Once you have decided to get help for a drinking or drug abuse problem and decided that the you really need inpatient care at a drug or alcohol rehab, you still need to choose a quality drug rehab, and you still have a very tough decision to make when evaluating between the hundreds of drug rehabs likely available in your area alone.

Most drug and alcohol rehabs are run by committed professionals and do offer a wide and comprehensive program designed to offer the most benefit to the recovery process. Unfortunately, some exist for little reason other than to collect your admissions check, and will offer very little therapy of value. How can you pick a good drug rehab?

Thankfully, there are a few ways to determine if a rehab under consideration does offer quality programming, and one criterion you can use for evaluation is the level of aftercare programming as offered by the facility.

Drug or alcohol treatment at a residential rehab facility should never end with the culmination of a residential stay, and drug rehab treatment should occur over two separate and distinct but equally important phases. The first stage occurs while you are a resident of the facility, and is the more intensive phase; the second or “aftercare” phase of treatment occurs only after you have left the facility, yet return regularly for continuing aftercare therapy and education ( Why you need aftercare).The importance of aftercare

This aftercare makes an incredible difference, and one of the best indicators of long term success and sobriety is a committed and enthusiastic maintenance of aftercare therapy. Aftercare may include continuing group peer support sessions, will likely involve some form of continuing 12 steps style meetings, and should also include occasional sessions with a therapist or psychologist.

Aftercare therapy assists recovering addicts reentering the community to maintain the lessons and teachings of rehab even in the face of a different daily reality. Aftercare helps those people struggling with sobriety to consolidate relapse prevention plans even when faced with mounting temptation and availability; and when aftercare includes individual sessions with a therapist, a relapse prevention plan can be modified on the recommendations of a professional to meet the demands of temptation as they occur in the initial months of abstinence.

Aftercare is very important, has a big influence over success rates and should be a priority; but of course it also costs a drug rehab money to run aftercare programs. Drug and alcohol rehabs that exist only to collect your admissions check will have little interest in maintaining a long term commitment to your sobriety, while quality facilities do endeavor to treat each patient successfully. One way to differentiate between the two is in the level of aftercare programming available and offered.Find out what exactly you are entitled to

While all drug and alcohol rehabs will pay lip service to the concept, find out what specific aftercare therapies you will be entitled to, and for how long. If all that is offered are occasional 12 steps meetings, this indicates a low commitment to recovery. If the rehab maintains a more intensive therapeutic involvement with patients after release, the contrary is true, and this likely indicates a more quality facility.

Drug and alcohol rehabs are expensive and demand a significant time and energy commitment, and you don’t want to waste your time at one that offers you a limited chance at sobriety. One way to differentiate between rehabs is the level and intensity of aftercare as offered. Aftercare is not the only thing, but it is important, and how different drug and alcohol rehabs handle aftercare can tell you a lot about the quality of the program in general.