug.  There is a relationship between the addict and her drug of choice that is more important to her than any of the relationships she has with the people in her life.

Think about the obstacles she overcomes to maintain her use:  She’s fighting with people, struggling to sustain some semblance of a daily life, and possibly even backed into a legal corner. Despite those negatives, she really enjoys the way that substance makes her feel. It’s a relationship that she never wants to end.

She puts more work into that relationship than with any of her real-life relationships.  Consider the qualities that go into a relationship: You think about commitment, dedication, faithfulness, honesty, and communication. But those qualities demonstrate themselves in a kind of twisted way when it comes to drug addiction.

She lies to the people in her life because she is committed to maintaining her addiction. She is dedicated to maintaining a façade that will protect her ability to use.  No matter what opportunities are presented to her, she remains faithful to her addiction.

Just how does that relationship become such a reality for the addict? As she descends into an ever-deepening abyss of addiction, she rationalizes her drug use by telling herself that she is different from other people and she can handle the drugs. That means that people are wrong about drugs being bad.

She has to believe that in order to maintain a positive self-image. The alternative is accepting that drugs generate negative behaviors, and she will have to despise herself for her use.  She must then despise the people who love her because, since she’s not worthy of love, the people who love her must be stupid. All of this unhealthy reasoning is exacerbated by her use.

Loved ones ask, “Why are you doing this to us?” Initially the addict promises over and over again to stop using. But she doesn’t stop. The satisfaction she gets from her high becomes the primary motivation in her life. Nobody and nothing matter as much as the substance of choice.

How does she shut down the people who are interfering with her drug of choice, the real love in her life?  You’ve heard that the best defense is a good offense: So the addict responds by lashing out at her family members.

She’ll begin with something like “I’m not hurting anybody but myself.” But she will spiral downward to horrible things like, “I don’t want you to interfere in my business” and “I hate you—I will never forgive you—leave me alone” and even “Why don’t you die.” She will say and do anything to get family members to back off.

If you are dealing with an addict and you feel that you are not as important to her as her addiction, you are correct. That’s why recovery requires involvement of the entire family. The addict is still fighting you when she says “I got myself into this—you can’t help me get out of it.” Recovery is not something she can do alone. A drug abuse treatment center can bring her to communicate with honesty. Only when she accepts the truth that her addiction affects her entire family, and only when she begins to work with her loved ones instead of against them, will she truly be able to achieve recovery.

One of the most recent fads in drug abuse is the ingestion of dextromethorphan—a common ingredient in cough and cold medications. So, just what is the biggest risk of DXM? The very fact that it’s a legal substance, contained in over-the-counter cough-and-cold medications, renders it very dangerous. When you ingest mass quantities of it, your brain forgets to tell your lungs to breathe. And then you die.

It’s Not New

Dextromethorphan crossed the radar of the drug-using public in the 1950s, and it didn’t take long for people to find out it could get you high. Once codeine was banned from over-the-counter cough syrups, drug manufacturers settled on dextromethorphan as a favorite new active ingredient. By the 1970s people began sharing exciting stories about the great highs they got from cough syrups like Robitussin and similar brands.

Nobody wants to single out Robitussin as the sole culprit, because other brand names (Delsym, for one) include DXM as well. Abusers also go for generics because they are more affordable. The point is that the Robitussin brand name became assimilated into users’ vocabulary—to druggies, “robotripping” means you’re up for a good time.

DXM dropped off the popularity scale in the 1990s, overshadowed by other ways to get high.  Lately it has re-emerged as a favorite drug of choice because it’s easy to access, both legal and cheap.  

Myths and Misconceptions About DXM

• First and foremost, people think they can take a safe trip as long as they look for cold pills that are mostly DXM. They think that DXM by itself is not harmful.  

• They have no idea how to calculate an effective dose for their high. The effect of DXM depends on body weight. That means the dose that puts a 150-pound person on a pretty neat high can be deadly for his 120-pound friend.

• People also believe that since DXM comes in commonly available over-the-counter medications it cannot possibly harm them. After all, the government wouldn’t put anything on the market that could kill them, right?

One Dose Leads to Another

Once someone goes down the road to dextromethorphan abuse, he may begin to explore ways to maximize his high. That’s when a user takes the cough syrup and cooks it down to extract pure DXM. The process involves the use of hazardous chemicals like naphtha, a flammable solvent used by wood workers.

If it weren’t so dangerous, it would be almost amusing to hear DXM abusers caution one another against ingesting anything except pure DXM. They simply don’t worry about blowing up their kitchen trying to extract it.

People tire of drinking so much cough syrup just to get high, so they often look for cold pills. Taking somewhere between 10 and 20 cold pills gives them a feeling of being drunk. When they take higher doses, 30 or more, they experience actual hallucinations. Taking more than that will put them face down on a sidewalk—or face up in a casket.

The Dangers of “Other” Ingredients

Most DXM products come with added common ingredients that are harmful when taken in excess. There is acetaminophen (think Tylenol), chlorpheniramine (an antihistamine), and guafenesin (an expectorant). The repeated ingestion of large amounts of Tylenol damages the liver permanently. Chlorpheniramine induces rapid heartbeat, and it also has been associated with seizures and coma. Guafenesin causes vomiting.

If you are using DXM or you know someone who needs treatment for dextromethorphan abuse, side effects include muscle spasms, panic attacks, delirium, loss of motor coordination, and, of course, that fatal suppression of the respiratory system. Don’t stop to take a breath—get help now.

If you’re thinking about seeking help for abuse or addiction, you may be wondering if you’ll have to participate in group therapy in a rehabilitation center. What’s it like? Will you be forced to reveal your innermost personal feelings? Can you do it?

Group Is Just a Group

Treatment professionals advocate the use of group therapy as a valuable modality in addiction treatment.  If that seems scary, consider this: Whenever two or more people sit and talk about common goals or problems and they realize that they share commonalities, they become a group. It is this emotional attachment that forms the basis for a therapeutic group. If you’re in a rehabilitation center, you may feel relieved to know that participating in group therapy simply means you will be sitting down with a bunch of people who have problems and struggles very similar to yours.

That being said, however, it’s important to know that there are different types of groups, organized by the clinical professionals who want to make your treatment experience a success.  Most rehab centers offer the following five types of groups:

Support Groups.  People in a support group listen to one another’s stories, critique their behavior, and offer ideas for change. If you offer some half-baked excuses as reasons for your abuse, the other people in the group will likely call you out for it—they keep each other honest.

Psycho-educational Group. This type of group provides education about substance abuse. For example, you could learn about specific substances that are abused, or you could learn about the chemical changes in your brain when you use. These groups provide nuts-and-bolts understanding of what happens to you from the substances you’re ingesting.

Skills Development Group. Here you will learn about triggers, the things that make you want to use. If you give a smoker a cup of coffee, for example, he will want to light up a cigarette. The coffee is the trigger. You cannot achieve recovery if you do not understand the things that make you want to use such harmful substances.

Cognitive Behavioral Groups.  These types of groups offer support for behavior modification. What patterns of thinking have been destructive for you? How can you change them?

Therapy Groups. This is the type of group that you’re worried about the most:  The groups where you’ll end up baring your soul for everyone else to see.  They serve as a valuable tool for helping people to recognize the problems in their lives and in their relationships that led them to use. Rest assured that these types of groups take place in rehabilitation centers only when they are run by licensed, degreed, certified professionals who know the road they’re taking you down. You can also talk about these very personal issues in individual one-on-one sessions between you and your counselor.

All Groups Serve a Purpose

You can’t just pick one type of group and avoid the others. You must experience all these types of discussion in order to recognize effective ways to reach recovery.  Nobody walks into a rehabilitation center on Day One and knows how to integrate himself into a group, however. Helping you to find your role and purpose in group will be the job of your alcohol or drug counselor. You can lean on him or her in order to learn the ropes.

In another posting, we’ll be talking about specific behaviors that are common in therapy groups—the rules of group as well as common group behaviors that you will recognize as you move forward.