Some long-term recovery treatment programs and sober living homes may ask you to pay upfront for a few months of the program. Paying ahead for your treatment may seem like a hardship. However, this may help you stay committed to completing your treatment program.

Paying ahead is a way of investing in your recovery and yourself. You might be more inclined to stick to your program to “get your money’s worth.” During your program, you may face challenges and painful emotions. You may feel tempted to give up and leave the program prematurely.

You may also be accustomed to short-term programs and assume that you will be fine to leave the program after only a few weeks. Paying ahead will help you stay grounded and continue the program. After all, you have already paid for it; why not continue?

The Science of Paying For Therapeutic Treatment

Therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, life coaches, and other professionals specializing in therapeutic interventions usually charge a fee for their services. While these fees help to pay for business expenses, salaries, office spaces, and schooling, paying for services is symbolic of investing in yourself.

Recovery programs are a means to self-improvement and building a better life for yourself. While you might be feeling motivated to recover and improve your life, you may find it difficult to hold yourself accountable to treatment requirements without some form of personal sacrifice.

Preventing Revolving Door Treatment Habits

Committing to your program requirements might be challenging. You may experience some difficult emotions. Completing anything worthwhile will come with challenges, but the challenges will be worth it. Some recovery programs and facilitators have noticed a trend of “revolving door treatment.”

People come in and out continually. They come and go, in a cycle of relapse and recovery. Each time they come to a new program, they feel excited to recover and enter with enthusiasm. However, sometimes, their enthusiasm wears out quickly, and they have no reason to stick around.

To prevent this cycle, many recovery programs and sober living homes have adopted the policy of paying ahead for long-term treatment. When your enthusiasm runs out and you begin to work on forming new habits in recovery, knowing that you might take a financial loss by quitting early can help you to stay in treatment.

Long-Term Treatment

At first glance, a three-month commitment may feel over-bearing. You may not be accustomed to programs with such long-term requirements. As humans, we can often be resistant to change, even when those changes can improve our lives. We feel great discomfort in changing our habits and feel our minds pushing back.

We might hear a voice telling us that life would be easier by falling back on our old habits and addictive behaviors. You need time to change your inner voice. You need time to invest in yourself and your recovery. Changing your addictive behaviors is complex and requires time to make lifelong improvements.

Why is changing our addictive behaviors so complicated? Why are we prone to do things that are bad for us? You may be asking questions like this. You might think that by realizing your behaviors are destructive, you can fix your addictions easily and quickly. Human behavior is incredibly complex and can be difficult to change.

Wanting to make a change is not enough to change; you need to invest time and work into the challenge. Ultimately, our addictions have become a part of our lives because they have worked to fulfill some sort of need. You may have begun to drink alcohol to cope with underlying depression or anxiety.

While the alcohol may help in the short-term for a quick fix, it does not help to solve the underlying issue and creates even more problems. While in recovery, you not only need to understand the underlying motivation of your behavior, you need to replace your unhealthy habits with healthy ones.

Discovering the reasons behind your addictions takes time. You may need time to build a level of comfort with your peers, coaches, and therapists to reveal your innermost thoughts and feelings. Next, you will learn replacement coping skills. Learning these new coping skills will take much longer than a week or two.

By paying ahead for recovery treatment, you will feel more obligated to take the time needed to get your money’s worth for your recovery. The time, hard work, and money that you put into improving yourself will be worth the investment.

Have you been in recovery for years only to find yourself in and out of treatment? Do you feel like you are stuck in a revolving door cycle between recovery and relapse? You may need to invest in a longer-term recovery program. Many recovery programs and sober treatment homes require participants to pay ahead for their treatment. Investing ahead will help you stay on track of your recovery and give you the time you need to build healthy habits and coping skills. Recovery takes time and you are unlikely to build lifestyle changes within only one or two weeks. Camelback Recovery understands the importance of investing in recovery. We ask that our participants pay in advance for at least three months in our program. We believe that this time gives you enough time to build skills that can last a lifetime. Call our staff today to begin your recovery treatment and invest in yourself at (602) 466-9880.