Substance Abuse
Substance
abuse generally starts with an attempt to handle pain.
This could me mental or physical pain and does not necessarily need to be great.
A teenager uses drugs for the first time and finds they helped with shyness and so uses them more and more often, as a false solution to the pains of adolescence.
A mother finds relief from family stress with anti-depressants and so continues their use and even increases the dosages.
Physical pain is relieved with prescription painkillers and so they are continued more and more frequently. All of these substances have their own particular side-effects which create new situations and new sources of mental and physical pain, and so other substances are now used in an attempt to handle these new pains. Thus most of those entering substance
abuse treatment find themselves having problems with not just one substance but multiple substances. Narconon Arrowhead aids the individual in confronting and resolving the use of these substances as well as dealing with the underlying mental and physical pains which resulted in the original and now continued abuse.
Drug Rehab Information By State
The
12 step program has been around in various forms since the 1920’s.
It basically involves 12 different steps done by the addict or
alcoholic in an attempt to gain control over the
addiction or alcoholism.
There are thousands of local meetings throughout the world whose membership uses the 12 steps as their basic approach.
Many of the short term
drug rehabs also use the 12 step approach to solving
addiction or alcoholism.
There is absolutely no doubt that this approach works for some and works well. However, overall success rates tend to be dismally low. For instance AA reports a meager 5-7% retention rate for those attending these meetings. All is not hopeless for you or a loved one who has found a
12 step program not fully handling addiction or alcoholism. There are more non-traditional alternatives available with significantly higher success rates; Narconon Arrowhead is one of these.
Each drug or substance can of course have its own symptoms of
abuse and addiction; however there are a couple of general points that can be made about addiction.
Addiction generally is a condition characterized by repeated, compulsive seeking and use of drugs or alcohol despite adverse social, mental, and physical consequences. It is usually accompanied by physiological and physical dependence with the appearance of withdrawal symptoms when the drug or alcohol is rapidly decreased or terminated.
When
addiction exists, the
drug use controls the individual rather than the individual controlling the usage.
With
addiction life more and more revolves around getting and using the drugs.
Family, health, career, finances, all take more and more of a back seat as important factors in life as the addiction continues to increasingly absorb the addicts attention and energies.
Prescription drug
addiction generally occurs with those medications which suppress pain of a physical or emotional nature.
Painkillers suppress physical pain and many are taken at levels exceeding recommended dosages and tolerance builds up fast,
abuse then continues in an attempt to handle the pain, or just out of fear of future pain.
Medications such as anti-depressants are designed to suppress various forms of mental stress or duress.
Abuse of these is similar to painkillers in that dosages are exceeded and tolerance builds leading to more and more of the drug needed in an attempt to maintain emotional balance.
Prescription drug
addiction in both these cases results from trying to mask the symptoms rather than treating and resolving the underlying causes of the physical or emotional pain.
The dangers of
addiction are so numerous that it can’t really be spelled out in a short paragraph.
There are of course all the various physical complications that come from any particular drug or chemical.
Add to this the fact that many, if not most, addicts are abusing multiple drugs and chemicals and one sees the danger of
addiction to any one substance being compounded by this multiple use. One of the
dangers of addiction is plainly clear however.
This being the fact that when addiction exists, the
drug use controls the individual rather than the individual controlling the drug use.
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