Every other day, the grocery store tabloids are announcing that a new celebrity has gone into rehab. This is usually cause for us normal people who live in tiny Toronto condos and work in dentist's offices to scoff, as if we are somehow better than them. But rehab isn't just something that exists to comfort self absorbed celebrities. Real people, maybe even some of the people you know, have been through it to, and it's difficult. So before you judge these people, maybe you should learn what rehab really is and what being in it means for the person.

Rehab is short for rehabilitation and it's a way of helping a person learn to modify a destructive behavior. There are many different kinds of rehab. Someone who was sent to jail for kickboxing in Scarborough will undergo rehab to help them understand how not to act on their violent impulses. People who have been injured in an accident or have developed a disability or mental illness will also undergo rehab to help them learn to live with the aftermath of their injury and overcome its limitations to the best of their ability. But the type of rehab everyone usually thinks of is drug rehab.

Drug rehabilitation is a form of combined medical treatment and psychotherapy designed to help someone who has become addicted to a drug, such as alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or even cigarettes, overcome their destructive cravings. The patient will receive treatment for the physiological effects of their dependency, such as the side effects of drug withdrawal and any damage the drug has done to their body, as well as attend sessions with a physiotherapist in Toronto to help them understand how to change their behavior so they don't fall back into their old habits upon their release.

In order for rehab to work, the patients need to both accept that they have a problem and be willing to work to fix it, and continue to work for the rest of their lives to change their habits. Because of this, people who enter rehab are usually at rock bottom. They've lost their jobs, their condos in Toronto, their health, and have probably also been arrested. Many people are ordered into rehab by judges or magistrates, and the staff at the center must work that much harder to get them to a place where they want to change. If they don't get there, rehab may not work, which is why you see so many celebrities entering it multiple times.

Even after rehab is done the formerly addicted person is released back to their North York condo, he or she still has a lifetime of work to do. Programs like 12 Steps and Alcoholics Anonymous are often begun during rehab so that the patient can keep up attendance even after the mandatory attendance period is over. Rehab usually lasts somewhere in the vicinity of a month.