How Find Me a Rehab Matches You With The Right UK Treatment

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment. You can do it without it being complicated. Let our experienced addictions clinicians, who work in rehab centres, share their advice with you.

Trying to negotiate the plethora of websites can be confusing. Which ones are genuine? Who wants to help you and who just wants to sell you something?

Relax. We are not here to sell you anything.

You can call and speak to an experienced addictions clinicians who work in the addictions sector. Our advice is free, impartial and confidential.

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment :How Does it Work

In strange ways!

Private treatment or local authority funded statutory addiction services: Which should you choose?

We can help you find your local free services.

Your local authority is free to decide who runs their service. They can contract in whomever they like. It could be the NHS, a charity, 3rd sector provider or a private company.

What level of service they commission is up to them. Budgets are very tight.

All will provide substitute prescribing for heroin addiction and support for crack and cocaine use. Many will provide a community alcohol detox for those who fit nationally recognised criteria.

Some will provide residential treatment.

Local services do their very best, within the confines of their budgets.

Drawbacks with Local Authority Funded Services

The aim of local authority funded statutory addiction services is crime reduction.

Drugs aren’t free. People with a drug addiction , sadly, commit a disproportionate amount of crime to fund their habits.

Local authority services will, where appropriate, provide free prescriptions for substitute medications like Methadone and Buprenorphine.

The emphasis will be on maintenance dosing. Those seeking treatment from local services are often very, very chaotic with chronic drug, social and health problems. By maintaining on Methadone or Buprenorphine they are less likely to commit crime to pay for drugs. A win-win: Less crime in the community and better outcomes for the person.

How do I access local free services?

Local authority services often have walk in sessions or traditional appointment systems. Above all, whichever approach is used it is important to remember that , as good as these services are (and our clinicians have worked in them) their response is not as quick as if you want private treatment.

You are not going to get a prescription on your first appointment.

Should they do deem you suitable for residential treatment, you are going to have to commit to workshops and key sessions before they will consider applying for funding for you. If you drop out of contact you will have to start the process again.

Local Authroity Funded Rehab

The priority will be keeping costs to a minimum is essential within local authority funded services.

Many have “blocked beds” purchased, in advance, with some of the large chains of rehab centres as well as with charity and 3rd sector provided services.

Some provide detox as well as therapy whereas some only provide a detox. Sometimes, you will be provided with both but the process is separated and you will move from detox to rehab. This is not always “joined up” and you may have to wait between leaving detox and starting rehab. Not a good idea: At all.

Many relapse between detox and rehab. Why? Because detox releases all the negative thoughts and emotions that you were suppressing with drugs and alcohol. If these come to the fore and you are not in treatment, you will, very likely: Relapse.

Free Community Alcohol Detox

Statutory services are, sometimes, able to provide a community alcohol detox, free of charge.

There are very strict national clinical guidelines with very, very limited wriggle room. If you sit outside of the criteria it is extremely unlikely they will be able to help you with a community detox.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Consuming more than 30 units a day
• Previous alcohol detox within the last six months
• History of alcohol related withdrawal seizures
• Co-addiction
• Certain prescribed medications (Pregabalin, Gabapentin, etc)
• History of significant self harm
• Recent suicide attempt
• Diagnosis of severe and enduring personality disorder
• Living alone with no adult to supervise 24/7 for the duration of the process
• Adverse blood tests

Home detox, alone, rarely solves the problem. Without the therapy to address as to why you were drinking you are bound to relapse: FAST. Most home alcohol detox clients relapse by the end of the week, if not by the start of the second week after detox. It is like sticking a plaster over a gun shot wound.

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment :Home Alcohol Detox

Yes, this can be arranged. However, we advise strongly against it.

If alcoholism could be overcome by sitting at home and taking a few pills, rehab centres wouldn’t be needed.

A detox without therapy, relapse prevention and aftercare is like moving the deckchairs on the titanic after it has hit the iceberg.

Legal issues with home detox

Nearly all home detox companies offer treatment illegally as they do not have CQC registration and are not using the correct exemption. Unless they have CQC registration for home treatment, only a doctor, registered with the General Medical Council on the specialist register for addictions can provide this service.

To do so that doctor has to work in a CQC registered addiction service as a “day job” and can offer home treatment as a “side hustle”. However, the doctor has to run all aspects of the operation: From start to finish. No other person can be involved.

The vast majority of home detox companies use nurse or pharmacist prescribers: This is illegal unless they have CQC registration for home treatment.

In any event, home treatment companies charge you over £1,800 for £20 worth of pills. There is no relapse prevention, no therapy and no aftercare. In other words: A waste of time and money. A weeks residential treatment can cost less!

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment: What Do I Need?

You can speak to an experienced addictions clinician for free, independent and confidential advice.

We work in rehab centres though we are not tied any specific one. All we care about is that you get the right treatment, at the right rehab at the right price.

Referral agents

The rehab sector, when it comes to marketing, is split into two sectors: Centres and referral agents.

Sadly, due to clever marketing you may think you are speaking with a centre when, in actual fact, you are speaking with a salesperson. It is unlikely that the person you are dealing with has ever been to a rehab centre. They are there to take your details, refer you to a rehab and, if you book, take a very large commission.

They will plague you, morning, noon and night until you make a booking. When you get home from rehab they will continue to contact you in case you relapse.

Referral agents will make promises that no one could, or should, deliver. We have heard it all: Swimming pools, fully staffed gyms and caviar. You don’t need the latter and the former, on detox medication, would be extremely dangerous.

Postbox Addresses

Referral agents use all kinds of clever marketing strategies to convince you they have centres all over the UK. They don’t.

They will rent post boxes at serviced office accommodation and then manipulate google into thinking they have a clinic there: They don’t.

On their websites they will tell you that there is a rehab centre in every town and city in the UK. This simply isn’t true.

There are towns and cities that have multiple rehabs and large parts of the country where there aren’t any.

The job of a referral agent is to get your details and sell them on for commission. Anything they can do to get a “sale” they will do. The referral sector is not regulated.

Fake adverts

One particular method of harvesting your details is to advertise a fake centre. One example is Lifeline Surrey: Alcohol & Drug Rehabilitation in Surrey | Lifeline

The centre does not (and never has) existed. The photographs were taken from a Rightmove advert and a local gym. If you call the person who answers (and is based in the Far East) will tell you the centre is full or they can not accommodate you there. She simply wants your details to sell on. This is one of her ventures. Others have resulted in criminal prosecution: qc.org.uk/press-release/fines-ps60780-issued-following-cqc-prosecution-unlawful-substance-misuse-service

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment :The Essentials

There are four essential elements for treatment: Detox, therapy, relapse prevention and aftercare.

Everything else is an added extra and not really necessary.

The fundamentals of treatment haven’t changed since they were incepted: and they don’t need to.

New therapies come and go but the group therapy model for addiction recovery remains the bedrock of every rehab centre the world over. Why? Because it works. 12 STEP/SMART/eclectic. It really doesn’t matter which model a centre uses. Time worrying about which model is used is time wasted.

You don’t need to be religious. The 12 STEPS is open to everyone.

Finding Residential Addiction Treatment :What you don’t Need

Yoga with miniature goats, shakra realignment and organic green cleansing tea from Machu Picchu . Sounds nice but you don’t need it and you will be paying for it!

Sure, there are luxury spa type rehabs where you can be pampered and served gourmet food. However, there are also extremely good lower cost options.

Think of rehab like a plane. You can travel in economy, premium economy, business or first class. You will all get to the destination at the same time. If the plane experiences turbulence a lie flat bed won’t make it any better and if the plane is held in a holding pattern because of bad weather you all get delayed.

Rehab is the same. The outcome is sobriety and abstinence. Whether you are in a suite with a four poster bed and a fresh fruit platter or a functional room with a desk and chair it is what you put into the process that matters: Not the surroundings.

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