When someone is struggling with alcohol or drug addiction, families usually have many questions—and often very little time to find answers.
We have tried to answer some of the questions we hear most often. If your question is not here, please call us. Sometimes a conversation is more helpful than another page of information.
Eternal Awakenings is a Christian residential alcohol and drug treatment program in Gonzales, Texas.
We work with men and women whose lives have been affected by alcohol, prescription drugs, opioids, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, and other substances.
Our approach brings together professional addiction treatment, counseling, community, family involvement, personal responsibility, and Christian faith.
We believe addiction affects the whole person. Recovery should do the same.
Yes.
Christian faith is at the heart of our program. It is not simply an activity added to otherwise secular treatment.
We believe spiritual healing can become an important part of recovery, particularly for people who have become separated from faith, family, meaning, and the person they once hoped to become.
For many of our residents, recovery becomes more than learning how not to drink or use drugs.
It becomes a journey home.
You do not have to arrive with strong faith, perfect faith, or even certainty.
Many people come to us with questions, doubts, disappointment, anger, or a spiritual life that has been neglected for years.
We do ask residents to participate respectfully in the Christian components of our program.
We have never believed that genuine faith can be forced. Our task is to provide an environment in which people can honestly examine their lives, their choices, their relationships, and their relationship with God.
Every good treatment program should help people stop using alcohol and drugs.
We believe recovery must go further.
Addiction often leaves behind broken relationships, shame, isolation, fear, spiritual emptiness, and the loss of meaning and direction.
Our goal is to help the person begin rebuilding a life—not merely interrupting an addiction.
That means counseling, accountability, community, family work when appropriate, medical and psychiatric support when needed, and a serious Christian spiritual foundation.
Treatment length depends upon the individual.
Some people come for approximately 30 days. Others may need a longer period of treatment, such as 60 or 90 days.
There is no magic number of days that guarantees recovery.
The important question is not simply, How quickly can I leave?
A better question is, What do I need in order to have a genuine opportunity to recover?
We encourage families to discuss treatment length with us based upon the individual’s history, needs, progress, and circumstances.
Eternal Awakenings is an intensive residential program. Residents participate in more than 50 hours each week of structured recovery programming, including group and individual counseling, recovery education, Bible study, community support, worship, family work, and other recovery-focused activities.
Counseling occupies a significant part of the day at Eternal Awakenings.
Residents normally spend intense hours each day in group counseling, along with opportunities for individual counseling.
Individual counseling allows a person to explore his or her own history, problems, relationships, and patterns of addiction. Group counseling offers something different: the experience of discovering that other people understand.
Recovery requires personal work, but much of that work happens in relationship with others.
Treatment continues on Saturday and Sundays.
Every second Saturday is full of family treatment with family in attendance.
We do not believe residential treatment should simply provide a safe place to stay while time passes.
Thirty days can go by very quickly.
We try to use that time well.
The purpose is not to keep residents endlessly busy. It is to create enough time and structure for them to begin understanding their addiction, examining their lives honestly, repairing relationships, developing recovery skills, and beginning the spiritual and emotional work that recovery requires.
The addicted lifestyle is intense. We use the participant’s familiarity with that intensity and redirect it toward recovery. The same energy once consumed by addiction can now be invested in building a new life.
Yes.
Recovery involves the body as well as the mind and spirit. Research has found that regular physical activity can support addiction treatment by reducing cravings, improving mood, decreasing symptoms of anxiety and depression, improving physical health, and providing a healthy way of dealing with stress.
At Eternal Awakenings, exercise and time at the gym are therefore not simply recreation. They are another part of restoring health and developing a different way of living.
The addicted lifestyle is intense. Recovery has to give that energy somewhere new to go.
Recovery should involve the whole person, including physical health.
Residents have time during the day for lunch, exercise, and recreation, including use of the gym. There is also free time during the evening before lights out.
Treatment is intensive, but people also need opportunities to rest, exercise, talk with one another, think, and simply experience ordinary life without alcohol or drugs.
Yes.
Community recovery support is part of the evening schedule.
We want residents to become comfortable with the idea that recovery continues in community. Treatment eventually ends, and the person has to return to ordinary life.
Learning to participate in a recovery fellowship while still in treatment can help establish a pattern that continues after discharge.
Eternal Awakenings draws from the enormous body of wisdom that has developed within the recovery community, including principles found in Twelve-Step recovery.
We also approach recovery from an explicitly Christian perspective.
We have found that some people arrive with misconceptions or uncomfortable experiences related to AA or other recovery groups. We do not ask residents simply to accept ideas without discussion. We study recovery principles, talk about them, question them, and consider how they apply to an individual’s life and Christian faith.
Our purpose is not to make someone a member of a particular organization.
Our purpose is to help that person recover.
Our days are structured and fairly intensive.
The morning begins at 8:30 with Bible study, followed by an hour devoted to recovery literature and the principles that have helped generations of people recover from alcoholism and addiction.
From 10:00 until noon, residents participate in group counseling.
After lunch, there is time for exercise and recreation at the gym.
The afternoon includes a lecture or educational session on some aspect of addiction and recovery,
followed by another two-hour group counseling session.
After supper, residents have opportunities for individual counseling and community recovery support. The day concludes with a brief time to talk about what happened during the day, followed by evening prayer.
There is free time before lights out at 11:00 p.m.
The schedule is intentional. Addiction often produces disorder, isolation, and a life increasingly organized around obtaining and using alcohol or drugs. Treatment introduces a different rhythm—one built around truth, responsibility, relationships, spiritual life, physical health, and recovery.
Yes, addiction rarely injures only the person who is drinking or using drugs. Spouses, parents, children, and other family members are often deeply affected.
Families may carry anger, fear, guilt, exhaustion, or years of broken trust.
Family counseling can help everyone begin understanding what has happened, establishing healthier boundaries, communicating more effectively, and rebuilding relationships over time.
We do not expect families simply to forget the past.
Healing is usually a process.
Certainly.
Many people who ultimately achieve long-term recovery have experienced relapse somewhere along the way.
Relapse should be taken seriously, but it does not mean that recovery is impossible.
Sometimes it means something important was missing—a support system, adequate treatment time, honesty, spiritual grounding, continuing care, treatment of an underlying psychiatric problem, or simply the willingness to do what recovery requires.
We try to understand what happened and help the individual begin again.
This is one of the most difficult situations a family can face.
You cannot manufacture willingness in another person. But families can stop protecting addiction from its consequences, establish appropriate boundaries, seek professional guidance, and be prepared when a moment of willingness appears.
Those moments sometimes come unexpectedly.
When they do, it is important to act.
If you are unsure how to approach someone you love, call us. We can talk with you about the situation and possible next steps.
Yes.
Group counseling can be one of the most powerful parts of recovery.
Addiction thrives in secrecy and isolation. In a healthy group, people begin discovering that others understand experiences they thought were theirs alone.
They hear their own story in another person’s words.
They also learn accountability, honesty, empathy, and the importance of helping others.
Eventually, recovery stops being something a person does alone.
Many people struggling with addiction also have emotional or psychiatric difficulties that deserve attention.
When appropriate, residents may receive evaluation or care from qualified medical or psychiatric professionals.
We believe these concerns should be taken seriously. Treating addiction while ignoring significant mental health problems can leave an important part of the person untreated.
The need for medical detoxification depends upon the substance involved, the amount being used, the person’s medical history, and the risk associated with withdrawal.
Some forms of withdrawal can be medically dangerous.
For that reason, we evaluate the situation carefully and determine what level of medical care is appropriate before or during admission.
If you are uncertain whether detoxification will be needed, call us and describe the situation as accurately as possible.
Yes, when medically appropriate.
We are a Christian treatment program, but faith and medicine are not enemies.
Certain medications may be useful in treating withdrawal, psychiatric conditions, or substance-use disorders. Those decisions should be made by qualified healthcare professionals based upon the needs of the individual.
Prayer and competent medical care can occupy the same room.
Leaving treatment is not the end of recovery.
In many ways, it is the beginning of another stage.
We encourage residents to develop a strong recovery network before they leave. That may include family, church, counselors, recovery meetings, sponsors or accountability partners, physicians, and healthy friendships.
The person returning home needs people who know the truth about his or her recovery and are willing to remain involved.
No one receives a prize for recovering alone.
Yes.
I have spent more than four decades working with people whose lives had been profoundly damaged by alcohol and drugs.
Some arrived believing they had gone too far.
Their families sometimes believed the same thing.
I have learned to be very cautious about declaring any human life hopeless.
Consequences are real. Damage is real. Recovery can be difficult.
But people change.
Families heal.
Faith awakens.
Lives that appeared finished sometimes begin again.
Then you will not be the first person to walk through our doors carrying shame.
Addiction can take people into places they never imagined they would go. They may have lied, hurt people they love, broken promises, lost jobs, damaged marriages, or simply become someone they no longer recognize.
We do not believe shame should have the final word.
Christian faith tells a different story.
The far country may explain where you have been.
It does not have to determine where you remain.
There is still a way home.
If alcohol or drugs are repeatedly damaging your health, family, work, finances, judgment, relationships, spiritual life, or ability to keep promises to yourself, it is reasonable to ask whether treatment is needed.
You do not have to wait until absolutely everything is gone.
Often the tragedy is not that someone sought help too soon.
It is that they waited too long.
Call us.
You do not need to have everything figured out before making that call.
Tell us what is happening. We will listen, ask questions, and help you think through the next step.
Sometimes recovery begins with a dramatic decision.
Sometimes it begins much more quietly—with one frightened person picking up a telephone.
