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What We Treat

Treating the Many Faces of Addiction

When you hear about rehab, or “treating addiction,” there’s a lot you probably don’t see going into that treatment if you haven’t been there. If you don’t suffer from addiction yourself, you probably look at rehab as a place where people go to just stop using drugs or alcohol, right? How much more complicated than that can it get?

It’s actually a lot more complicated than that than just “quitting.” Beating drug and alcohol addiction isn’t just a choice. If people could just flip a switch one day and decide to stop being addicted, it wouldn’t be the epidemic problem it is today. Addiction takes hold of people in both mental and physiological ways, and it doesn’t let go just because you want it to. For example, in severe cases of alcohol addiction, withdrawal symptoms can actually be life-threatening without proper detox.

Also, in many cases, substance abuse is linked to mental health problems. These co-occurring disorders are especially vicious, and tend to feed into one another, amplifying both problems. Northpoint Seattle is trained to recognize and treat these instances of co-occurring disorders, previously known as dual diagnosis.

So what does Northpoint Seattle treat exactly, and how do we help patients deal with the many forms and faces of addiction?

What Northpoint Seattle Treats

First off, we treat all forms of addiction in a personalized, compassionate way. Alcohol addiction, methamphetamine addiction, and opiate addiction all have different features and associated problems. On top of that, no two people go through addiction in the same way, even if they suffer from the same affliction.

At Northpoint Seattle, we understand this and we treat each affliction with a personalized treatment plan that addresses your unique issues and problems. We understand that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to addiction treatment is ineffective, so we treat our patients with respect as individuals, not simply as classes of afflictions.

But what forms of substance abuse do we actually treat in our intensive outpatient (IOP) program?

Here are just a few:

Alcohol Addiction

One of the most common, and most destructive, forms of substance abuse in the United States, alcohol addiction accounts for more people in rehab than any other form of substance abuse, and yet only a tiny fraction of those who need help actually receive it.

We get to the root cause of alcohol addiction and treat not only symptoms, but the underlying reasons that lead those suffering to drink in the first place. We are trained to recognize when alcohol detox is necessary, and while we don’t handle detox in house, we do refer out to high-quality detox facilities in the area that can help you through the most difficult stages.

Drug Addiction

Drug addiction is a catch-all term for the abuse of any narcotic from marijuana to prescription opiates like Oxycodone and Methodone. And while we may consider these all under the umbrella of “drug addiction,” they have much different symptoms, and the reasons behind them vary from person to person as well.

There are a number of situations in which someone can become addicted to narcotics. It happens in different ways, and to different degrees, but people can struggle with:

  • marijuana
  • heroin
  • prescription drugs
  • cocaine
  • crystal meth
  • any number of other narcotic substances

Northpoint Seattle has a well-trained staff that knows what to expect during treatment, and yet keeps and open mind and doesn’t act like they know you just because they know about your addiction.

Co-occurring Disorders

We take co-occurring disorders very seriously, because those that suffer from them are the most at-risk. Mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression can lead to, or result from, substance abuse. Sometimes the disorders develop mostly independent of one another, but when they appear concurrently, there is no question the disorders aggravate one another.

Northpoint Seattle believes that treating addiction symptoms is meaningless if we don’t also treat underlying issues. If we get you to stop using drugs, but send you right back into the same circumstances you were in before, without new-and-improved strategies to cope with and improve that situation, you won’t have the skills you need to keep yourself clean after your treatment is complete.

We want you to get clean and stay that way, which is why our treatment plan is geared to helping you with all your problems – not just getting you to “quit.”