Locating an Outpatient Drug and Substance Abuse Treatments

While a rehab center will help a patient and his family locate outpatient services available in the patient’s community, there are times when a person with a substance abuse problem must locate these services on his own.

The process of locating an outpatient treatment program is not as difficult as it used to be. The phone books of many communities contain blue pages that list government numbers for mental health and addiction services for a specific county. The local events section of a small town newspaper will let a reader know where and when meetings for many groups are being held. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and related groups always post their meeting times and locations in this section for those who need to attend.

The last resource is one that takes some technological savvy to navigate, although operating systems like the Mac OS, the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, and Windows itself are making ignorance of technology far less of a problem. The Internet can be an easy way to locate outpatient treatment programs near your area or find contacts or tell a person who needs drug abuse treatments or substance abuse treatments where he needs to go to get help.

It is doubtful that anyone reading this particular entry needs to be lectured on the use of Google, but should the paper and the phone book somehow fail to help a person located outpatient substance abuse treatment programs, the Internet can either provide updated information or help a person track down information about local outpatient programs.

When all else fails, it is possible to contact a local church and ask them if they sponsor AA meetings. Many churches do and will tell a person on the phone when the meetings are held. All of these tactics work, but it is probably a good idea to look in the events section of a local newspaper first.