Friday, July 20, 2012

Drug Rehab,,? Why Can't I Just Do Drug And Go Home

We frequently hear the question when someone addicted to alcohol or drugs is faced with a lengthy drug rehab program: Why can’t I just do drug detox? The answer is painfully simple: to find and solve the problems that drew you into addiction in the first place, and learn how to avoid those pitfalls in the future, you must do a drug rehab program.

If the first real step towards recovery is the decision to handle your addiction once and for all, then drug detox is the second vital step. Almost all drug rehab programs begin with drug detox, when the addict goes through withdrawal. After that, they won’t feel such a burning physical need for their next drink or drug fix, and they won’t collapse or have seizures from the withdrawal symptoms.

To many addicts, this sounds like all they need – after detox, they’ll be cured! No need for three or four or more months of drug rehab!

It’s true that a drug detox can help relieve the often terrible withdrawal symptoms caused by coming off alcohol or drugs. The damage done to your brain and body by alcohol or drugs can be significant, and is usually, if not always, accompanied by some degree of malnutrition and dehydration. A good drug detox includes nutritional work to help boost the effectiveness of your detox. And finally, because detox can be quite an emotional experience, counselors should be there to provide needed support.

All these needs are addressed during a proper drug detox, which can take on average a week or so depending on the person and their addiction. After drug detox you can continue on your road to recovery in drug rehab without the addictive substances that brought you there. Your mind is clearer than it’s been in a long time. Your emotions are freed up, and your reactions to people and life begin to make sense again, rather than being drug-centered. A great drug detox even before drug rehab can provide a big boost to one’s self-worth, vitality and hope for the future.

Drug detox is far from the cure – but it’s a great preview of how life can eventually be. However, nothing has been done yet to address the psychological and emotional factors that led you into your addiction and kept it alive like an evil twin, like a dark shadow on your life. That will be your voyage of discovery in drug rehab – and as you can imagine, it can take a while.

A good drug rehab program will provide new understanding about yourself and your relationships with others and your environment. It will offer you the tools you need to repair the damage your addiction has caused, and prevent it from happening again.

We read recently where someone said that alcohol and drugs don’t make anyone happy, they simply mask the problems that make you unhappy. The road to full self-recovery only begins with drug detox: it ends with however much time it takes later with a successful drug rehab program.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Drug Free Rehab vs Medication As A Drug Rehab

Drug Free Rehab vs Medication As A Drug Rehab
I do not understand western medicine’s fascination with medication. It seems these days that everyone is searching for a pill that will be the answer to all of their ailments. Take this pill for that. Take that pill for this. Research which drug will cure this or aid with that. It simply goes on and on. We have become a medicated nation.

I am baffled by this when we see the consequences of drug addiction in our communities. We think our problems with addiction will be solved if only we can get a handle on the meth problem or the heroin problem or the marijuana problem. We can’t see that many of the medications that are being handed by our doctors and pharmacies can be just has destructive as so-called street drugs. What’s frightening to me is that we are trying to solve the drug addiction problem in our country by creating new drugs that these drug addicts can take to cure their drug addiction.

Does this faulty thinking make any sense? Are more drugs truly the only way to handle a drug addict’s drug problem? Why can’t we provide those suffering from addiction with a comprehensive drug free rehab program? Yes, I said it. Drug-free. This means skip the methadone clinic. Skip the Subaxone. Skip the anti-depressants. Skip the quick fix.

The cover story for the July 16, 2007 issue of Time Magazine delves into the nature of addiction and how “new brain research is helping us understand why we get hooked.” The researchers involved use addicts’ brains to “design new drugs that are showing promise in cutting off the craving that drives an addict irresistibly toward relapse.” Great! Right? If an addict just didn’t crave the drug, he would be fine.Partially, yes. But there is so much more to what causes an individual to get hooked on drugs. There are always underlying issues that the once sober individual is trying to escape. Giving an addict a drug to stop the craving only addresses a part of the problem. There must be drug free ways to reduce the cravings an addict experiences and provide a complete drug free rehab for the drug addict.

Holistic approaches to drug addiction have been developed and have been proven to work. Truly addresses the cravings an addict experiences by cleansing the body of drug residues in a drug free setting, using vitamins and a sauna program at its base. The end result is that the cravings for drugs have disappeared. However, the program also addresses the underlying causes for the addiction in the first place. None of these wonder drugs for addiction deal with the root causes, which in all honesty, makes me question the motivation behind developing these types of drugs.

Who profits from these wonder drugs? Is it the drug addict who now has to support his new habit? What happens to this addict when he can’t afford to get his medication? Will he return to using the bad street drugs and find himself caught in the trap of addiction all over again? These drugs to cure addiction are new. That means long term side effects are unknown. What will they be? What side effects will the addict have to deal with?

We have already seen what happens to those on methadone. We have seen that Ritalin, a methamphetamine, causes serious problems for our children. And yet, we keep pushing this idea that medication is the answer to addiction. When will see that drug free rehab is truly the only solution to our drug addiction problems?