It’s bad enough to be addicted to one substance, but frequently addictions do not occur alone. The type of personality susceptible to one type of addiction is frequently defined as an “addictive” personality, which means there’s actually a physiological make-up that predisposes them to becoming addicted. That’s one reason that drug & alcohol rehab programs are sometimes bundled together.
Combination drug and alcohol programs
Use combinations of the same therapies used in drug treatment as well as alcohol treatment in order to get the addict off of their drugs of choice. Just as in other forms of rehab treatment, there is follow up with social groups, other forms of therapy such as psychotherapy, behavior modification, and other treatments. Hospitalization during withdrawal is especially crucial for the compound drug/alcohol addict, because the complex of symptoms of overdose/withdrawal is so much more dangerous than a single substance alone, and so much more likely to be fatal.
One big difference from an ordinary alcohol program, however, is that there may be judicial control involved. Drug use and abuse is usually illegal; and not only is the drug addict sometimes caught in the act of breaking the law (such as burglary to support the expensive drug habit), the very acts of finding and taking the drugs themselves are breaking the law. So drug & alcohol rehab programs may be required by the court, or they may even be a course of treatment that occurs in prison behind bars, or at the very least in a court-ordered half-way house.
