onlymedid, your pdoc is right drinking and psych meds don't mix. Alcohol is a depressant so it's countering the effects of any anti-D's you're on, not to mention interacting with the meds pharmacologically.

Substance abuse treatments can vary a lot depending on the person's needs, level of addiction, and availability, and insurance if the program's not publicly funded.

I've done rehab 3 times - once residential, and twice outpatient.

Residential - you live there, and setting can vary from hospital to home like. Basically there'll be a lot of group therapy, and education around addiction. Plus a lot of resedential programs, at least in North America are very 12 step based, so you can expect a lot of AA information and meetings to be integrated into the treatment programs. This is less likely to be true of residential programs that are run by hospitals. The standard length of treatment in Canada is 21 - 28 days, although some private hospitals offer treatment of up to 44 days. And there are long term treatment facilities where you can stay for months, but they're only for really hard core alcoholics.

Outpatient is very similar except you continue to live in home. The one I went to twice ran 1/2 days, 4 days a week for 10 weeks. It was not 12 step based and I liked it a lot better. Much more education on addiction, cognitive behavioural therapy, interpersonal communications skills and recreation therapy. I liked it better because it was more realistic - sure you were in treatment part of the day but you were still in your home environment and had to learn to deal with triggers for drinking.

See what kind of a program your pdoc suggests.

--splitimage