Great Lakes Women’s Rehab – Addiction Treatment Center 
For over 60 years, Adult & Teen Challenge, the parent organization of Great Lakes Women’s Rehab, drug addiction treatment programs have provided long-term healing for thousands of people. We are the largest and longest continuously operated group of addiction recovery centers in the world, with over 200 centers in the U.S. and over 1,000 more centers worldwide.
Rather than considering addiction a lifetime “disease,” our addiction treatment center in Milwaukee looks to the underlying root causes of the initial addiction or dependency. We approach addiction as starting from an individual’s unfulfilled longing or that there was a void in their life. The addiction was triggered by deep felt issues, so unless those issues are dealt with first, getting the individual off the substance they are addicted to is just a short-term solution. Without life change, they will go right back to the drug or alcohol after a few days, weeks or months. Any addict can go through detox and get off alcohol or drugs for a short while, especially in a highly monitored environment. Our goal is to provide long-term recovery and lifetime avoidance of addictive substances once the individual leaves our women’s addiction treatment center, even when hard knocks hit.
Addicts and alcoholics typically start “using” or drinking out of a personal need to cover up some internal issues, such as a need for love, success, forgiveness, belonging, acceptance, a spiritual void, or a lack of life purpose. The individual fills such voids in their life with drugs or alcohol, which provide temporary relief for the mental anguish they are feeling. However, these substances will take hold and build a chemical dependency in their body, taking away any ability for the addict to stop on their own. The dependency becomes too powerful and attempts to get off these substances can often lead to painful and sometimes life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.
Once invited in, these substances can entirely take over the individual and their mindset, mentally or physically preventing them from stopping on their own. The cost of maintaining a habit can sometimes cause the addict to turn to theft (even from their own family), or selling drugs, which can lead to jail sentences. Usually, the substances are needed in higher and higher quantities or more frequently to achieve the same effect, until the addict overdoses or otherwise destroys their own body.
Short-Term vs Long-Term Drug Addiction Care – Why Our Addiction Treatment Center in Milwaukee Works
So, unwrapping the layers of addiction, Great Lakes Women’s Rehab takes several steps, and these steps cannot be rushed. Once you understand them, you will see why it takes up to a year to accomplish. Typical high-cost, short-term rehabs are quite convincing that they can solve addiction in a much shorter period of time. They are a joke in the media — we often hear of celebrities attending one after another and never solving their addiction. That is because their life issues have not been dealt with.
Have you wondered why the rehab industry generally keeps their term short? First, because it is more palatable to the addict, employer, or the family for the problem to be “fixed” quicker. Secondly, because most insurance programs will only participate in the first 90 days. So, the expensive rehabs make the most money by having a revolving door, and that wreaks havoc on the individual and their loved ones. Addicts have to go back to short-term rehabs again and again, until their loved ones have completely run out of money. And in-between, the addict goes right back to their habit, creating a roller-coaster existence for them and their loved ones.
On the contrary, our addiction treatment center is operated as a nonprofit, so our fees are very low. We focus our efforts on permanent recovery, no matter how long it takes. We keep the investment for the individual or their family to a minimum, seeking most of our operational funding from donations from the community. That support gives us enough time to work with each addict to totally transform their life, for good. And that is why Great Lakes Women’s Rehab, part of Adult & Teen Challenge, is so successful.
Why Addiction Treatment Center Can Take A Full Year
The first step is to recovery is detox. It is meant to purge the substances and their immediate control over the addicted individual. This alone can take weeks or even months, depending on the substance, in a highly monitored and daily tested environment.
Withdrawal can be anguishing, difficult and sometimes dangerous. After detox is completed, the real work begins, but change cannot happen from a few days or weeks of counseling. Change happens day in and day out, over many months, as the individual lives in an environment where lies, negatives motivations, and improper actions are constantly challenged. It happens as the individual makes mistakes and is called out for those mistakes by the staff or peers that have been in the program longer. Time is the greatest tool in our arsenal, along with the wise counsel of our staff, and spiritual renewal. The individuals in our addiction treatment center gradually learn to think and act differently.
As in building any healthy habit, repetition is the key to long-term success, so proper thinking and actions become natural and automatic.
