If you’re in the middle of a treatment program for your addiction, you may begin to feel confident enough in your progress that you believe you can go home early. But it’s essential to remember that people who make the impulsive decision to walk away from treatment early often resume their addictive habits within weeks. If you don’t finish the full course of your therapy, you can’t expect to have all the coping strategies you’ll need to recognize and manage your relapse triggers.
What are the consequences of leaving early, and what might you expect if you exit treatment before you have completed your program?
Can You Check Yourself out of Rehab?
If you are considering leaving a rehab program, talk through your feelings with your treatment team. For example, people who believe they have made enough strides to handle life outside a rehab center might not be looking at the bigger picture. You might also benefit from bringing up the topic in group therapy, because your peers might help you regain a sense of perspective on what motivated you to enter rehab in the first place.
If you are thinking about checking yourself out of rehab, wait 24 hours and re-evaluate your feelings. Recovery doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not something you can accomplish all by yourself. However, isn’t your health and happiness worth putting in the effort?
What Makes People Want to Leave Rehab Early?
There’s a wide range of reasons you might start thinking about exiting rehab prematurely, and if you’re serious about getting sober, you need to consider these carefully.
Withdrawal and Cravings
The unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms of withdrawal can be challenging to endure. Your experience may vary, depending on which drug you are withdrawing from, but common symptoms include nausea, irritability, mood changes and trouble sleeping.
Undergoing withdrawal is not easy, but the worst of the symptoms will pass in a few days. During medical detox, the experienced addiction professionals at a qualified rehab center can help keep you as safe and comfortable as possible, and make it easier for you to manage your cravings.
Not Enjoying Rehab
Some people find the rehab experience doesn’t align with their expectations. Perhaps they miss their friends and families, or are struggling to adapt to the structure a rehab program requires. Others assume their addiction is “cured” once they complete detox, and they don’t need to go through the rest of the process.
Consider this: leaving a rehab program prematurely means throwing away everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Recovery is a process, and you’ll lose all the progress you have made toward breaking your cycle of addiction if you choose not to see your program through. Addiction and substance use require therapy, counseling and healing, and interrupting your treatment can put you at greater risk of a relapse.
Re-Committing to Your Recovery
Substance abuse treatment provides you with foundational skills that are necessary to not only treat addiction, but to uncover the emotional challenges that made you vulnerable to developing a substance misuse problem in the first place. By leaving treatment early, you are essentially sending yourself back to square one, with all the same burdens on your shoulders.
Drug and alcohol rehab is the beginning of a brand-new phase in your life. Nobody ever promised it would be easy. However, a treatment that can quite literally save your life is worth seeing through to the end. Even if you’ve only been in the program for a short while, you have already taken the most difficult steps toward achieving health and happiness, and your future is much brighter because of it.
At New Found Life, we offer medically managed detox and a complete continuum of evidence-based care in Long Beach, CA. We have seen firsthand how recovery can make a difference in people’s lives, and we want to help you realize those benefits for yourself and your family. Contact us today to speak with our admissions team and make a new beginning.