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Do Alcoholic Treatment Centers Treat Other Addictions?

Whether a person has an addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling or sex, addiction affects people in the same way. The addiction process also follows a standard path of progression. Alcoholic treatment centers specialize in treating alcohol’s effects in a person’s life, but alcohol is still considered a drug.

According to an article on the Scientific American site, gambling and sex have the same effects as drugs in the life of someone who’s addicted. Whether an alcoholic treatment center treats other addictions depends on the types of services a center offers. Since treating the addiction is the focus of any treatment program, many alcoholic treatment centers do treat other types of addictions.

Types of Treatment Centers

Alcoholic treatment centers will offer a wide range of services to help you through your addiction problems.

Treatment centers in general offer a wide variety of services with each center having its own type of program. Besides treating alcoholism versus other addictions, differences between treatment centers include:

The types of services offered
How a center is funded (public or private)
Treatment principles or tenets that determine how a particular program is run

All of these factors determine whether an alcoholic treatment center treats other types of addictions.

When considering substance-based addictions, the only real difference between alcohol drug treatment and other types of drug treatment is the type of medications use to help relieve withdrawal symptoms. Since withdrawal symptoms become an issue when treating any type of addiction, alcoholic treatment centers differ in that they are medically-equipped to treat alcohol-related withdrawal conditions.

Alcoholism vs. Addiction

While alcoholism and drug addiction have acquired their own designations as far as treatment modes go, the common thread of addiction runs through both camps. Both types of conditions change a person’s physiological, mental and emotional state to the point where the substance takes over his or her life.

With non-substance-based addictions like gambling and sex, it’s the activity itself that alters thought and behavior patterns to the point where it disrupts a person’s life. People addicted to these types of activities also experience physiological, mental and emotional changes that work to reinforce addictive behaviors.

In this light, alcoholic treatment centers can provide the types of services needed to treat most any type of addiction, but not all do. It really comes down to locating the types of alcoholic treatment centers that also offer treatment for other types of addictions.

Finding a Treatment Center

When looking for an alcoholic treatment center that treats other addictions, the amount of funding a facility receives can limit the types of services offered. As publically-funded centers rely on money provided through state and federal agencies, funding may be limited. This means these centers may only be able to offer alcohol-based treatment because of limited funding. Privately funded treatment centers are more likely to provide a wide variety of addiction treatment services and programs.

Also important is the level of care and support a person requires when they enter treatment. As different treatment centers may offer inpatient, outpatient and/or aftercare programs, finding the appropriate level of care becomes just as important as finding a program that treats a person’s addiction needs.

Resources:

Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-rehab-work

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