Alcohol Abuse Treatment and Addiction treatment may be often discussed as separate thing, but alcohol is just another substance that humans can become addicted to. Instead of alcohol abuse and addiction being discussed as requiring a different treatment, they will be treated as though the doctors and psychiatrists are treating the same problem, addiction.

Dr. Dean Adell, who hosts a medical talk radio program, says that addiction medicine is a specialized field of medicine that practitioners need to be specially trained to handle. Many good doctors have chosen to specialize in the field, but the treating an addiction is largely done the same way. There can be up to three steps in alcohol abuse treatment or addiction treatment: detox, impatient therapy, and enrolling in an outpatient program.

Inpatient addiction treatment can be expensive and is intensive. Inpatient care is intended to help the patient become clean and start out with a strong transition back to his normal routine, but impatient therapy alone is not enough. It is good for determining destructive behavior patterns and psychological problems that the patient may have used to self-medicate, but outpatient programs must be used as part of a successful alcohol abuse treatment or an addiction treatment.

Even a person who is clean will remain an addict for the rest of his or her life. Outpatient programs increase the chance of a patient not slipping into their destructive behavior and provide a support network of other people who understand what another addict is going through. The support network provided by twelve step programs can help a person stay off whatever substance he or she has abused.

Most outpatient programs follow the twelve traditions initially laid down by the group Alcoholic’s Anonymous. Many churches host AA meetings and an impatient facility should help their patients locate outpatient resources to treat addiction before a patient leaves.