If you or someone you care about has lived with anxiety disorder, you don’t need a lecture about the disease. You know that it strips its victims of their dignity, and turns them into shells of the people they used to be. To live with anxiety disorder is to live in a state of permanent agitation, never comfortable, never knowing peace. Under those circumstances, it’s perhaps unsurprising that so many victims of the disease turn to drug and alcohol abuse as a means of self-medication. And given that link, it should go without saying that successful addiction treatment must address a patient’s psychological well-being.

An addict with anxiety disorder can’t get sober without first achieving meaningful psychological healing. That’s simply not the way recovery works. The best drug and alcohol treatment facilities, then, are those which employ dual diagnosis techniques to address both the physical and emotional needs of their clients. In the end, anything less than that simply isn’t good enough.