Having been a psychologist for several years at one of the country’s premier residential addiction treatment centers, and having worked in the field of drug and alcohol treatment for more than 10 years, I have had much opportunity to witness first-hand what works and does not work for people trying to recover from drug and alcohol addiction.
So often people come to a residential treatment center and do very well while they are there for 30, 60, 90 days, or however long they are able to stay. But once people discharge and re-enter the “real world” outside the supportive bubble that residential treatment provides, it is usually a harsh reality check for many individuals–often leading to relapse and a return to old addictive and dysfunctional behaviors.
As a result, there is now a growing movement within the field of addiction treatment called Concierge Treatment, which is focused on bringing residential treatment, and all it has to offer, to the patient in his/her own environment. The benefits of this new approach are many—namely they help address patients’ issues as they occur in the context of family, work, and daily life in general. Furthermore, they allow patients to participate in treatment for longer periods of time, without sacrificing time away from family and work, thereby increasing the likelihood of success and long-term sobriety. The most valuable impact these approaches bring, however, is their ability to permit patients to learn to grow and change in their home environment, so that when the intensive treatment phase is over, there is no harsh reality check when they return home to where all the life stressors and triggers are waiting.
Interesting, as well, is the fact that we are starting to see the rise of a new breed of residential treatment centers which also take this ultimate 1:1 approach. For example, The Kusnacht Practice in Zurich, Switzerland often takes one client at a time, with a complete multi-disciplinary treatment team devoting all their time and attention each day to that single patient and his/her treatment needs. After the patient completes his/her treatment stay at their facility in Zurich, the patient returns home with his/her primary therapist for what they call a “mentoring period,” which can last from several days to a few months, where the therapist assists in the translation and integration of all the information/skills learned in treatment, back in the patient’s home environment.
So why is Concierge Treatment the wave of the future? Because rather than seeing the client only 2-3 hours per week, in a foreign setting removed from the family and interpersonal work dynamics that so often drive many addictive behaviors, now the therapist can witness firsthand, for 8-12 hours per day, the interplay of factors, personalities, and other external influences that are contributing to the client’s life stressors and ineffective ways of dealing with them–i.e. his/her addictive/self-destructive behaviors–and easily intervene when and where appropriate, in the form of individual work, couple’s work, family work, meditation, spiritual work, neurofeedback, etc.
Thus, this individualized and customized treatment program, conducted in the client’s own work/life environment, will help the client truly understand the “why” behind his/her substance abuse, and provide the client with new behavioral insights and living skills to achieve lifetime recovery and lifetime dreams.