Alcohol rehab in Fort Lauderdale — clinical depth at your door.

RECO is roughly 40 minutes up I-95 from Las Olas — a deliberate distance that lets Fort Lauderdale clients commute to PHP or IOP while still stepping away from the bars and social circuits tied to active drinking. Addiction psychiatry is in-house, so naltrexone, acamprosate, and Vivitrol decisions happen alongside therapy rather than via outside referrals. The clinical team specializes in alcohol use disorder rather than treating it as one concern among many.

From Las Olas Boulevard or Victoria Park, RECO Intensive sits about 26 miles up I-95 — roughly a 40-minute drive depending on the hour. For Fort Lauderdale residents, that distance is deliberate and useful: close enough to commute to partial hospitalization without uprooting work, school, or family obligations, and far enough that the Delray Beach campus offers real separation from the bars, restaurants, and social circuits tied to active drinking. Clients from Coral Ridge, Rio Vista, and Wilton Manors regularly make that drive five days a week during the more intensive phases of care, then taper to fewer days as they step down. Others choose residential first and return home to Broward County after stabilization. Either path is structured around the same clinical principle — alcohol use disorder is a medical condition that responds to specialized treatment, not a willpower problem to push through alone.

Why alcohol use disorder requires specialized medical attention

Alcohol is one of the few substances where withdrawal itself can kill you. Unlike opioid withdrawal, which is profoundly uncomfortable but rarely fatal in otherwise healthy adults, severe alcohol withdrawal can produce seizures, autonomic instability, and delirium tremens — a syndrome with measurable mortality even in hospital settings when it goes unrecognized. That clinical reality drives the first decision in any alcohol treatment plan: does this person need medically supervised detox before therapy begins, or can stabilization happen at a lower level of care?

RECO uses the ASAM Criteria — the six-dimensional framework most American addiction programs use to match clients to the appropriate level of care — to make that call. Dimension 1 (acute intoxication and withdrawal potential) and Dimension 2 (biomedical conditions) carry the most weight for alcohol. A 32-year-old who drinks heavily on weekends presents differently from a 58-year-old who has consumed a bottle of wine nightly for fifteen years and has elevated liver enzymes, hypertension, and a prior withdrawal seizure. Both have alcohol use disorder. The pathway through care looks substantially different. Even moderate use disorder benefits from a thorough medical workup before therapy starts, because hidden problems — undiagnosed liver disease, thiamine deficiency, sleep apnea masked by sedation — quietly undermine recovery if left unaddressed.

Medication-assisted treatment for alcohol use disorder

Two medications have the strongest evidence base for sustained recovery from alcohol use disorder: naltrexone, which blunts the rewarding effects of alcohol and reduces craving, and acamprosate, which appears to normalize glutamate signaling disrupted by long-term drinking. Naltrexone is available as a daily oral tablet or as Vivitrol, a once-monthly injection that removes the daily decision to take medication — a meaningful advantage in the first months of recovery, when motivation fluctuates. Disulfiram remains an option for highly motivated clients who want a chemical deterrent.

What separates how this works at RECO from a typical referral pathway is that addiction psychiatry is in-house. The prescriber making medication decisions is in the same building as the therapist running CBT sessions and the case manager coordinating step-down. When a client’s craving spikes during week three, the MAT conversation happens that week rather than at a separate appointment six weeks out. The same integrated approach applies to opioid use disorder when it co-occurs — buprenorphine and naltrexone are both available — and to the psychiatric medications that frequently come into play during early recovery from alcohol, when underlying anxiety and depression often surface.

The behavioral therapy component

Medication is one leg of the stool. The behavioral work is what teaches a client how to live without alcohol — how to handle a wedding in Las Olas, a stressful workday, a Friday night when nothing on the schedule prevents drinking. RECO’s alcohol program leans on three evidence-based modalities. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy maps the thoughts and triggers that precede drinking and rehearses different responses. Dialectical Behavior Therapy adds distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal skills — particularly useful for clients whose drinking served as their primary mechanism for managing intense feelings. Motivational Interviewing remains the dominant style for the early-engagement work, when ambivalence is normal and confrontation backfires.

For clients with trauma underlying the substance use — and that overlap is substantial — RECO offers EMDR and Trauma-Focused CBT delivered by trained clinicians, with careful sequencing so that trauma processing happens after the client is stable enough to tolerate it. These modalities are delivered in both group and individual formats across the levels of care, from partial hospitalization through intensive outpatient, with the intensity tapering as the client’s recovery skills consolidate.

Family therapy from week one

Alcohol use disorder is a family illness — not in a vague metaphorical sense, but in measurable terms. Spouses develop their own anxiety patterns. Adult children carry recognizable relational templates from growing up around an alcoholic parent. Parents of younger clients oscillate between rescuing and withdrawing in ways that often inadvertently maintain the drinking. Treating the client in isolation leaves all of this untouched, and the family system pulls the client back toward old patterns within weeks of discharge.

RECO integrates family therapy from intake. Weekly sessions with the primary therapist include the spouse, parents, or adult children where appropriate, with telehealth options for Fort Lauderdale families who can’t always make the drive. Separate programming for family members — psychoeducation about alcohol use disorder, peer support with other families navigating treatment, guidance on what to say and what to stop saying — runs in parallel. The goal is that by the time the client is in aftercare, the people they go home to understand the illness, recognize early warning signs, and have their own support structure.

Insurance, getting started, and what the Fort Lauderdale commute looks like

RECO is in-network with most major commercial carriers — Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and others. The admissions team handles benefits verification directly with the insurer, typically within a business day, so families know what is covered before treatment starts. For clients with Florida Blue PPO plans, which are common among Broward County employers, alcohol detox and the subsequent levels of care are generally well-covered.

For Fort Lauderdale clients choosing PHP or IOP rather than residential, the commute deserves planning. I-95 north from downtown to Delray Beach runs reliably 35-45 minutes outside rush hour and can stretch to an hour in the worst of morning traffic. Many clients carpool, and the sober-living network in Delray Beach is also available for clients who want the structure of residential housing while attending day treatment. The first step — for someone in Coral Ridge, Wilton Manors, or anywhere across Broward — is a phone call to (866) 396-2008 for a confidential clinical assessment. More detail on the alcohol-specific program is available on the alcohol addiction treatment page.

Serving residents of: Las Olas, Victoria Park, Coral Ridge, Rio Vista, Wilton Manors.