Drug Addiction – Seeking Help

t starts of with an innocent drag of a ‘joint’ at a friends house – you laugh you giggle, oh and do you eat; you sit up for hours contemplating the fate of the universe, religious, spiritual and philosophical topics. Then that’s that for a while, until next time lets say a week a month, it makes no difference.
Soon this innocent experience has become a ritual, habit if you could say. Low and behold, now you’re invited to a house party and are introduced to more ‘hard-core’ drugs – hey if the weed was not so bad, what’s the harm in trying ecstasy, acid or a bit of cocaine?

The year progresses and so do the parties, and suddenly you find your self using drugs on a regular basis even at home alone. Then, whether over night or over a gradual progression – who knows for sure – you are addicted. You can’t stop using. You whole life is concerned with buying and using drugs and unfortunately more often then not you are not enjoying your self anymore. What do you do? Well, you can carry on using until it kills you or go insane or even until the cops can arrest you and your shinning record will be tarnished with jail time. Or you can seek help – this is what this article is about – help for the drug addict.
Before we continue, let us define the term drug addict (which includes an alcoholic). A drug addict is any person whose very life’s purpose is the getting and using of drugs and can not in their own power stop using drugs. Drugs can be defined as any illegal narcotics or mind altering substances including alcohol because believe it or not alcohol is a drug too.

Well, if you are desperate for help – that’s a good thing, then you will find it. I recommend booking yourself into a 12 step rehabilitation centre; they are not cheap but just think of how much money you’ve been spending on your addiction. It’s worth it; it worked for me, finally. You might not agree with all their philosophies, you might not enjoy the group therapies and it is going to be, possibly, the hardest time of your life. But remember what you put in you get out.

If you can’t afford to go to a private rehab centre there are also government subsidised and funded centres, well in South Africa at least. They are not pleasant but they’re better then prison.

If booking your self into a rehab centre is out of the question for what ever reasons you might have visit Narcotics Anonymous’ or Alcoholic Anonymous’ web site for your specific country and location online. They will have a list of meetings – times and places where recovering addicts and alcoholics meet. Because of group anonymity I can divulge no more, except that the meetings really help.

Lastly, but defiantly not least have faith you are suffering from a sickness not a moral disorder although your sickness might have lead you to do bad things – it does to a lot of people. Forgive yourself if you can, if you can’t seek counselling. Pray, find God. He is loving and forgiving and can help you conquer you sickness. Even go to church it’s helped me a lot. Jesus literally saved my life.

Whatever you do, do not isolate, do not give up hope there is life after drugs – no matter how far down the spiral you are – and this life is an abundant joyful fulfilling life. And when you are clean by all means do not relapse.

Helping the Drug Addict – What Is Kindness?

Putting off an intervention and detox rehab on a drug addicted friend or family member is the biggest unkindness of all. To let the addict continue to worsen and become more addicted does more damage than could possibly result from a failed intervention.

Allowing drug abuse to continue as before, with the drug abuser digging a deeper and deeper hole to hide in; watching this process without arranging an intervention or taking ANY action, only gives more power to the drug and more permanent damage to the addict.

And guess what? Approximately 90 percent of interventions succeed! That’s right. 9 out of 10 professionally done interventions result in the addict entering detox rehab treatment.

But, according to one of the United States’ leading intervention companies, only around 10 percent of loving, caring families with a drug addicted member, will agree to have an intervention done.

So what is real kindness? Here are the facts:

The addict is dying. Drug addiction is progressive. What seems commonplace to the abuser today would have been unthinkable to them a few years ago. Read the papers or watch the news, drug addiction is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives every year in the US.

Waiting makes the recovery longer and more difficult. Habits become entrenched more and more deeply with time. What was a tendency becomes a habit. A habit becomes a compulsion and the compulsion ends up a life-threatening addiction. There is no better time to stop than right now. This painful process will only be more painful in a month and far worse in a year.

Drug damage is permanent.Every time he or she gets “stoned”, the changes occurring in the mind and body are setting in deeper with each day of drug use. There is no kindness in allowing the drug to steal years of life from the addict and their future too.

Pay now or pay later. In most cases, the expense of fixing something is far less if done sooner. This couldn’t be truer in any area than in detox rehab treatment. Just look at how much easier it would have been to stop the drug problem in its infancy. What if you could go back to the beginning of the problem and handle it there? How much easier would it be?

Drug Addiction Clinics

Drug addiction clinics, also known as drug rehabilitation centers or rehabilitation clinics, or rehab, for short, are facilities that get people who misuse and abuse drugs and who become alcoholics treated by employing various methods. Such means include medication, therapy and counseling. When it comes to drugs though, a drug addiction clinic would fit the bill perfectly as this facility specializes in getting an addict recover from his or her drug infused haze. Such a facility also knows that an addict has a specific need when it comes to getting treated for his or her addiction.

During a patient’s stay inside these clinics, his or her treatment will vary from other patients who are also staying within the clinics’ confines. Treatment depends on the gravity of a patient’s addiction, how long has he or she been hooked on this or that substance, how long will his or her stay be and what sort of counseling should the patient receive. Not only those though, these clinics also have outpatient options, wherein a patient does not stay within the clinics’ walls.

While patients are within the drug addiction clinics, they will be attended to by a professional staff made up of nurses, doctors as well as counselors. The doctors will be letting a patient go through what is called drug detoxification, or detox for short. During this phase, a patient joins therapy sessions whenever necessary or is given the right medication to lessen the impact of his or her withdrawal from a substance. This phase is the most critical and the most crucial part of rehab but it is also the most taxing on a patient since he or she will go through very uncomfortable physical as well as behavior adjustments. Apart from drug detox, a key phase in going to rehab is also getting a patient’s family, friends and loved ones involved as a patient’s addiction not only affects him or her but also them.

Drug addiction clinics can and will help anybody who is addicted to drugs overcome their addiction. However, this can only happen when an addict realizes that he or she needs to check into such facilities and that he or she wants to be free from the grip of drug addiction. After all, drug addiction can be overcome once an addict comes to terms with his or her addiction and would want to change for the better, not only for him or herself but for others as well, especially those who he or she calls family.