The Cognitive-Behavioral Approach to Cocaine Treatment

Article by behaviordisorders.net.

CBT gives cocaine users the tools to cope with stressful situations and avoid being put into spots where they will be tempted to use again.

Addiction treatment centers can use many different courses of treatment to deal with patients struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. One thing that many people don’t realize is that the type of treatment being used can vary based on many factors, including the type of substance that a person is addicted to along with other factors like a person’s mental health, physical condition and other addictions.

One of the most successful ways of treating cocaine addiction is a form of drug rehab called Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a short-term approach that helps people with serious cocaine addictions to recognize the situations where they are most likely to use cocaine, how to avoid these situations when possible and how to cope with the external pressures and triggers which are most likely to cause them to use cocaine in the first place.

There are several reasons why CBT is an effective treatment for cocaine abuse and is frequently used in drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. Because it is a short-term approach, it can usually be fully completed within the course of a normal stay in treatment without taxing the resources of a clinic’s staff. In addition, it is a flexible approach which can easily be tailored to the wide range of issues that individual patients have inside a rehab center. In addition, it can be structured to work within individual or group treatment settings along within both inpatient and outpatient settings.

CBT helps people in the midst of drug addiction to break familiar habits and learn healthier ways to deal with external pressures in their life. Cocaine users work to develop the motivation to get clean and sober and learn how to stay abstinent. They are taught how to recognize situations that place them at a high risk of relapse and effective means of coping with these situations. Instead of turning to cocaine as a first choice to feeling something in their lives, CBT teaches cocaine abusers how to reward themselves with other activities.

For a variety of reasons, cocaine abuse can be one of the most difficult addictions to break. Unlike with prescription drug abuse, there can be heavy social pressures for people to break their abstinence and start using again. CBT gives people recovering from cocaine addiction the tools and coping skills needed to stay free from drugs.