Why fail rehabilitation programs

Cory Monteith, the American youth series Glee co-star, died from alcohol and heroin overdose shortly after leaving rehabilitation. This period after the imprisonment and withdrawal seems to be crucial. A question that some would say is life or death.

According to experts, when one spends three months without a drop of alcohol or a drug gram, levels of tolerance in the body decrease, especially if it's heroin. This makes it, if the person does, you run the risk of overdose, because it is normal to consume the same amount to which it was accustomed.

Relapse can occur just after leaving a treatment or after years of abstinence. However, they are in those first weeks the addict embodies a struggle against Titans.

Critical stage

An easy period in which the addict has to integrate into society and feels more vulnerable because he has left the bubble that protected it. It is also a reunion with old friends and habits.

Techniques used in the centers out of an addiction are numerous, although most have a common denominator: abstinence.

The other option is that adopt programs of health in many countries: using methadone or suboxone as an alternative to illicit drugs. A drug addict can spend decades medicated with methadone.

There are points for and against both trends. Advocates total abstinence say that methadone is making worse the addiction of the patient.

While those who defend a medicated treatment warn of the dangers of death after leaving Rehab without methadone.

Addicts end up dying 

Yes, some people die, but not many, tells him to BBC World Chip Somers, executive director of Focus 12 a rehabilitation centre to which came the star British Russell Brand to leave drugs.

The reality is that more people overdose die without having gone through a period of abstinence, that those that make after leaving a centre such as ours, says Somers, who says that in the 10 years that has been managing Focus 12 only you have heard of a case of death by overdose within days of completing the program.

One of our slogans is that there are no old addicts," says Somers. At the end addicts end up dying from overdose, if rehabilitation fails and they relapse.

Heroin, the most dangerous

The greatest danger of an overdose after relapse is when the individual is addicted to heroin. This narcotic depresses breathing, and if combined with other drugs, such as alcohol in the case of the star of Glee, the result can be fatal.

Another criticism of the rehabilitation centers is that in addition to not make use of the available drugs to counteract the addiction, some are not accompanied by family therapies that help to build a social environment that reinforce the sobriety and discourage drug.

Somers is agreed on the importance of providing support groups and follow-up once it has discharged the patient. We have weekly group sessions and customized therapies, although these are not binding.

The effectiveness of the rehabilitation centers is relative. According to figures we handle, 70% ending the program, 45% remains completely abstemio after two years after reintegrate into society, says Somers.

The root of addiction

Our experience tells us that addiction occurs mainly by three reasons: stress, pleasure and impulsiveness, said Professor David Nutt, the center of psychopharmacology from the Imperial College of London, a Brand for the documentary.

Methadone is supposed to stabilize the addict and this is impossible, because when one drug is what he wants is to be properly set up above.

Chip Somers

Stress activates a part of the brain that is relieved by alcohol and drugs. Pleasure addiction occurs when you're enjoying so much of what you appeals to narcotics to increase that pleasure. While impulsiveness is a behavior linked to dopamine; the lack or alteration of this substance in the brain makes you more prone to addiction by recreational uses.

That provision to addiction, practically inherited, is what may lead experts to opting for treatment with methadone or suboxone. And not all have psychological awareness or support to do a rehabilitation of abstinence, tells the BBC the Dr Clare Gerada, of the Royal College of General Practitioners and expert in addiction.

I'd love that people maintain drug-free, but I've been too long as a general physician to know that that is not possible.