LIVING LIFEWith Dual Diagnosis
Finding emotional balance, takes the right practitioners.
For every moment that inner voice has reminded you how powerless you’ve become to drug cravings, there lives the opportunity to seek help to overcome the disease of addiction. Perhaps your drug of choice is alcohol, and you long to stop needing the drink. You know you need help. But hopelessness supersedes action. You know you want relief. But anxiety keeps you frozen in fear. This could be about you or someone close to you.
But what if there’s more. For near 50 percent of those with a substance use disorder there is more — the presence of a mental illness.
Traditional addiction treatment programs that focus on an individual’s chemical codependency can help with removing the physical cravings to use, and address unhealthy life choices and destructive coping mechanisms. But with dual diagnosis, left untreated, addiction recovery is short-lived. Here’s why.