ARCO is the short form of “Addiction Recovery Coach Online”. This is an online therapy platform to help persons suffering from Alcohol or drug use disorder or prevention and early intervention. The patients will get all the necessary services through ARCO including medical consultation, counseling, therapy, psycho education and ongoing support programs for a qualitative recovery.

ARCO is an Intensive Out-patient (IOP) Treatment Programme for addiction management, provided at online platform with live sessions.The program is designed to suit the online platform, based on evidence based practices and offered by certified addiction professionals who are trained on Universal Treatment Curriculum on Substance Use Disorder. Recent researches show Online therapy for addiction management is as effective as residential rehabilitation models, but less expensive and easily accessible!

There are different pathways to Recovery and online therapy is one of them. There are eight published studies that compared addiction treatment delivered via online therapy with in-person treatment and found that online therapy was as effective as in-person treatment or residential rehab. Addiction is lately known as Substance Use Disorder (SUD) management which induces several co-occurring mental and medical disorders. 

ARCO services are open to any person affected by addiction at any stage. The process begin with your enquiry with us or the registration. Then our Intake Counsellor will get in touch with you and do the initial counseling and screening. In the second step, you are allotted a Counsellor based on your need who will make a treatment planning with you. Thirdly, those opting for addiction recovery therapy will get a psychiatric or medical consultation and your detox process will begin in OPD basis. Once the detox is done, therapist will continue to assist you through individual counseling, group therapy and psycho education to assist you through recovery process. A Recovery coach may be assigned at the termination of the treatment process with initiation to self help programs.

The ARCO services are on payment basis. The process start with a nominal registration fee of Rs. 300 for Indians and (USD 10 for foreigners) for the initial screening and intake process. Once you get oriented to the therapy and choose a therapy package, you will pay for the 45 days of therapy package which is around Rs.7200 (USD 100) for the entire package. Any extension of the treatment duration beyond 45 days will be charged extra. (There is a separate payment package for internationals)

The therapists at ARCO are professionals with many years of clinical experiences with specialized training in Universal Treatment Curriculum on Substance Use Disorder. UTC is a globally recognized course leading to licensing as “Internationally Certified Addiction Professional” (ICAP) and our chief therapists are licensed therapists, certified by the Global Center for Credentialing and Certification (GCCC) and the Colombo Plan. Our Recovery coaches are also trained in UTC and with many years of qualitative recovery.

The portal gives you a simple format for registration to ARCO services. Once you submit the form, our intake counselor will get in touch with you for further procedures.

Online therapy strives to be as confidential as in-person sessions. Meaning, the information you share with your therapist is not shared with anyone else without written permission. The access to the therapist is through an individual login and you will have the same therapist as your personal counsellor. The therapist is bound by the code of ethics that prevents him or her from sharing the information with any entities.

Once a therapist is allotted to you, you will fix an appointment with the therapist at your most convenient time for the therapy sessions. The sessions are conducted up to your preferred mode of communication, but we at ARCO recommends using a video therapy which gives a face to face experience. No sessions are allowed to be recorded. Mostly zoom platform is used for the online therapy. However,  whatsApp video is also a secured video conferencing platform.

The online therapy also functions like the face to face therapy which includes intake counseling, screening and assessment, treatment planning, detox services assisted by a medical or psychiatry practitioner, individual and group therapies and psycho education.

ARCO has affiliated psychiatrists and medical officers who will be available for consultations online. Normally, every therapeutic package on recovery therapy has a component of medical/psychiatric consultation for safe OPD basis detoxification services along with the psycho therapy.

In ARCO, we have six different packages and clients can choose any of this depend on their needs. The intake counsellor will help you choose the right package after the initial screening process. The packages we have at ARCO are:

1. ARCO Recovery Therapy (Primary Treatment program)
2. ARCO Recovery Coach (Recovery coaching by peer counsellors)
3. Women in Recovery (A specialized program exclusively for women)
4. Prevention and brief intervention therapy for schools and colleges
5. Work Place prevention and therapy for Corporate sector
6. Behavioral Addiction therapy