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Colorado is a beautiful place to go to drug rehab. There’s no place like Colorado when it comes to scenic beauty and wonder.  There are 358 Addiction Treatment facilities, or drug rehabs, in Colorado according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association. All the drug rehabilitation facilities listed on the SAMHSA website in Colorado are not the same. Sifting through them all can be an overwhelming task.  One of the better drug rehabs in Colorado is Jaywalker Lodge in Carbondale, Colorado.  If you are having trouble finding a drug rehab facility in Colorado I suggest you call Jaywalker Lodge for a referral, or you are welcome to call NTS and we can provide a few comprehensive drug rehab facilities in the Colorado area that best fit your needs.

One great thing about the Colorado drug rehabs is that most of them do their best to incorporate the great Colorado outdoors in their treatment programming.  In winter, if the drug rehab in Colorado is close to a ski mountain, many drug rehabs will take their client’s snowboarding or skiing for activities.  Winter rehab in Colorado may be cold,  but it is definitely an experience.

The state of Colorado has a long drug abuse history.  Colorado is home to many meth labs and the use of marijuana in Colorado is higher than in many other states.  Colorado colleges are notorious for producing and attracting illicit drug users.  Often when a person comes from one of the Colorado Universities to treatment in another state, that treatment center will wisely suggest that the client not return to Colorado for college.  Likewise, whenever a client entering college chooses a University in Colorado it is often for the wrong reasons in my experience.  When a client says they want to go to Colorado for college it immediately sends up red warning flags about the stability of their sobriety.  It’s not Colorado’s fault necessarily, it’s just that there is a large drug using community in Colorado based on marijuana and alcohol.   One client referred to Colorado as sort of a “hippie paradise.”  This of course has no reflection on Colorado as a place where people cannot get effective drug and alcohol treatment.  As I said, there are many great addiction treatment facilities in Colorado that offer quality treatment in a beautiful environment.
Sincerely,

NTS Staff

It is commonly held that brain activities are tied to behaviors and thoughts and specific areas of the brain perform specific functions making processing of information more efficient. Assuming this theory is true, neuroimaging should be able to tell us a lot about the behavior of the addict or alcoholic, theoretically speaking and what works and doesn’t work in drug rehab. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, there is still a lot we do not know about the brain, but there is much we do know now thanks to cognitive neuropsychology. The more we learn about the different parts of our brain and how they influence behavior, the more we should be able to use neuroimaging to either determine behavior, or validate assumptions about behavior, for instance that a particular behavior is the result of a neurological malfunction. With drug addicts and alcoholics, often people want to see what kind of damage they have done to their brain. Often times it is the parents of the addict/alcoholic that thinks there is something physically wrong with them. Without a brain scan it is easy to tell a family that their son or daughter has the disease of alcoholism/addiction, but they often still want some medical proof. Brain scans are costly and there practical use is still questionable. It would be nice if we could measure the exact levels of neurotransmitters in the brain and determine whether someone is deficient in a particular neurotransmitter, lets say dopamine, and then give the person a pill that will raise their dopamine level to a proper level, but at this time no one has figured out how to do that. We are only able to indirectly measure neurochemical abnormalities.

Scientists in the past started us down the road that has led us to neuroimaging. Wilder Penfield (1891–1976)before operating on patients, stimulated the brain with electrical probes while the patients were conscious on the operating table (under only local anesthesia), and observed their responses. He hypothesized, as many before him, that particular brain regions were responsible for particular behaviors. According to lecture, Penfield did this “to accurately target the areas of the brain responsible for a disorder and reduce the side-effects of the surgery” (Lecture Notes from class lecture on June 23, 2009). Since then science has come a long way in mapping the brain.

The entire field of cognitive psychology is devoted to the discovery of the brain’s functions. According to class lecture, cognitive neuropsychology researchers examine the behaviors and high level processes (attention, memory, language) of patients with unique brain damage in different contexts, or with different stimuli. In examining patients with brain damage cognitive psychologists have been able to determine what different parts of the brain do over the years. It began with Phineas Gage’s accident that resulted in profound behavioral changes. The behavioral changes noted by people in Gage’s personality ignited the field of cognitive psychology and without cognitive psychology there would not be neuroimaging. Neuroimaging depends on the developments of cognitive psychology.

While the field is still young and there are many more things to be discovered, it seems that neuroimaging is a possibility for the future of psychology. In my own work with addicts and alcoholics, I have been presented with many brain scans from clients and after learning about the brain’s functioning from my own education, I do actually find the reports informative and as helpful as an MMPI or WISK in helping me understand what is going on with the client and what damage may have occurred as a result of a client’s drug abuse. It helps me decide whether the client needs special neuropsychological attention and whether further neuropsychological testing would be helpful, or beneficial to the client. They also provide very colorful pictures to client’s parents and clients and their parents always like to see colorful pictures. Seriously speaking though, I continue to be skeptical of neuroimaging and its benefits to addiction treatment even after my research.  Also one of the promising aspects of neuroimaging relates to the diagnosis and treatment of dual diagnosis disorders which is a speciality at NTS.

This article was originally written for a graduate class and revised for this blog by NTS Staff.

I came across Sound Pillows at an addiction treatment conference.  Stuffed in-between treatment center display booths was the Sound Pillow booth.  I thought, “what a strange place to market a pillow,” but after seeing the product I realized that it’s one of the most ingenious tools for addiction treatment facilities that’s come around in a long time.  It’s a simple idea, one of those ideas that makes you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  The Sound Pillow is a pillow with speakers tucked deep inside it and a long cord to hook up to the music delivery system of your choice (i.e., your IPod or MP3 Player).  When you lay your head down on the pillow you can hear the music, but your roommate.  A brilliant idea for people in drug rehabs who have to share rooms with other people and struggle with the cumbersomeness of trying to go to sleep with headphones on.

Many of the clients at the drug rehab I work at use headphones to fall asleep and block out the noise of their roommate(s).  What a brilliant solution to be able to plug in your IPod to your pillow!  It truly is perfect for people in drug rehab.  When a few of my clients saw mine they immediately wanted one.  I think I’m going to buy them for Christmas gifts this year for my family.

I have been using the Sound Pillow nightly.  I downloaded some soundscapes on my IPod and created a
“Sleep” playlist.  I downloaded ocean sounds, white noise, and Amazon Rainforest sounds and have it run on a continual loop all night long. If I turn up the volume too loud my wife can hear it, but if I keep the volume at the right level she can’t hear anything.  I’m one of those people that needs sound in the background to fall asleep to and the Sound Pillow has solved the problem of uncomfortable headphones and irritated partners.

Sound Pillow Info Click Here

New Orleans has experienced a host of difficulties over the years.  The drug and alcohol problem in New Orleans is higher now than ever according to reports.  There are some non-profit drug rehabs in New Orleans, Louisiana, but not many private pay drug rehabs in New Orleans.  Bridge House is one drug rehab center that is fairly well-known there, but I would be very cautious about opening a New Orleans based drug rehab primarily because of the geographic difficulties of the area that make New Orleans susceptible to the types of floods we saw after Katrina.

When I was in my undergraduate geology class back in the late 1990′s, my professor spent an entire day reviewing the geology and geography of New Orleans.  He correctly predicted that New Orleans would one day be under water because it is below the water that surrounds it.  He said that technically New Orleans should not exist because if it weren’t for the outdated and poorly constructed dams that kept the water from flooding the area, New Orleans would be underwater.

So New Orleans is a town that should not exist from a geological perspective.  He said the same thing about he Newport Beach Peninsula.  He said that the Newport Beach Peninsula would one day be under the sea.  He demonstrated to us what would happen to the Newport Beach peninsula if an earthquake were to occur there.  He took some sand in a cup and placed an object on top of the sand then asked one of us to gently shake it.  The object sunk underneath the sand and disappeared.  Every since that demonstration I have never lived on the Newport Beach peninsula.  I’m also frighted for all the Newport Beach Peninsula Drug Rehabs.  There are many drug rehabs on the Newport Beach peninsula and given one earthquake of magnitude they would all sink under the sea, effectively ending the Newport Beach, Los Angeles and many other Orange County Drug and Alcohol Rehabs in one day.

The same types of problems exist in New Orleans for any drug rehabs there.  Drug Rehabs in New Orleans have the potential of becoming underwater drug rehabs, and its very difficult to conduct addiction treatment under water, so I’ve been told (I’ve never actually tried it).  Although that is a concept yet to be invented, “Underwater Drug Rehabs,” hmmmmm interesting….  We could call it “Atlantis,” or “Nemo’s Underwater Drug Rehab Adventure,” or “Poseidon’s Drug Rehab Center-Treatment Under The Sea.”

Having been in the addiction treatment business for over 13 years now and watching the internet develop over those years, it has been interesting to see the evolution of internet marketing of drug rehabs across the United States.  I heard somewhere from someone in one of my many internet marketing meetings over the years that drug rehab marketing on the internet is one of the biggest most compacted areas of marketing on the internet.

In the beginning there was the yellow pages.  It used to be that when I got sober the only way to find anything was through the yellow pages, especially a drug rehab.  Of course, the yellow pages is a thing of the past, but I think the yellow pages might make a return, at least in the case of finding drug treatment services for oxycontin addiction and withdrawal symptoms in a particular state, city, or town. When I say the “Yellow Pages,” I’m not necessarily referring to the actual old yellow books that pile up on your front doorstep and in your kitchen cabinets, I’m referring to the Super Pages on the web and the Google map directory listings that have started popping up when you search for something in a particular state or city.

Why might the Yellow Pages make a comeback in drug rehab marketing?  Because the internet has become inundated with bogus drug rehab search sites created by individual drug rehabs, or large conglomerate drug rehabs like Scientology’s Narconon Program.   These directory sites are bias of course and often do more to frustrate people looking for drug rehabs in particular areas than provide them with what they are looking for.  I don’t blame the people that create these drug rehab directory sites (I’ve been guilty of helping build a few of them), but it has become a bit ridiculous these days with the number of bogus drug rehab directory sites that are out there that direct people to particular drug rehabs in los angeles they are being paid to endorse, or that will direct people directly to the drug rehabs they own (e.g., CRC).  Again, there’s no blame here because I’m just as guilty as they are in helping fuel these addiction treatment directory sites and writing things in blogs like this one that will filter you to this particular blog even when you’re not searching for a blog on this particular subject (i.e., drug rehabs in your city).  Have you noticed how I have been using proper nouns throughout this blog, always referring to drug rehabs as drug rehabs and using the words drug rehabs a lot? It’s because Google will pick up these key words within the paragraphs, check to make sure they aren’t computer generated and someone is actually writing something about the subject, and then move it up on its search list when people type in specific search terms I’m using in this blog, such as “drug rehab.”  Sure it’s a dirty little trick, but what else are we supposed to do?

The internet is still evolving and becoming more refined and marketing drug rehabs is extremely hard because you’re target is everyone, everywhere who might be suffering from drug and/or alcohol addiction and needs drug rehab (see I’m still using the words)!

I just figured out that I’ve been involved in over 513 drug rehab marketing meetings over the last 13 years.  In each one of those meetings everyone involved attempts to figure out what the best marketing strategy is for the web, and no one has figured it out yet, but we’re still trying.  I just hope that people who are looking for a drug rehab can sift through the debris we as an industry have created on the web and find the help they need.  As always, at NTS, we do our best to refer people to the treatment facility that best fits a person’s needs and resources.  So, if you need help finding a quality christian drug rehab in your city or state don’t hesitate to call us and we will gladly offer you our opinion, advice, and suggestions.

Chicago is a beautiful place to visit and has many tourist attractions, but no one expects to visit there to enter a drug and alcohol treatment facility.  Drug rehabs in Chicago are not as well known as other drug rehabs in other states and cities.  Chicago does not have a shortage of drug rehabs, but many people choose to go outside Chicago, Illinois to get treatment for drug and/or alcohol addiction.  Chicago remains a major drug trafficking destination and drug addiction remains a big problem in the windy city.  Chicago, Illinois drug rehabs are modeled after the successful approaches used in other states and other successful addiction treatment programs, such as sober colleges in California.  If you are looking for a drug rehab, or addiction treatment facility, in Chicago, Illinois please feel free to give us a call and we can help you find a quality drug treatment program in Chicago that best fits your needs.  We are here to help.