Outpatient addiction treatment, 12 minutes from Highland Beach.

For Highland Beach residents, RECO offers a level of clinical density — PHP at 30+ hours weekly, IOP, in-house addiction psychiatry, and MAT — that general Boca behavioral-health practices typically cannot. The Delray campus is a twelve-minute drive up A1A from Bel Lido Isle and Toscana, which makes daytime treatment realistic without disrupting evenings at home. Clients keep the same primary therapist from PHP through IOP and into aftercare.

Highland Beach sits quietly between Delray and Boca Raton, a two-mile ribbon of oceanfront condominiums and gated coastal homes along A1A. For a resident of Bel Lido Isle, Toscana, or one of the Penthouse buildings facing the Atlantic, RECO Intensive’s Delray Beach campus is roughly seven miles north — about a twelve-minute drive depending on the season and the bridge. That short distance matters more than it sounds. It means a client can attend a full PHP day, return home for dinner, and sleep in their own bed; it also means a family member can drop off, check in, and be back in Highland Beach before the morning is gone. The clinical density available at RECO — specialist-level partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient programming, and an in-house addiction psychiatry team — is the kind of care most general behavioral-health practices in Boca cannot offer in one coordinated setting.

What outpatient addiction treatment actually means

“Outpatient” is a category that covers a wide clinical range. At the lower end, standard outpatient therapy might be a single weekly session with a counselor — appropriate for someone who is stable, has been in treatment before, and needs reinforcement rather than restructuring. At the upper end, a partial hospitalization program (PHP) runs roughly thirty to thirty-five hours each week, five days a week, and looks more like full-time treatment than a series of appointments. Intensive outpatient (IOP) sits in the middle at about fifteen hours weekly across three to four days.

For most adults entering care for a moderate-to-severe substance use disorder — alcohol, opioids, stimulants, benzodiazepines, or polysubstance use — standard outpatient is not enough clinical contact in the first phase of recovery. PHP and IOP exist precisely because the early weeks need structure, repeated exposure to evidence-based therapies, and frequent contact with the same treatment team. At RECO, both levels share the same primary therapist, the same psychiatrist, and the same modalities, so stepping down from PHP to IOP does not mean starting over with a new clinician.

Who outpatient is the right fit for

The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) publishes the placement criteria most reputable programs use to determine level of care. The framework looks at six dimensions: acute intoxication and withdrawal potential, biomedical conditions, emotional and behavioral conditions, readiness to change, relapse potential, and the recovery environment. A clinician weighs all six during the assessment rather than relying on a single factor.

Outpatient — whether PHP or IOP — is appropriate when withdrawal risk is manageable with medication and outpatient monitoring rather than 24-hour medical supervision; when no urgent biomedical condition demands inpatient care; when psychiatric symptoms are stable enough to engage in group and individual therapy; and when the person has somewhere safe to sleep at night. That last dimension matters in this region. A client returning each evening to a stable Highland Beach household with supportive family is in a very different position than someone whose home life is part of what triggered the substance use in the first place. When the home environment is the obstacle, sober living becomes part of the clinical plan rather than an afterthought.

What a PHP day looks like

A typical PHP day at RECO runs Monday through Friday, from mid-morning into mid-afternoon. The structure is intentional. A client begins with a check-in group, moves into a clinical process group built around cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills, and meets one-on-one with their primary therapist on a scheduled cadence. Psychiatry is woven in as needed — medication management for co-occurring depression, anxiety, ADHD, or PTSD, and decisions about medication-assisted treatment (MAT) when relevant: naltrexone or acamprosate for alcohol use disorder, Vivitrol or buprenorphine for opioid use disorder.

The afternoon typically includes experiential or specialty programming — trauma-focused work using EMDR or Trauma-Focused CBT for clients with significant trauma histories, motivational interviewing (MI) sessions, family programming, and groups focused on relapse prevention, grief, or specific issues like the opioid epidemic that gave rise to so many of the cases we see. The point is that the day is a coherent clinical experience rather than a scattered list of appointments, and the same care extends through IOP and into aftercare and alumni programming when a client steps down.

Sober living as part of the treatment plan

RECO operates its own network of sober-living residences in Delray Beach, coordinated directly with the clinical team. This is meaningful when the home environment in Highland Beach or elsewhere is not yet ready to support PHP-level care — a partner who is still drinking, a household where the substance is physically present, or simply a living situation where isolation is part of the problem.

Sober living during outpatient treatment is not the same as residential care. Residents attend programming each day, then return to a structured, monitored house with peers also in recovery. House norms, drug testing, curfews, and meeting attendance are part of the agreement. For some clients, six to twelve weeks in sober living while attending PHP and IOP is the difference between a treatment episode that holds and one that does not. The clinical team and the sober-living staff communicate directly, so a relapse, a missed group, or a difficult family contact is visible to everyone involved in the care plan.

Getting started, insurance, and the practical details

Most major commercial insurance plans cover PHP and IOP at RECO. We work directly with Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, Beacon, Magellan, and many regional plans, and we will verify benefits at no cost before any commitment is made. Our insurance verification page outlines the process. We do not accept Medicaid or Medicare. For clients whose primary concern is alcohol or opioids, the alcohol-specific and opioid-specific pages describe how MAT, medical monitoring, and the relevant therapies fit into the broader outpatient plan.

The first step is an assessment by phone with a clinician, not a salesperson. From Highland Beach, that conversation can happen the same day, and an in-person evaluation can usually be scheduled within forty-eight hours. The assessment determines the right level of care — PHP, IOP, or in some cases a referral to a higher level of care before outpatient is appropriate. If you are calling on behalf of a family member, the clinician will walk you through what to say, what not to say, and how to bring the person into the conversation when they are ready.

Serving residents of: Bel Lido Isle, Boca Cove, Ocean Cove, Toscana, Penthouse.