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RECREATION THERAPY  Call (800)227-3953

Beyond the basic health benefits of exercise and stress reduction, quality addiction treatment must necessarily include leisure education and stress management skills. When patients with addictive illnesses get into recovery, they discover early in that process that they have much more time and how that time is spent is extremely important to the integrity of the recovery process. For this reason, our treatment program incorporates recreation options developed against some leisure education principles. For many of our patients, the recreation program is their first experience of fun sober or clean for a very long time!

One recreation session each week includes families. The planned activities are family oriented and involve activities like visiting the zoo, sports games, outdoor recreation shows, craft fairs, and typical activities that families can enjoy together.

The leisure education program at Rimrock is designed to be real-world based. Patients enjoy a variety of activities in the community, away from the treatment facility in three two hour sessions each week. Seasonal activities such as golf, skiing, hiking etc. are all part of the offerings from which patients may choose. In addition to the recreation portion of the leisure education program, physical fitness and stress management are provided. Each Wednesday night, patients work an individual fitness plan using the facilities of two local college's health and fitness centers. Patients are assisted in a variety of fitness workouts in these state of the art facilities that include swimming pools, basketball and racquet ball courts, cardio resistance equipment, free weight rooms and walking tracks.

Stress management or reduction techniques are presented twice each week. Patients learn to identify their vulnerability to stress, stress responses and to select from a wide offering, techniques they can adopt to reduce stress. We know that patients with addictive illness tend to have a low tolerance for stress and that stress can be a trigger unless it is carefully managed. Techniques such as yoga, tae bo, meditation, relaxation training, and others afford each patient the opportunity to find at least one technique he/she can enjoy and commit to integrating into their life.

Adolescents have an additional recreation session each week that includes special outings and activities appropriate to their age. Boredom and time on their hands can be triggers for adolescents that lead to using. The use of leisure time is a significant issue for our kids.