The Real Definition of Alcohol Recovery
March 25, 2008
Virtually everyone can agree that addiction recovery is the goal of any treatment program. However, the actual meaning of the term “recovery” is a little more difficult to pin down. An article in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment says that abstinence is only the first step in recovering from alcoholism or drug addiction.
The experts wrote that addiction recovery refers to all of the positive benefits that are a result of getting addiction treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. This includes the mental, social, and physical health aspects of rehab. They define personal health as including all of these elements. They mentioned the importance of having social support and giving back to one’s community and society as a key element in the process of addiction recovery.
According to the article, abstinence from alcohol and drug abuse is a necessary first step. However, it is far from being the only thing an addict has to do for addiction recovery. Further methods of addiction treatment such as counseling, support groups, and education about substance abuse are necessary to avoid relapse. One of the suggestions from the article is to use different terms to refer to how long it has been since the individual last used drugs or alcohol. For example, someone in the early stage has been sober from one month to one year. Sustained recovery is between one and five years, and stable recovery is when an individual has not used drugs or alcohol in more than five years.
The authors of the article hope that defining recovery will provide benefits for drug and alcohol addiction similar to the way that discussion of high cancer survival rates has resulted in more people voluntarily getting screened for cancer. They compare addiction recovery to cancer survival by noting that chances of relapse for both conditions decrease after five years.
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