Rochester, Minnesota
Originally acting as a stagecoach stop between Saint Paul and Dubuque, Rochester has evolved into an outstanding city full of culture and history. In 2014 the city’s estimated population was over 111,000, making it Minnesota’s third largest city outside of the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington Metropolitan Area. With a population growing every year, it’s easy to see how a scourge like alcoholism is able to creep into the folds of society.
Alcoholism is an indiscriminate disease that can easily sneak up on its victims and destroy their lives. Unfortunately, alcoholics are often incarcerated as a result of actions committed while intoxicated. Addiction is a disease, including alcoholism, and needs to be treated like any other disease would be. With care, compassion, personalized treatment, and medical assistance.
The Dangers of Alcohol Abuse
There are different ways that alcohol can be abused, some are more dangerous than others. Any form of substance abuse, however, is highly problematic and leads to very serious health issues. The ways we look at substance abuse have drastically changed since addiction was classified as a disease, which has also allowed us to get a better understanding of the condition.
Primarily there are two ways to abuse alcohol: binge drinking and consistent drinking. Both of these have their own dangers that can arise both short term and long term. Long term alcohol abuse is most commonly associated with problems like cirrhosis of the liver, but there are many more issues that can become present, both physical and neurological.
Consistent drinking is what it sounds like: drinking consistently throughout the day in high quantity. This can create a high tolerance for alcohol and an even greater dependency on the substance. The more alcohol your body ingests the more you will need to intake in the future in order to get the same effects. This also means that the withdrawal symptoms will be that much stronger, the fear of which can sometimes prevent people from trying to quit drinking.
The other common form of alcohol abuse is binge drinking, a form of substance abuse that is common among people ages 17-28 and in party settings. The specific definition of binge drinking is consuming more than four drinks within a short period of time, generally within 2-hours. Binge drinking may seem fun at the time, but with it comes the highest risk of alcohol poisoning. Alcohol poisoning is one of the most dangerous side-effects involved with alcohol abuse, providing a wide variety of incredibly unpleasant symptoms, several of which can be fatal. This side effect can cause confusion, vomiting, seizures, clammy skin, and a suppressed gag reflex which can cause choking.
The short-term effects of substance abuse can be pretty bad, but believe it or not the long-term effects are even more detrimental. Symptoms such as heart attacks, hypertension, pancreatitis. Neurological symptoms of alcohol abuse include stroke, memory loss, and even dementia.
Treatment with ABT
At A Better Today we do everything we can to provide the best in care and treatment. We offer multiple forms of therapy as well as medical supervision of withdrawals. ABT employs therapists that are educated at a Master’s level with specialties in substance abuse and similar fields. This not only gives you the advantage of having incredibly knowledgeable care, but also in knowing you are in great hands as you recover from your disease.
The first step towards recovery is detox: the process where your body is without alcohol or drugs and is cleansed of the harmful toxins. During detox your body also tends to go through withdrawal symptoms which can be very difficult to deal with. Luckily, these symptoms can be managed through certain medications combined with the excellent and skilled staff at A Better Today.
Withdrawal is scary, there is no way to sugar-coat that unfortunately. There are some very severe side-effects that can incur during withdrawal. Sometimes the fear of withdrawal drives people to continue drinking, even if they don’t realize that they’re simply diving head first into the rabbit hole. The problem only gets worse the more you abuse alcohol.
ABT creates specialized treatment programs that are tailored to each client’s individual situation: we look at the substance you are dependent on, the severity of the substance abuse, and the history of said abuse. The more information we have the better we can help you through these individualized treatment programs. The goal isn’t just to beat this horrific disease but to also insure you can stay sober and live a life free of addiction. Our goal extends beyond helping you fight this disease: we also help you to develop skills you can use to prevent relapse in the future and protect yourself against triggers.
There is no magic pill or one-size-fits-all program that can treat any disease or dependency. Not only do we know this, we put this idea into practice. While we tend to focus on group and individual therapy, there are a wide variety of other therapies that we offer during treatment. Each method of therapy is useful in its own right. The method of therapy employed is dependent on a combination of what the client feels most comfortable with and what the therapist recommends.
The two primary forms of therapy we employ are group and individual therapy. Group therapy puts you in a small crowd of other recovering addicts, giving you a small community to be with as you go through treatment. Individual therapy is often what people have responded best to: it’s just you and a therapist in a one-on-one setting talking about your issues and substance dependency. The goal here is to identify the underlying reasons for the substance abuse. These reasons could be as plain as day or completely hidden, buried somewhere in your subconscious. The therapist will work with you to discover any and all contributing factors and then help you build strategies you can use to resist the things that might trigger a relapse. Individual therapy is especially effective due to the privacy of the sessions. People seem to open up easier in a one-on-one setting as opposed to when surrounded by others.
While these are the primary forms of therapy, there are many others offered through ABT and any can be employed in order to help you forge a brighter tomorrow. Equine therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, and music and art therapy are all different forms of therapy that we offer. Each of these have their own range of advantages.
Where to Go for Treatment
A Better Today is located in Scottsdale, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. While this may by a decent distance away from Minnesota, take inventory of the advantages that can come from traveling for treatment. Traveling can offer you the benefit of a new, fresh environment for starting a new chapter of life, as well as helping you escape any triggers at home.
Triggers are defined as events that give the individual justification to return to his/her behavior, but they can also be objects or people. Seeing someone you used to drink with could be a trigger, as could seeing an old bar you used to frequent, hearing drinking stories, or seeing your favorite brand of beer sitting on a coffee table. These triggers provide excuses for relapse and can be very difficult to resist if you don’t have the necessary skills and knowledge to avoid them. This is why traveling is often heavily recommended for treatment. You can get away from these triggers and get sober in a fresh, clean, trigger-free environment monitored by expert and compassionate staff.
While going through treatment, one of the ways ABT will aid you is by training you to resist these triggers. Once you are out of treatment there are ways to continue monitoring yourself and keep accountable such as transitional living and mutual-support groups.
Transitional living is a great way to practice using the skills taught to you while still being somewhat monitored. While you develop these skills you will practice them in a controlled environment, which is very different from using them in the real world. Using transitional living offers substance abusers a structured living environment while they work to get back on their feet, and it has proven to be successful.
Once sober you may have the option to join the ABT family and alumni, giving you the opportunity to build a new life and help those who are struggling with their own issues. Your insight into the world of substance abuse could be helpful.
Getting treatment is very important, nothing should stand in the way of recovery and building a better life. At A Better Today we don’t want anything to get in the way of your or your loved one’s recovery, least of all the cost of it. That is why we create affordable, reasonable payment plans so that you can get the help you deserve without breaking your wallet. We also accept most forms of private insurance, which will often cover most of or all of the costs of treatment.
If you or someone you know needs help, the time to act is now! Call (520) 288-8484 now to speak to a specialist and get all the information you need to get started. Call A Better Today for a clearer, brighter tomorrow.
