If you’re suffering from a substance use disorder, residential treatment can provide the care you need to promote a lasting recovery.
It may be tempting to simply try the program that’s closest to your home, but traveling for treatment offers six key benefits.
1. Traveling Gives You a Fresh Perspective
A change of scenery can often change your mindset. Traveling the distance between the treatment center and your home helps to reinforce the idea that this is a monumental first step towards a new chapter of your life.
Distancing yourself from your home environment is particularly helpful when environmental factors have played a role in your continued substance abuse. If you’ve fallen in with a circle of friends who heavily abuse substances, turn to substance abuse to cope with family stress, or associate being under the influence with the local party scene, an extended time away from home can help jump-start the process of forming a new sober identity.
2. Traveling Helps Protect Your Privacy
Struggling with substance abuse is nothing to be ashamed of, but sometimes you may not want the people around you to know that you’re going to a rehab center. You might be worried about damage to your professional reputation or how the potential for gossip could affect your spouse and children. Or, perhaps you are simply a very private person.
Counselors and other staff members are legally obligated to protect your privacy regardless of where you choose to attend rehab. However, if you travel to a facility out of state, this minimizes the chances that a fellow patient or a visitor may be someone you know.
3. It Curbs Impulsive Behavior
Although no two people with a substance abuse disorder are exactly alike, impulsivity is a common personality trait among those who struggle with addiction. Taking risks and making spur of the moment decisions often plays a factor in having recreational substance use turn into a full-blown addiction.
When you’re in treatment, a propensity towards impulsive behavior may lead you to try to abandon the program when your counselor pushes you to explore issues you’d rather not address. Therapy can bring up uncomfortable emotions, but this is a necessary part of the healing process. If you are attending a rehab close to home, it’s very easy to give up and quit instead of pushing forward.
4. It Avoids the Opportunity for Enabling
Even though your friends and family want you to get sober, their actions may be inadvertently enabling your addiction. Often, people who struggle with drug or alcohol abuse develop codependent relationships where a spouse, parent, or close friend continually steps in to protect them from the consequences of their actions. This might include loaning money, paying legal fees, providing a place to stay, or telling lies to excuse behavior while you were under the influence.
If this pattern of enabling is allowed to continue while you’re seeking treatment, it can prevent you from experiencing the full benefit of your therapy sessions. When your friends or family are contradicting information provided by your counselors or minimizing the seriousness of your addiction, it’s difficult to move forward with the healing process.
5. It Provides Time for Self-Reflection
Traveling for treatment provides a unique opportunity to focus solely on what you need to accomplish to build the foundation for sobriety. You can devote 100% of your time and energy to recovery, instead of worrying about how your children are doing in school or how your spouse is running the household.
Taking time for self-reflection can feel selfish when your loved ones are in the immediate area. However, if you’re traveling for rehab, time for introspection becomes a natural part of the process.
6. Traveling May Provide Higher-Quality Care
There are excellent drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers throughout the country, but each facility’s programming is slightly different. Some rehabs have programs in place for people who have co-occurring mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression, while others are better equipped to handle the unique needs of trauma survivors or people who are also struggling with process addictions or eating disorders. Some rehabs have programs separated by gender or faith-based programs that rely heavily on your spirituality to guide the recovery process.
Expanding your search for a suitable rehabilitation center to facilities outside your immediate area can allow you to access specialized care that is suited to your unique circumstances. You deserve the best possible substance abuse treatment, regardless of where you happen you live.
We can start you on the road to recovery.
