Aftercare and discharge planning: what happens after the 28 days

Why 28 days is the start, not the end

In our model, addiction is a learned way of regulating an unbearable internal state, not a failure of willpower. A residential stay gives you a safe, structured place to learn other ways of coping and to loosen the old pattern. What it cannot do is live your ordinary life for you. The real test comes when you are back among the same relationships, pressures and reminders that surrounded the using in the first place. That is what the discharge plan is for, and it is why we begin building it with you well before you travel home.

Recovery is rarely a straight line. We treat ambivalence and setbacks as part of the process rather than proof that treatment did not work. The aim of aftercare is not to promise you will never struggle again. It is to make sure that when a hard week comes, you already know what you are looking at and what to do about it.

Built from your own goals, values and triggers

Your plan is not a leaflet handed to everyone. It grows out of the work you do in the programme, so it is written in your own words and points at your own life.

Goals that hold when life gets difficult

In the goals work we separate pressure goals, the punishing kind that turn into guilt the moment you slip, from aligned goals that are connected to your values and to where you actually are. We keep them small, flexible and focused on process rather than perfection, because a goal you can adjust in a storm is a goal you can keep. You leave with a short set of these, chosen by you, not imposed on you.

Values as a compass, not a rulebook

Using the Life Wheel exercise, you map what matters across the different areas of your life, health, relationships, meaningful activity, rest, creativity, community, and notice where a value has gone quiet or out of balance. When your daily choices are guided by your own values rather than by shoulds inherited from others, self-care stops being a chore and becomes a direction. That map is part of what goes home with you.

Knowing your triggers before they arrive

The triggers work is drawn directly from the programme. We name the external triggers (sights, sounds, smells, places), internal triggers (strong feelings), trauma triggers and symptom triggers such as poor sleep, and we build your personal early-warning system, the "red button" signals that tend to appear before a crisis. Triggers are not the enemy in this work, they are information. Once you can recognise the signals early, you have time to act rather than react.

Your relapse-prevention toolbox

Falling is not failing. A central part of the closing modules is assembling a personal toolbox, a concrete set of supports you can reach for when everything shakes:

• Phrases that ground you and reframe the inner critic, so "I have failed" becomes "I have learned something".
• People you can call, named in advance, so support is a decision you have already made rather than one you have to find mid-crisis.
• Actions that reconnect you, the routines, movement and self-care that steady you.
• Inner resources, the values, strengths and memories that hold you when motivation is low.

We treat a slip as a learning opportunity to be met without self-punishment, and the plan says plainly what to do if one happens: who to contact, how to interrupt it, and how to get back on the path quickly. This work sits on the same foundations as the wider Regulation Model and the therapies used throughout the residential programme.

A year of weekly sessions, counted

Here is our aftercare as a number you can hold us to: one session every week for a full year after you leave, online wherever you live or in person at the PROMIS clinics in London. Across the twelve months that is more than 48 sessions, and all of it is inside the £9,900. There is no aftercare package sold to you on the way out of the door.

The reason it runs for a year rather than a month is that the risk does not sit where people expect. The twenty eight days are the part that feels hard. The months after are the part where a plan quietly stops being followed, and a weekly session is what keeps it from doing so, because someone is expecting you and the work stays current rather than fading into something you did once in Spain.

Continuity of care back home

Most of our patients travel from the UK and Europe, so the plan is written for the place you are returning to, not for Málaga. Where a mental health condition sits alongside the addiction, aftercare continues the joined-up approach used in your dual diagnosis and trauma work rather than dropping it at the airport. We help you line up ongoing support in your own community, and because the recovery model here is a UK clinical model, the language and tools translate cleanly to what you find at home. Our UK versus Spain page sets that continuity out in more detail.

Recovery is easier to hold when the people around you understand it. Our family programme is part of that continuity, helping partners and relatives understand the pattern, set healthy boundaries and support without policing, so the home you return to works with your recovery rather than against it.

If you are weighing up a place for yourself or someone you love, the honest next step is to talk it through. You can see exactly what the 28-day programme includes on our admissions page, or read what the fixed £9,900 fee covers, and what is arranged separately, on pricing.