Treatment Programs in Pearland, TX

At addiction health establishments such as our center for treatment programs in Pearland, TX, professional therapists help patients by identifying the areas in which they lack the tools needed to fight their disorder, and work hard to equip them. It takes intensive, long-term addiction treatment therapy to achieve the results desired, and sometimes even dual diagnosis treatment in Pearland is necessary.

Addicts are often portrayed in the movies as morally bankrupt, or simply lacking in willpower. Media opinion remains just as harsh when a celebrity like Lindsay Lohan gets into trouble for addictive behavior. It only tends to soften a touch when a well-loved celebrity such as music superstar Prince dies of causes related to addiction.

Even then, reports, nearly always, stay well away from bringing much-needed clarity to the subject: that addiction is a bona fide mental illness, and those who suffer from it are actually unable to control their actions. Unlike schizophrenia, depression or bipolar, however, there are no medications for addiction.

Can Willpower Be Enough?

Willpower can help in certain situations involving mild temptation, over short periods of time. When you experience powerful temptation that never lets up, however, willpower does not help. Sexual attraction is an example of a natural mental force that isn't very amenable to willpower.

Millions of responsible and mentally able people each day jeopardize their jobs and marriages by dabbling in extramarital affairs, simply because they've run out of willpower. Sexual desire is a valid analog to addictive cravings -- addiction taps parts of the brain involved in sexual desire and a desire for foods such as chocolate. If risky affairs that ruin everything are too hard to resist for millions of the mentally able, the cravings of drugs can be all but impossible to stand up to for those who are not.

Most people who become addicted have other problems with willpower, as well. They suffer from psychological difficulties that make it hard for them to make use of it. They may suffer from anger issues, low self-worth, or dysphoria, which is a psychological condition characterized by an excessively negative attitude.

There are other possibilities, as well. Negative overgeneralization, a tendency to believe that things, once they go wrong will always go wrong, is often a challenge. Magnification, an urge to see problems as worse than they really are, positive disqualification, a tendency to minimize the good things in life, and a variety of other problems, make it extremely hard for some people to resist temptation. Willpower simply has no chance.

Fortunately, our highly effective drug rehab in Pearland has developed treatment programs through several decades of research.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of psychological therapy. It is well-rooted in accepted scientific research. In CBT, the patient sits down with the therapist, and over several sessions, analyzes the way his mind works, in an attempt to control it.

For a patient who finds that life makes him angry enough to cause him to turn to drugs for comfort, therapy might involve a search for why the anger occurs. Therapy will usually address itself to the task of finding specific triggers for anger, the exact responses that come up, and a search for possible changes in life that could make anger seem less necessary -- professional success, greater personal control and so on.

Such insights can help the patient see how his anger isn't an immutable fact of life -- that it is often a response to general dissatisfaction with life. With such insights in hand, the patient is willing, usually, to believe that anger isn't really essential. He is able to look into ways of suppressing it or otherwise changing it.

The therapist may train the patient in ways to hold themselves back from actually expressing anger, and encourage expression in private, instead. This is the behavioral modification part of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Once a patient learns to express the control needed to move their anger to a different location, they begin to see it as essentially controllable. Such therapeutic approaches can work with a number of other challenges, as well.

Art Therapy

Art therapy helps people recovering from addiction by engaging them in artistic endeavors such as music, dancing, or stage acting. In many people, a part of their tendency to addiction comes from long-term stresses built up in the mind. People are, for various reasons, unable to express their pain and stress, a condition that, in part, been responsible for their need to seek an outlet in addictive behavior. The release of artistic expression can often help.

With the therapeutic approaches mentioned here and the many others available for specific types of patient need, the expertise of the therapist delivering therapy is primary to the success of the therapeutic undertaking. Doesn't it isn't enough to simply choose a name brand rehab center, and find accept whatever addiction treatment programs are on offer. That's why it's essential to seek our treatment programs in Pearland for drug and alcohol addiction treatment.

Instead, you need to talk to the therapist who will treat you, and make sure that it all works for you. Finding the right therapist, can be a very powerful thing, indeed. To speak to one of the experts at treatment programs in Pearland, TX, all you need is to call (877) 804-1531.