Drug addiction treatment Gorzów Wielkopolski

Drug addiction treatment is planned help spread over months, meant to bring a dependent person to lasting abstinence and a return to ordinary life: work, home, relationships with those close to them. It is not about merely stopping the drug, but about changing the situation that led to using in the first place, which is why we work with the whole patient, not only with the addiction.

The most common misunderstanding is confusing treatment with detox. Detox, the clearing of the substance from the body, interrupts the drug's action and is usually the first step, but it does not change what pushed the patient toward reaching for the substance. That is why the real treatment only begins after detox. The course of withdrawal itself and the symptoms of the first days we describe separately, on the page about drug detox in Gorzów Wielkopolski.

We build the plan individually, after a consultation and an assessment of the state of health, and we run it fully privately, with no contract with the National Health Fund.

The brain has a built-in mechanism that helped people survive over thousands of years. When we rest after exertion or hear good news, it releases dopamine and remembers that situations like these are worth seeking out again. It is the same mechanism that makes us want to eat, sleep and build relationships with other people.

The substance as a false survival signal

A drug enters this same system and activates it more strongly than any natural stimulus. The brain begins to treat the substance as something indispensable, more important than food, sleep or the people close to us. That is why addiction is not a matter of weak will or choice, but a real brain disorder that medicine places alongside chronic diseases such as diabetes or hypertension.

With repeated use the brain grows accustomed to this and turns down its own reward receptors. Things that once brought joy stop working, and the substance becomes necessary merely to feel ordinary. On top of that the prefrontal cortex weakens, the part of the brain that normally restrains impulses and allows planning, so control over behaviour drops exactly when it is needed most.

The brain also remembers the circumstances of using. A familiar person or an ordinary evening can by themselves trigger a craving for the substance before any conscious decision appears. That is why old company and old times of day lead back to the habit so easily, and a relapse is not proof that someone failed to try.

It is a chronic disease, but that does not mean a person is helpless against it, just as with other conditions people live with for years. Treatment does not come down to gritting one's teeth, but to rebuilding the survival mechanism and teaching the brain different responses to former cues.

The difference is easiest to see by placing two situations side by side. In one, there is a single problem - the addiction. In the other, beneath the addiction sits a mental illness as well. It is not the same path with a pill added at the end; it is two different paths, arranged differently and led differently.

What does the plan look like when there is only one problem?

When it is addiction alone, treatment runs along a relatively straight line: assessment, stabilisation after stopping, psychotherapy aimed at the mechanisms of the addiction, work on situations that trigger relapse, and follow-up visits. Each step follows from the previous one, and the pace is set mainly by how the patient copes with abstinence.

What changes when depression, anxiety or psychosis is added to the addiction?

When there is a second diagnosis, that line splits in two and cannot be glued back into one. Addiction and mental illness can look alike, intensify at the same time and mask each other, so the plan must cover both from the start rather than dealing with them one at a time. This changes who is on the team, how often we schedule appointments and what we watch for along the way - it does not merely add one item to a list.

The point around which this whole page turns is easy to state and hard to carry out: when a mental disorder and an addiction co-occur, treating only one side usually does not hold. Not because the patient is weak, but because the untouched half of the problem comes back for its due.

What is left when only one side disappears?

If we deal only with the using while depression or anxiety is left untreated, that discomfort does not go away on its own and keeps pushing toward what once brought relief. If it is the other way round - we lead only the mental illness and leave the using aside - continued use quietly undermines its treatment and the results do not hold. We do not settle here what came first; it is enough that both problems genuinely exist at once for neither to be safely put off until later.

When does a psychiatrist join the plan?

That is why one team holds both sides, not two offices that know nothing of each other. We combine medical and therapeutic care within a single plan, and a psychiatrist steps in when the mental disorder itself needs to be assessed and managed, not just the shadow it casts through withdrawal. We do not promise to handle everything; we say clearly who is responsible for what and at which point psychiatry is needed.

We lay out the treatment over months, not as a single procedure, and with a dual diagnosis this spread over time matters more than usual. The stages - contact and diagnosis, stabilisation, the actual psychotherapy, work on sustaining the change - are the same as with addiction alone, but they are led with an eye on the other side. We do not give a fixed number of months in advance, because what lengthens it is settled only after the assessment.

What keeps both sides within one plan

Coherence comes from regular contact and from one team seeing the whole: it notes how mood, sleep and craving for the substance change, and adjusts the plan before either side can slip away. When one starts to dominate - for instance, anxiety returns or the urge to use speaks up - we respond to it without losing sight of the other.

Conversation as the main tool, not an add-on to medication

The centre of gravity lies in therapy, because that is where both sides genuinely meet: the patient learns to recognise when he reaches for the substance because of the illness, and when the illness intensifies because he has gone back to using. Medication, if needed, buys time and stability for this, but does not replace the work.

Once the patient is stable, some sessions can be held online over video, so that travelling does not become a reason to drop out. The first appointment and the work during the hardest weeks happen in person.

Relapse is part of the course of addiction, not proof that the treatment has failed or that the patient has let people down. With a dual diagnosis it is worth reading it in a particular way: very often it means the plan has quietly narrowed to one side. It focused on abstinence and let go of the illness - or it was absorbed by treating depression, and the using slipped into the background. That is a fault in how the treatment is led, not a moment of weakness to be held against anyone.

How do you tell that we are again minding only one problem?

A signal is often that for several weeks the conversations circle around one matter while the other does not come up at all. The answer is not to tighten demands on the patient, but to reopen both threads at once. One thing we always ask: come forward early, not after weeks of hiding - the sooner contact returns, the less there is to rebuild.

The family of a person with a dual diagnosis is in a particular position: they see both sides in turn. At one moment it is clearly the using - the disappearances, the money that vanishes somewhere, the old acquaintances. At another it is someone withdrawn, sleepless, frightened for no clear reason, and it is hard to tell whether that is the effect of the drug or a separate illness. Relatives try to pull this apart on their own and usually get lost in it, because from the outside one really does look like the other.

What does the family not have to settle on its own?

It is not for the family to rule what is illness and what is addiction - that is our task, and we do it with both sets of observations to hand. From relatives we need one thing: that they bring both what is visible in the using and what is visible in mood or behaviour, instead of deciding in advance which problem to report. Toward an adult, moreover, the family has no legal lever - it can motivate and set conditions, but not force treatment. And one more thing, easy to forget in all the strain: relatives are not there to cure themselves of someone else's addiction. Their role is to be a support, not another patient.

It is also worth knowing that the official figures show the problem late here. In Gorzów Wielkopolski the number of families that come to social assistance because of drugs is small and for a long time barely changed: in 2020-2021 it dropped to the lowest values of the whole decade, and by 2024 it returned to the level of years before, a few dozen families a year. Such a register captures above all those whose material situation has already collapsed - and so very late. The family moves that really change something happen earlier, before anything reaches such a statistic.

It is easy to read something untrue about how big the drug problem in the city is, because the loudest voice belongs to police figures, and those measure something other than it seems. In Gorzów Wielkopolski the number of offences under the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction has held to a narrow band for five years - 343, 350, 367, 303 and 325 a year - with no clear direction, and the clearance rate stands just under a hundred percent. That series on its own says little.

What does this register really measure?

You can see it only when you set the region alongside the city. In 2024 the number of the same offences fell by almost a quarter in the Gorzów subregion, and by close to thirty percent across the whole Lubusz Voivodeship - while in Gorzów itself it barely moved. The same wave, counted more broadly, gives a sharp drop, and within the city limits nothing shows. This means the register reflects mainly the intensity of the services' work in a given year and area, not the number of people who use. For someone weighing up treatment, the conclusion is practical: whether the city's statistic happens to be rising or falling says nothing about their own situation - and it is not what to base a decision to come forward on.