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Drug and alcohol rehab can be one of the greatest blessings a person ever receives. When one looks for rehab, in nearly every situation, the need is desperate. A life may be at stake, or a person may be at risk of winding up in jail. An effective rehab can mean the difference between living and dying, between a business succeeding or failing, between a family staying together or breaking apart.

The critical factor is the effectiveness of the program. A program can have well-intentioned staff and good ideas but those ideas must translate into sobriety after completion of the program for it to be a good investment. 

Some programs count their successes by how many people complete the course of treatment. They say that relapse is part of recovery. But there are other programs that count their success by sobriety after the program is complete, months or years after. If you find a program that measures its success this way and the numbers are above 50%, then you have a program that is a better investment than many others.

A 28 or 30 day program is handicapped by the briefness of the program. In a month, most drug or alcohol users are just barely regaining the ability to produce some of the brain's normal hormones that allow a person to feel joy, happiness or pleasure. Drugs are seen by the brain as a better substitute for dopamine, serotonin and endorphines, hormones normally produced by the brain when pleasurable activities are engaged in. After lengthy replacement of normal hormones by drugs or alcohol, the brain shuts down its hormone-production abilities. The result is that a person no longer feels pleasure and they are commonly depressed. 

A longer program allows the brain to regain some of its normal function again and then gives the person time to rebuild life skills after they stat feeling a little more normal again. A longer-term program gives a person a much better chance at long-term success in recovery.