Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A Follow-up Study on Drug Addicts after Treatment and Rehabilitation

This is a prospective six-month follow-up study on drug addicts after treatment and rehabilitation. The main concern is to find out during this critical period, whether the addicts were able to stay off drugs or fall back to drugs and what happened during the process.

The major findings were: quite a number of the addicts cannot be traced after completing treatment and rehabilitation; 25% dropped-out of the study mainly due to drug use; 39.2% of those follow-up were re-addicted while 17.9% "slipped"; only 17.9% managed to abstain from drugs during the six months follow-up period. Addicts who relapsed can be divided into 2 groups: those who returned to drugs immediately after rehabilitation, and those who fall back several months later after attempting to stay away from drugs without success. The main reasons identified for relapse were mixing with addict-friends, boredom, craving for drugs and emotional pressure. The majority of those who slipped first started to consume alcohol because they thought alcohol is not a drug. A combination of various factors such as strong family support, avoiding drug addicts or the temptations, mixing with non-addicts, self-realization, having a job, determination and beneficial activities to fill their time helped the addicts to abstain from drugs. Cigarette smoking is rather common and most of the cases returned to cigarette smoking rather immediately. Majority of those who dropped-out, relapsed or slipped, started alcohol use soon after treatment.

The study recommended for the whole treatment and rehabilitation programme to be reviewed. Families need to be educated about addiction, rehabilitation, relapse prevention and handling of addicts. Rehabilitated addicted have to be integrated into their families before they return to the larger community. The problem of easy availability of drugs must be dealt with seriously. Joining self-help groups, recreational activities and guidance from recovering addicts are important.

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