Which One Is Me?
Detox, inpatient, outpatient, MAT — side by side, and then the part that actually answers the question.
These four words get used as if they were four competing products, and they are not. Detox handles withdrawal and is not treatment. Inpatient and outpatient are two answers to where you sleep while being treated. MAT is a medication that can sit alongside any of them. Once that is clear the choice usually makes itself, and the comparison below is built to get you there rather than to define terms.
This is not a clinical assessment and it is not medical advice. Only a licensed clinician can assess someone and recommend a level of care. Medical emergency: 911. Suicide or mental health crisis: call or text 988.
How to use this page. Rehab Connect USA is an informational directory. We are not a treatment provider, we do not provide medical or legal advice, and we do not recommend or endorse any facility. Facility listings come from SAMHSA's FindTreatment.gov and are reported by the facilities themselves — we do not independently verify them. Confirm anything that matters directly with the provider and with a licensed clinician.
Side by side
| Detox | Inpatient (hospital) | Outpatient | MAT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In one line | Medical management of withdrawal. | Treatment delivered in a hospital, with medical staff on site. | Treatment you attend while living at home. | Treatment that includes an FDA-approved medication for substance use disorder. |
| Where you sleep | Depends on the setting. Detox happens in hospitals, in freestanding programs, and in some cases at home under supervision. | In the hospital. | At home. MedlinePlus notes that outpatient alcohol withdrawal needs someone staying with you and keeping an eye on you. | Anywhere. Medication is a component that can sit alongside any of the other three, not a place. |
| What it is for | Getting you through acute intoxication and withdrawal to a medically stable, substance-free state. | Care where medical needs sit alongside the substance use, or where withdrawal is moderate to severe. | Mild-to-moderate needs, and keeping work, school or family going while being treated. | Most commonly opioid use disorder. TIP 63 reviews three FDA-approved medications for it: methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine. |
| What it does NOT do | It is not treatment. The federal protocol states that detoxification is not substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation, and is not designed to resolve the longstanding psychological, social and behavioural problems involved. | It does not continue after discharge. Ask what is arranged for the day you leave. | It does not remove you from the environment. If home is part of the problem, this is the wrong starting point. | It is not a replacement for the rest of the care. MedlinePlus describes it alongside counselling and support, not instead of them. |
| Roughly how long | Short. Days, not weeks — but MedlinePlus notes alcohol withdrawal symptoms may go on for weeks after the acute phase. | Varies by program. Ask. | For outpatient alcohol withdrawal, MedlinePlus describes daily visits to your provider until you are stable. | Can be long-term. MedlinePlus notes methadone is also used as long-term maintenance and that some people stay on it for years. |
| The SAMHSA category to filter on | Detoxification — browse by state | Hospital Inpatient Treatment — browse by state | Outpatient and Outpatient Level of Care — browse by state | Substance Use Medication-Assisted Treatment and Opioid Treatment Medications — browse by state |
Residential, partial hospitalization (PHP) and intensive outpatient (IOP) sit between the inpatient and outpatient columns above. The care-type guide walks through all six levels one question at a time.
Which one is me?
The federal sources do not rank these, and neither do we. But MedlinePlus does describe the settings withdrawal can happen in, and which situations point at which — and that is the closest thing to a real answer that exists in writing.
“I drink every day and I am scared to stop.”
Start with detox, and not at home on your own. The federal protocol identifies seizures and delirium tremens as the most extreme forms of severe alcohol withdrawal, and reports most alcohol withdrawal seizures happening in the first 48 hours after stopping or cutting down. MedlinePlus says people with moderate-to-severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms may need to be treated at a hospital or other facility that treats alcohol withdrawal, and that those with mild-to-moderate symptoms can often be treated as an outpatient — with someone staying with them and daily visits to a provider until stable.
Which of those two you are is a clinical judgement, not a self-assessment. That is the call to make.
“It is opioids.”
Ask about medication from the first phone call, not after detox. TIP 63 reviews three FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder: methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine. MedlinePlus describes methadone as relieving withdrawal and also serving as long-term maintenance, buprenorphine as treating withdrawal and able to shorten detox and also usable for maintenance, and naltrexone as helping prevent relapse — while warning that naltrexone can bring on sudden and severe withdrawal if it is started too early.
MedlinePlus also lists the three settings this can happen in: at home with medication and a strong support system (which it calls difficult, and says must be done very slowly), in facilities set up for detox, or in a regular hospital if symptoms are severe.
“I cannot take three weeks off. I would lose my job or my kids.”
Then the outpatient column is the one to read first, and the real question to ask each program is what it expects of your week. Before you assume the job is the blocker, read the federal FMLA rule on leave for substance abuse treatment — we go through what it does and does not protect. It is more protective than most people assume in one direction and less in another, and it is worth knowing which before you decide.
“Home is where the using happens.”
Then outpatient is the wrong starting point regardless of how mild things look on paper, because outpatient assumes you go back there every night. This is the situation residential and partial hospitalization exist for. The care-type guide asks this as one of its questions and routes on the answer.
“I already did detox. Twice.”
That is the exact pattern the protocol names. Detox is not treatment — its own consensus panel takes special care to say so — and one of its three defined components is fostering entry into the treatment that follows. The protocol even notes that for people who complete detox repeatedly and then do not engage with treatment, some programs use a written, voluntary, not legally binding contract to encourage it.
If detox has not held, the thing to change is what comes after it, not the detox.
Why there is no facility count in that grid
Every other page on this site puts a number next to a treatment type, so the absence of one here is deliberate and worth explaining.
SAMHSA’s published facility data records services as field groups that a facility reported into. That works well for some categories and badly for others. In this copy of the directory, 99.8 percent of the 12,035 listed facilities carry the outpatient field group and 70.6 percent carry the opioid treatment medications group. Printed as “almost every facility in America offers outpatient care” that would be misleading, because reporting into a field group is not the same as offering, staffing, or having capacity in a service.
Detox is the exception that makes the point: 19 percent of listed facilities carry the detox group, which is low enough to be informative, and it is the one we built a whole dataset on — how far each US city area sits from the nearest facility reporting detox. For the other three columns, the honest move is a filter link you can inspect for yourself rather than a headline number we would have to caveat into meaninglessness.
Keep going
- Which level of care applies? — all six levels, one question at a time
- The first 72 hours in detox
- What to bring to detox
- Questions to ask a treatment facility
- How far is the nearest detox facility?
- Browse treatment facilities by state
Sources. Every factual statement on this page traces to one of the following. Where a claim could not be traced to a written source, it was left off the page rather than softened.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Detoxification and Substance Abuse Treatment, Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series No. 45. Chapter 1, “Overview, Essential Concepts, and Definitions in Detoxification”, and Chapter 4, “Physical Detoxification Services for Withdrawal From Specific Substances”. NCBI Bookshelf NBK64115
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Medications for Opioid Use Disorder, Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series No. 63. NCBI Bookshelf NBK535268
- MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia (U.S. National Library of Medicine), “Alcohol withdrawal”. medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000764.htm
- MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia (U.S. National Library of Medicine), “Opiate and opioid withdrawal”. medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000949.htm
- 29 CFR § 825.119, “Leave for treatment of substance abuse”, Family and Medical Leave Act regulations. ecfr.gov
- SAMHSA, FindTreatment.gov — the source of every facility record in this directory. findtreatment.gov