What’s Better For Getting Clean? Pain Management Clinics or Rehab?
Addiction to pain pills shares some commonalities with other addictions, but it starts out differently. Most people don’t get addicted to pain pills because they were using illegal or controlled substances to get high. Instead, you start by taking pain pills to help you cope with pain and end up physically or psychologically dependent on the pills. This can be particularly a problem for chronic pain sufferers who must deal with pain over an extended period. Recovery from this addiction involves two separate processes, one dealing with the addiction and the other dealing with the pain. Neither one alone is sufficient. If you deal with the addiction but the pain is still present, you may relapse into using pills. If you deal with the pain alone without addressing the addiction, you end up becoming a pain-free addict.
Rehabilitation
Rehab will help you deal with the process of recovering from your addiction. It will address your physiological addiction to the drugs by a medically-supported detox process. Just as importantly though, it also addresses the psychological aspects of addiction. Rehab centers understand that your recovery is not just a matter of curing a physical problem but also of changing elements of your life which can interfere with your recovery. Through meetings and counseling, you will begin a life-long process to sustain your recovery. Unfortunately, if the underlying pain which drove you to taking the pills is still present, it can still lead to relapses.
Pain Management
Medical solutions and pain management strategies address the underlying causes of your need to take pain pills. Before beginning rehab, you should work with your health care provider to address as much as possible the underlying causes of pain. For example, a physical therapist might help you correct underlying muscle weaknesses or bad lifting techniques that contribute to lower back pain. Next, pain management specialists can work with you to find alternative methods of managing your pain. These can include various relaxation techniques and complementary therapies, movement-based techniques, and occupational therapies that enable you to manage your pain in a work environment. While these will not cure your addiction, they will remove one of the major triggers for taking pills by providing you with healthier ways to respond to pain. Of course, these pain management techniques will not cure your addiction, but they will work to help sustain your recovery.
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