Drug addiction is a disease, and it is not a disease you should have to fight on your own. There are numerous treatment centers throughout the country where you can get help breaking your addiction and working towards recovery. These treatment centers work, in part, because they employ a wide range of therapies and treatments. They can select the right combination of treatment protocols for each patient. Here is a look at four of the kinds of therapy you'll often see used at a drug addiction treatment center.

1. Medication Therapy

Medication therapy involves the use of chemical medications to help you break your addiction. For example, if you are addicted to heroin, your doctor may prescribe buprenorphine, a medication that binds to your opiate receptors to help ease cravings and withdrawal symptoms. If you are addicted to alcohol, you may be given benzodiazepines to ease symptoms as you withdraw. These medications alone won't break your addiction, but they can help you get over that initial hump of withdrawal so that you can move forward with other types of therapy more effectively.

2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

In many people, addiction is a response to certain feelings or triggers. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a modality that seeks to identify those triggers and teach you new behaviors to use in response. For instance, if you currently reach for drugs every time you feel stressed, you may learn via CBT to work through your feelings of stress with exercise or healthy eating instead.

3. Rational Emotive Therapy

This type of therapy seeks to get you in control of your emotions. It works because most addicts use drugs or alcohol as a way to control their emotions. Learning to examine your emotions from the outside and then control them based on reason can decrease your need to depend on a substance for emotional control. You'll learn to ask yourself, "what am I feeling?" and "why do I feel this way?"

4. Massage Therapy

Massage may seem like an unlikely therapy for addiction, but it is increasingly being used to supplement other therapies, like Radical Emotive Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It helps ease stress and also fight the muscle soreness that often arises when patients withdraw from their drugs of choice. You may be scheduled for a massage once a week or every other week when you enter treatment.

To learn more about these and other treatment modalities for addiction, reach out to a drug addiction clinic near you.