From The Director 

It is time to stop and look at how long it takes for a patient to be considered done with treatment, cured, or successfully completed.  

We often get requests from those involved in the criminal justice system to document when an offender will be done with treatment.  Patients themselves often ask,"how long will I have to be in treatment".     

In decades past, people talked of 28-day programs and 26-week outpatient programs, and 6-week DWI education programs, etc.  Today, these terms are not considered medically appropriate.   

A patient with addiction(s) has the illness for life. They are very treatable and can return to a normal lifestyle that does not include the use of alcohol or any other drug to which they became addicted.  However, they have a lifetime illness, and must commit to managing it (so it does not manage them).  If they neglect their recovery work, they will always be at risk to relapse into the addiction state.  

Compared with any other chronic medical illness, it is understandable.  Diabetes is managed for life as is heart disease.  Now, step back and look how long treatment will take.  You can see that there is not a cure, per se.  You can see there is never a time where a patient would not be taking care of their illness.  

When a patient asks how long treatment will take, we tell them it depends on how they progress in treatment.  The goal is they become stable enough and knowledgeable enough to manage their illness without continued support from professionals. 

For some, this can happen in a few months of weekly outpatient sessions.  For others, it can take more intensive treatment like inpatient or residential, then stepping down to progressively less intensive levels like halfway houses, recovery house and outpatient. This can take over a year.  Some of the measures we use to determine stability include:  

• urine and breath test results 
• ability of the patient to verbalize an understanding of their illness
• commitment to do whatever it takes to become well
• lifestyle change demonstrated by improved functioning in relationships, job, and physical health.  

These are very individualized measures.   We also need to see the patient has set up a recovery oriented support system (i.e., AA, NA) that will insure their lifelong recovery.  So, just as a medical doctor cannot say how long someone with diabetes needs to keep coming for office visits, we cannot say how long a specific patient will need to have professional services.