There’s been a lot of progress in recent years on various types of addiction therapy and rehabilitation.
That has happened for several reasons. In general, awareness has been building that addiction is a major problem, but that it is also beatable with modern psychological techniques and technology. Also, there’s been more money put into research for addiction problems. There are, again, specific reasons for that, too. The bottom line is that we are making progress, slowly, but steadily.
It’s true: modern ways of addiction therapy are working. But a lot of this has come by trial and error, as people find out the best ways to reinforce supportive techniques that promote better life habits and remake us psychologically.
Traditional Therapy
In the past, aversion therapy represented relatively primitive approaches to treating different kinds of addiction.
At its very simplest core, you could describe traditional types of aversion therapy as “punitive” in nature, or as “teaching therapies” that taught through negative reinforcement. People tried to make the addictive substances or behaviors unappealing to the patient. That took various forms, some of which were, ultimately, pretty unsavory. Again, this was sort of based on outdated ideas about human psychology and how it affects motivation and dynamic change.
What we found since then is that people don’t generally respond well to this. While it can be effective, in some cases, it’s just not very sophisticated. It can also backfire. Scientists have learned more about our brains and how they work. That’s a great relief to people who battle various kinds of addiction that are sometimes pretty tough to beat.
Modern Ideas
In more recent times, people have found very different new ways of treating addiction, and some of them work much better than the old ways. Many are more based on actual psychological science and the ways that the body adjusts to input.
For example, at Elevated Recovery, we have the porn reboot, which is a very effective way of retraining yourself for better habits. You can see a lot of the success stories online etc. along with more information on how rebooting works. We use the icon of a computer to illustrate the ways that people can learn and unlearn behaviors over time. We bring our experience to our clients to help them to change for good. Take a look and see if you or a loved one could benefit from a modern addiction therapy program.
