At Benchmark Recovery Center, we offer a minimum 90-day stay to provide a safe, secure, and sober environment for adult men and women as they make the decision to shake their addiction from drugs or alcohol. We have long believed that this longer length of stay is vital for those truly seeking to change their lives for the better.
Often times, the traditional 30-day length of stay in addiction recovery or treatment programs doesn’t provide nearly enough time to really tackle the root of someone’s addiction, or deal with their many psychological issues that may have arisen during their battle with substance abuse. Our model of the 90-day length of stay is now beginning to gain recognition as the new “gold standard” of addiction treatment and recovery. Treatment and recovery centers across the country, including famous ones like the Betty Ford Center, are beginning to adopt 90-day programs as the norm and, like us, consider them to be much more effective.
90 Days in Recovery is Better than 30 Days
Dr. Johanna O’Flaherty, Vice President of Treatment Services at the Betty Ford Center, says that “90 days of treatment is the new 30 days of treatment.” According to her,
…while the traditional 30-day treatment model is an appropriate level of care for many patients, we are finding that a longer length of stay allows the patient to focus on recovery, along with a myriad of other psychological issues.
Dr. O’Flaherty references extensive research funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) that concludes, “For most patients, the threshold of significant improvement is reached at about three months in treatment.” The NIDA researchers referred to well-organized and conducted 90-day programs as “the gold standard” in treatment.
At the Betty Ford Center, a non-profit addiction treatment hospital in Southern California, about a third of the incoming patients now choose to stay for 90 days. Many of these people have had multiple prior attempts at treatment/recovery, are chronic relapsers, and/or patients who require prolonged detox. Another large group of people seeking 90-day treatment are licensed professionals like doctors, lawyers, dentists, and nurses. In order to retain or regain their professional license, they must satisfy rigorous treatment guidelines like those offered with a longer length of stay.
Many of these professionals enjoy a higher success rate than they would have with a shorter program. Data presented recently by addiction research pioneer Dr. Robert DuPont that indicates alcoholic/addicted doctors who undergo longer-term (mostly 90-day) treatment enjoy a 78% “success” (long-term sobriety) rate.
Benchmark Recovery Center a “Gold Standard”
This data shows what we, at Benchmark Recovery Center, have been saying all along. Our 90-day program can be called the “gold standard” of rehab because we offer a longer length of time for our residents to undergo detox, go through more of the 12 steps, and fully be set on a path toward permanent sobriety.
“A person can still get and stay sober by going to AA meetings, or going the outpatient treatment route,” says John Southworth, one the country’s leading interventionists. “But the data states definitively that a significant length of time – 90 days, 120 days – spent in a formal, credible treatment program gives an alcoholic or addict the best chance of lifetime sobriety.”
