You’ve probably heard or read stories of people doing drug detox and drug rehab over and over again. I read a story today about a guy who’d been through heroin detox ten times – once in a hospital, eight times ‘cold turkey,’ and once through rapid detox – which he said was more painful than any of his cold turkey attempts and had side effects that lasted for months. None of them helped the guy handle his heroin addiction – he eventually settled for methadone treatment. He’s now more or less permanently addicted to methadone and, from what I read in the article, he doesn’t seem to be even looking at the possibility of ever coming off it. What went wrong? He never did drug rehab.

Drug detox does nothing more than help the person through withdrawal. Some people have the idea that if they can just get through withdrawal, they can stop taking the drug. But if you don’t address the issues behind the addiction – which are not just physical – then the person will go back to drugs.

If you know someone who has gone through drug detox and has relapsed, make sure they get into a good drug rehab program. That’s the only way you can handle drug addiction. And, make sure the program is long enough to actually dig in, find, and address the underlying problems.

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