Quite simply, a residential treatment program is much more drastic and aggressive than an inpatient drug rehab program in Arizona. In fact, an inpatient drug rehab is targeted at people who can still manage their addictions and those who do not yet have life-threatening complications of their addiction problem. But the residential treatment program is directly targeted at people who are at the most extreme condition in their addiction. These people are those who have hit their bottom already, those for whom other methods of treatment have failed and those who have been incarcerated for criminal acts committed under the influence of drug addiction. The drug rehab in Arizona may be for people with mild addiction problems, but the residential program is clearly targeted at people for whom the addiction cannot get any worse.

The residential addiction treatment program in Arizona is actually a community program. People with similar addictions are made to stay together as their individual problems are addressed. They are imparted common training. The detoxification process is a part of both the inpatient rehab as well as the residential treatment program. A typical residential treatment program in Arizona can go on up to six months or a year, though there are also people who enter into such treatment voluntarily. For such people, there can also be short programs of up to three months duration. The inpatient rehabs will be much shorter than this; after the detox the person may be also put into an outpatient aftercare program.