Any alcoholic who has physical detox symptoms when quitting drinking probably needs alcohol withdrawal treatment.  Before we go any further, let me just point out that any person who has stopped drinking and started to shake should probably seek immediate medical attention.  If you are shaking uncontrollably then you definitely should go to an emergency room.  Alcohol withdrawal is a life threatening condition and it can produce dangerous seizures or even kill you.  So it is not something to take lightly and you should seek medical help if you are experiencing intense symptoms.

The basic idea behind alcohol detox treatment is to keep the person stable and smooth out their detox symptoms.  This is generally done with medication and under direct medical supervision at a rehab center.  Different medications can be used for this and it depends on your situation and where you go to rehab as to what medication they will use.  Generally what they do is to put you on a schedule with the medication and then slowly taper you off of it.  This insures that you will not have a seizure due to stopping the drinking or the drugs cold turkey.  The goal is to ease your body out of a state of convulsions in order to prevent seizures.

Now if you are in a detox center it is very likely that they will have a residential treatment portion of their program as well.  If this is the case then you should get involved with that as soon as possible because this is where the real “treatment” is at as far staying sober is concerned.  What good does it do for an alcoholic to get dried out, if they are only going to return to drinking almost immediately upon leaving treatment?  Sadly, this is what happens in the vast majority of cases so if you want to actually stop drinking and start living any sort of new life then you are going to need to take some action and learn some new things.

The key to alcohol treatment is to take massive action.  If you just sort of half heartedly attend the groups and the lectures and the meetings, you are not going to get much out of it and you will be in great danger of relapsing.  On the other hand, if you throw yourself into the program with all of your heart, then you stand a good chance of seeing some long term success with sobriety.  It is all about action when it comes to treating alcoholism.