Long Term Treatment: Healing the Brain from Addiction

When an addiction treatment plan includes the suggestion of Long Term Treatment, the prospect can be daunting. Clients and their families often have reasonable questions about why a person would commit to an extended period of time in treatment. After 30-60 days of rehab, people often feel it’s time to pull it together and move on with their life. But there are a number of reasons that certain people with Substance Use Disorder may benefit from Long Term Treatment. These range from retraining the brain, building new habits, repairing the damaged family unit, developing life skills, and much more. Let’s unpack!

“What do you mean, discharge plan?!”

Often a family in crisis is working hard to simply get their loved one to a safe place. They know their current living situation isn’t working, which is why they’ve asked for help. The first treatment episode is generally full of surprises for families, including the idea of a discharge plan.  Many parents and spouses are surprised to hear a therapist’s recommendation that someone continue care after the 30-60-90 day mark at a treatment center. They are unaware that an extended care treatment program or sober living may be the recommended next step in certain situations. 

An inpatient treatment center provides 24/7 care when someone is detoxing and stabilizing from substance use. Here, clients don’t always feel their best. They are presented with a lot of information, which can be hard to absorb in the first few days/weeks. Inpatient treatment providers begin creating a discharge plan for their client a few weeks prior to their discharge date. For some, this plan might include a Primary Care Physician,  therapist, and a list of local AA meetings. For others, particularly young people who struggle to be self-sufficient or self-supporting, this might look like long-term extended care. 

Sometimes the client bucks at the discharge plan presented. In scenarios where the family isn’t properly educated or involved in the treatment process, it’s difficult for them to support a plan that their loved one resists.  This is why it’s imperative to include the family in all aspects of one’s treatment (not just discharge planning!). By involving the family/support system from Day 1, there’s more clarity around why certain levels of care are recommended.

A person diagnosed with cancer will leave their oncologist with a series of next steps. This usually includes 1-2 options for a person to research on their own, then make an educated decision. The addiction treatment discharge planning process should look similar: a treatment provider makes a few recommendations, and the client/family explores their options. 

Why is Long-Term Treatment Being Recommended?

Not every family understands why a long-term treatment center may have been recommended to their loved one. When we developed the Surfside program, we looked at the amount of time that it takes to create news habits, to reroute neural pathways, to build a supportive community, and to find balance in all areas of life.  

Finding Time to Form New Habits

For many young men, substance use is just one of many maladaptive behaviors (other behaviors might include gambling, gaming, excessive phone use/porn consumption, etc). Extended time in a supportive, sober environment with professional oversight allows folks to begin developing new habits.  Easy to digest information about habit-building can be found in books like Atomic Habits, which we use as a framework for developing new behaviors.  Creating a new routine, replacing an old habit, or integrating a new one requires both time and focus. The more time we have with a support system that encourages us to adopt new, healthy behaviors, the more likely it is for the habit to “stick.” For us, this doesn’t just mean “not using.” In a program like Surfside, developing new habits includes waking up on time, eating meals at regular intervals, calling people in our network, and more. The environment supports someone as they move away from maladaptive coping mechanisms and move towards mindful action.

Retraining the Brain

A wealth of research referenced in many of our other blogs talks about the brain science that supports rebuilding the brain’s pathways.  We can change the way our brain functions through substance use, but we can also heal the brain by utilizing a variety of outlets.  This takes time, energy, and commitment. When a person is engaged in long-term treatment, we have the time and resources to really focus on rebuilding the brain.

Finally, an extended care treatment program helps people find a healthy balance in their life that extends far beyond sobriety.  Creating and adhering to a budget, developing critical life skills, building self-esteem through esteemable acts… all of these are valuable tools that should be integrated into a long-term treatment program. People are given the opportunity to experience restraint, patience, goal-setting and more while in a supportive environment. They can navigate the inevitable ups and downs of sobriety in the safety of an extended care. 

Healing the Family over Time

One frequently overlooked aspect of the treatment process is the family dynamic.  We’ve learned from Al-Anon/Nar-Anon that even after our loved one sustains a period of sobriety, we are still filled with fear.  There is the nagging sense that this is temporary, and a bad decision/impulsive behavior is right around the corner.  Not every circumstance requires long-term treatment, but there are many family systems that can benefit from an extended treatment episode.  

As our loved one takes huge strides to change their life, the family can focus on their own healing.  Addiction destroys families: it deteriorates trust, fuels resentment, and thrives on fear.  It also hijacks the family’s focus, so everything revolves around the person who is struggling… even if they’re doing well for the moment. Engaging in a long-term treatment program gives everyone in the family system an opportunity to pause, reset, and develop an entirely new relationship.