Phases of the rehabilitation process

One of the therapeutic community's goals is to teach its members to assume responsibility for their own behavior. To this end, the treatment is broken down into specific phases, which provide increasing share of responsibility for their own behavior.

The first phase (2 months.) - Adaptation in the community, during which the patient has to give up contacts with relatives and friends, not to use the phone, not to leave outside of the community (except in the special cases of disease under the supervision of senior phase patients or staff). During this phase, soon after starting, a drug addicted patient is unable to control their impulses and cravings, and therefore can not be held responsible for the many of their actions. Therefore, these restrictions are intended to protect him from dangerous contacts that could lead to his desire to use drugs again. Only after some time, when the addict begins to understand the operating principles of the therapeutic community, and adapts to them, once they learn to use the community's offered support and self-help techniques and to perform his own analysis of the drug using past, the community may consider his request to give him more responsibility, that is, to transfer to the second treatment phase.

The second phase (4 months.) - Limited contact is allowed, it is possible for a short time to leave the community and communicate with the loved ones, but under the supervision of a senior phase patient or a staff member after a priori discussion of that possibility with the community. In that phase the patient must also take more responsibility in various communal offices - it's community host's duties, a number of specific duties which oblige him to become responsible for the economy of the community (eg. animal farm maintenance, farming, washing things, and so on.). In the second phase of rehabilitation, the key treatment issue becomes self-analysis - the analysis of his life in writing, helping to examine all the factors that made him vulnerable to drugs. Only after this stage he can ask community to be transferred to the third phase of rehabilitation.

The third phase (4 months). - Responsibilities that permit to move independently from the community w/o prior notification. Upon consent of the community, every other weekend he can go home. At this stage, the patients should have mastered the basic self-care techniques to avoid  relapse and thus may become responsible for themselves. They can now supervise and train other members of the community, to accompany them outside the community, also take the presidential office and be responsible for the entire community. Also they are slowly beginning to return to their original social environment -  families can begin to improve their broken relationships. Patients can again become vulnerable but  at the same time feel safe, because the community still provides great support. If the trird phase is succesful, a patient can move to the fourth phase of his rehabilitation.

The fourth phase - contact (socialization and integration into society), during which the patient in the period the two months has to find a job or enter vocational training courses. This is the final phase of the treatment, during which the patients have to gain work skills to find their place in society. It's the ultimate stage where a patient starts taking personal responsibility for himself and his life.