The war on drugs used to be a battle against drug dealers. In recent years the war on drugs has really turned into the war against drug addiction. The number of people who are struggling with heroin, fentanyl, and alcohol abuse is simply staggering. Given current health and societal conditions in America in 2020, the country’s addiction problem figures to just keep getting worse. If you think about drug/alcohol addiction in terms of it truly being a war, it’s easier to understand that everyone needs to play a role in the battle. That means people in communities everywhere need to find ways to get involved for the sake of the community as a whole.
History has shown us that cities and states where addiction problems run rampant are the same cities that have significant crime issues. There is no denying that the pursuit of illicit drugs causes the crime rate to rise to an unacceptable level. Of course, drug stricken communities suffer other types of collateral damage in terms of issues like poverty and domestic abuse. Given that the war on drug abuse is a community problem, it’s fair to say that the addiction treatment community is on the front line in the battle. The responsibility of helping the people who suffer the most from addition issues falls squarely on the shoulders of treatment professionals. The titled question is relevant. How does the addiction treatment community work with overall communities to try to fight this problem at a higher level?
How Outpatient Treatment Centers Can Work With Local Communities
The key to outpatient rehab centers working with local communities has everything to do with good communication. There has to be a way for addiction treatment professionals to reach out to community leaders to connect the dots. What are the dots? Here’s a good example. A community might see a sudden rise in the poverty and crime rates and not know exactly why it’s happening. At the same time, the community’s rehab centers might be seeing an increase in clients coming in for treatment. It would seem there is a correlation here.
If a community’s rehabs have the ability to communicate with community leaders about what they are experiencing in the treatment realm, it might help answer some of the questions about poverty and crime. Of course, it might also work well going in the other direction. If the local police department sees a sudden increase in drug trafficking, they can communicate with rehab officials about the need for more treatment services. As drug abuse increases, the pressure falls on outpatient treatment centers because inpatient facilities become overcrowded. These examples address how rehabs and community leaders can work together on issues after the fact. Let’s look at how outpatient treatment centers can do outreach to help stop addiction problems from occurring.
Educating High School Students
Drug issues at the high school level have always been a problem in American. Idealistic high school kids know all about the euphoria of drug use but don’t often know the reality about how drugs and alcohol destroy lives. As addiction treatment professionals, therapists know the end effects of drug abuse. By traveling to local high schools for open discussions about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, there might be a good number of students who get the message. That could help prevent some kids from falling victim to addiction problems.
Setting Up Community Support Resouces
Clients cannot spend months and years going to outpatient rehab sessions. At some point, they have to get back to living normal lives. One of the things addiction treatment professionals can do to help recovering addicts is to work with community leaders to develop relapse prevention support groups. For the addiction treatment community’s part, they can provide literature and expertise on how to run support groups or 12 Step meetings.
They can also offer their services to come in and run some of these groups. The focus of this idea is that people in recovery need somewhere to go where they can talk about little problems before the little problems cause relapses. As you contemplate how to deal with your addiction, you need to remember you are part of a community. We hope that if we can help you arrest your addiction, you might be able to pay it forward by helping others in the community. First things first. You need to contact us at 844-639-8371 so we can begin helping you get yourself firmly into a state of recovery.