When choosing a residential treatment program for your brother, you’ll want to keep in mind that the longer the program, the better chance for success. Short term and outpatient programs just are not as successful as residential treatment center programs to help an addict. Some centers have 30, 60, even 90 day programs and beyond. A good example of a long-term drug and alcohol rehab residential program is the one offered by Narconon. An effective residential treatment center will not only rid your brother’s body of alcohol and drugs but also give them the information and confidence they need to go on to live the rest of their lives substance free.

Alcohol and drugs affect the mind, body and soul, so each of those things must be addressed while in residential treatment center programs. The longer the addict has to absorb the information and learn to put it into practice, the better. This is why the longer programs work so much better. Rehabilitation does not happen overnight. It takes time and learning new skills.

If your brother needs help from a residential treatment center, by all means seek out that help as soon as possible. Look for a center that offers holistic healing. Try to avoid centers that substitute one drug for another while in detoxification. The idea is to rid the body of drugs, not substitute them. A professional yet caring staff is always a plus. If your brother just happens to not get along with one of their staff, feel free to talk to them about it and perhaps choose someone else. Remember, however, that hostility and anger are part of the healing process and often it is the drug counselor or other staff member that bears the brunt of that anger. That anger is still going to come out regardless of who is working with the recovering addict.

There are many choices when it comes to residential treatment centers for your brother. Choose the one that treats the whole person thoroughly instead of just slapping a band-aid on the situation. Treatment doesn’t always work the first time but there is a greater chance of success when the whole person is treated and not just one aspect, such as the physical part.

Finally, we could not watch it anymore.  We got together, planned an intervention and got him to realize that he needed help with his addiction.  His kids only recognized him as a mass in the master bedroom, hollering for another beer or a shot of vodka.  His wife was on the verge of leaving him.  We had a counselor there and between all of us, we convinced him that he needed help.

He had to go through detoxification and he had a physical on that first day.  Then we got the bad news: he had liver failure, his kidneys were shot and there was nerve damage.  Further testing revealed that he was dying.

How do I help my friend who is dying from alcohol?  I talk to him every day, I take him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings so that he can share his story with others in the hopes that they get a wake-up call sooner than he did.  I give his wife a break from the house every now and then.

He called me the other night.  He cried like a little child about all that he had given up—the privilege of someday walking his daughter down the aisle and the pride of seeing his son graduate from the university that the young lad has dreamed of attending for nearly five years.  The only way I could help him was to listen, to be there, to offer solace.  He was right.  He had done this to himself and to his family.  Still, he was my best friend and I wished with all my heart that things were different.

How do I help him now? I went with him to plan his funeral.  I promised to give his daughter away when the time came.  I promised to be a father figure to his son and look after him while he was in college.  As I held my dying friend’s hand in the hospital for the last time three nights ago, I promised to look after his wife and children.

How did I help my friend who was dying from alcohol addiction?  By giving him the reassurance he needed and telling him that his family would be looked after, by promising to be there for them.  I could not find a miracle cure for him, but I could help him leave this world feeling that someone would be there for his wife and children.  It was the only thing that I could do, a final promise to a friend.

I wish I would have convinced him go to alcohol addiction treatment earlier on. Please, if you have a friend who is starting on the funest  road of alcohol addiction it is time to help him now before alcohol kills him.

I began getting calls and visits from strange men looking for Keith because he owed them money for drugs. Afraid that my young daughter and I would be injured by his rough friends in order to “teach him a lesson,” I eventually refinanced my home – which was almost paid off – in order to settle his drug bills.  He used to bring his paychecks home and just give them to me to pay bills, but he eventually got fired, of course, and he never gave me money after that, he only took, took, took.

I was somewhat consoled by the certainty that at least I knew he loved me, he knew how good our lives had been.  He would get tired of all this and come back and want to have again what we had once had.  I knew he was faithful to me, because I knew how much he loved me… (lol).  It was so easy to fool myself.  I could justify anything, that meant I could stay, I could continue loving him, this was just a phase.  He would come back to me.

Then one morning he called and asked if he could come home… he had been gone for 4 days.  I told him he could always come home.  He said he had a ride and was soon walking in the house.  He sat down at the kitchen table and we started talking about where he had been and why he hadn’t come home.    He asked me for a glass of water, which I handed to him.  He calmly took out a baggie of meth and a hypodermic needle…I lost it.  That was how he let me know he was back on the needle and then I knew why he was gone so much.  He was hanging with a crowd of “bangers” and knew I wouldn’t want to be there and neither would I be welcome. He knew I spent every night he was gone watching for him, praying he would come home, hoping he wasn’t with one of his little crank whores partying on the meth that he had bought with money he had either stolen from me, or from hocking something he had stolen from me.  Or, he might have traded something of mine for it – that happened a lot, I found out later.  He even had people front him drugs by giving them MY name and telling them that I would pay for it tomorrow!

Keith eventually ended up in legal trouble, of course.  He left my house, because he was hiding out.  He wouldn’t tell me where – I found out it was with a woman.  My self-esteem was in the toilet, my health was deteriorating because the stress was killing me, my friends couldn’t believe I kept taking him back and enduring the mental, physical and emotional torture he put me through…but I loved him.  God, was I codependent!!  He ended up with 7 felonies and 2 misdemeanor charges.  He was sentenced to 2 years state probation … and a lot of people we knew ended up getting busted and going to federal prison.  We found a piece of paper with those same names at my house in Keith’s handwriting.  Coincidence?  I think not.

In conclusion, there are drug users and drug addicts.  DRUG ADDICTS can not be trusted.  They will steal, beg, borrow, whatever it takes to get that next fix.  And if they don’t get that next fix, they will NOT be in a good mood.  Guess who they will take that out on?!  They will not stop!  They will not change!  They won’t remember what it was like before!  All an addict thinks about is where they can get that next fix.  I told my fiancé when I told him he had to leave, “When you get tired of your new love, you will know where to find your true love.”

Addicts who use a needle to inject their drugs have two problems: they have an addiction to the drug, and an addiction to the needle.  I found out that I might be able to compete for a while with the drug, but the needle addiction is all-consuming.  You can’t beat it.  The addict has to really want to get clean.  It takes a long time and it is very painful, and that’s just the needle withdrawal.  The addict also has to withdraw from whatever drug they are addicted to, and that hurts – physically and mentally. I watched Keith when he was out of drugs, and the pain that he went through just because he hadn’t “shot up” in the last few hours was intense and got worse.

If you know a drug addict, pray for them.  If they use the needle, pray harder.

B.
ex-codependent

There IS help available to beat drug addiction.

Find out how,  talk to a professional Chemical Dependency Counselor:

1-877-782-7409

As a youth at the age of 13 I started using drugs; as time went on my drug use became more serious everyday. I am now a woman sitting in a rehabilitation center at the age of 30 trying to pull the pieces of my shattered life back together. Drugs have completely destroyed my life, my children’s lives and my relationships with close friends and my family’s lives.

I ask that you think about this and make the right choice before you pick up or touch any form of drug. Life is a precious gift and in order for you to live life to the fullest you need to be drug free. Things can and will get out of control really quick and before you know it, you will be much older, finding yourself asking where all the time has gone or worse dead.

I have come close to death myself and have lost a huge amount of friends to the drug lifestyle. I would never wish the pain I have been through on anyone in my life. The more pain you go through the more you want to use drugs to hide your pain. This is nothing but a lose-lose situation, nobody wins; not you, your parents or loved ones.

Please think before you chose drugs over life, before you chose drugs over family and before you chose drugs over whom you really are as a person. I ask that you please listen to your parents and the positive people in your life that are trying with every ounce of love to guide you in the right path.

Thank you for listening.

Your friend,
I.R.

No matter what addiction one has, if it is an addiction, one has to suffer. A very old saying says anything in excess is bad and that is how addiction becomes inevitable bad. Basically addiction is something in which an individual gets very much used to a particular thing or commodity. In addiction, the commodity one gets addicted to become a daily need of the person and it becomes hard for the person to survive or be normal without that particular commodity. This disruption in the normal activity of an individual is termed as addiction.

This addiction becomes more dangerous if the commodity one is addicted to is dangerous. One such commodity is drug. Drug addiction is said to be the worst addiction possible. One addicted to drugs is said to become more dead every time he or she consumes it. It gradually reduces the body and mind co-ordination and that is the reason it becomes really hard for one to recover from the addiction of drug. But still there are many organizations all over the world which are in the process helping out all those who really want to repent and revive from their drug addiction. However apart from those organizations, everyone amongst us needs to behave with the recovering drug addicts in a special way so as to help them in recovering from this curse.

A recovering drug addict may be weak and under immense pressure. Under such circumstances, any human requires strong motivations as well as encouragement. Thus, our behavior should clearly show them that we are trying to favor and appreciate their strong effort towards recovery. We all are aware that it is not easy to move oneself away from drugs dependency. It cannot be done instantaneously and requires ample amount of time as well as support. The process is gradual and we should uplift and boost the person’s confidence level to recover.

We should make  the recovering drug addicts realize at every moment that they are strong enough and can recover from the addiction.

But the story was a lesson to many. For the wise learn from other people’s mistakes and not from their own mistakes.

This is the painful story of Cate…

It all started when I was in high school. Exams were hard; we even called them ICU (Intensive cramming unit). A friend told me of how Marijuana would calm my mind and that I could read day and night. I tried for the first time and it worked pretty well. The next time I had this feeling of stress without much thinking I went into it again.

"On a further medical diagnosis it was discovered I was HIV positive."

* Before I could realize what I was doing this became a trend.

I was doing it often. I even joined a club of some students who were known to be drug addicts. Within some few days of joining the club a friend of mine suggested I take cocaine for marijuana was for the simple. Cocaine was a hard stuff meant for the tuff people.

I tried and the feeling it gave me was comparable to none. I had never felt like this before. I felt so good. I could not wait to get my next dose. The drug was expensive but I would rather steal than miss the dosage. From time to time I broke into other students boxes to get money to spend on the drugs.

For a month I was successful but after a month I was caught by other students, which led to my expulsion from the school. I went home but my parents could not believe it.  They vowed never to finance my education again. With no income and the intense desire for cocaine I could do anything to get money. That’s how I joined prostitution.  I sold my body in return for money. Can you imagine that?

I would con men, steal from them, get severe beat ups but I did not relent in my efforts to get money. But every action has a reaction. More intake of cocaine made me look awful. No man would like to be associated with me and I could not get any more money. I suffered from cocaine withdrawal. I almost died then.

* I survived and cleaned up thanks to the rehab.

Sooner, my parents started a business for me. I worked hard and started prospering. I even extended the business room and everyone was happy once again.

I started getting a persistent cough that could last unusually long. After one month I visited a clinic. I was diagnosed and given the drugs. But the cough was persistent. I was referred to another hospital. On a further medical diagnosis it was discovered I was HIV positive. I didn’t believe it but I had no ground to deny. I had once prostituted.

I have suffered for many years. Tuberculosis, headaches and diarrhea have reduced me to who I am right now.

* I am unlikable and dying. Watch out . . . !

Indeed, in January 2^nd 2006 his name was in the local daily. It was all about “Joel tops once again”.

It is usually unusual for someone to top national examination both in the primary level and secondary level. Joel had done it. His parents were overjoyed. They thought he would be a blessing. His three brothers had indeed disappointed the parents who were peasant farmers, by their unusual drinking behaviour. Though they were bright in school they ended up never completing their university education.

Alcohol turns people apart, get help today!!

Gifts and presents of all sorts were presented to him. It is a norm that the head of state and the head of government, being the president and the prime minister pay a personal visit to a candidate who leads the national exam. It was all smiles as the two CEOs of the nation visited Joel and his parents.

* For a whole week the media was obsessed with this genius Joel.

Every one anticipated he would be a doctor as he had said. Newspapers called him “the doctor in making”.

Some months later he was admitted in campus to study medicine. He was tops once again. Indeed as a first year the university awarded him a first class honours in human anatomy for an exemplary performance in this field; a very rare event. The president was there to honor him again. He was put under a full salary equivalent to $3000 every month.

$3000 was accurse in disguise. Joel started drinking alcohol. He would spend nights and days in a night club. He missed his lectures and as a celebrity, newspapers and the media were at it again. ‘Alcohol turns a genius to a walking cabbage’. There were photos of him drunk and sleeping on the road sides.

* A few months later he was expelled for missing examinations.

His salary was withdrawn. Once in the village and an addict he turned to local brews. One day he consumed a local brew that was poisonous. He first lost his sight. Imagine of a blind genius! Two days later he started vomiting blood.

On being rushed to the hospital, he was admitted to the intensive care unit. He lay in bed for ten days. His parents could not afford the rising hospital bill and he was transferred to a common ward. Within two hours after the transfer he went to be with the dead by passing on.

* * * Alcohol had turned a national hope to a corpse. * * *

We would all spend the night at one of three houses; one, where the parents were so cool they bought our beer for us, one where the single mom was always out on dates, and one where the dad worked 24 hour shifts sometimes as a firefighter.

Alcohol abuse is more dangerous than you think!

This went on for a couple of years and when we graduated and went to college, it was even more fun because we could do so in the privacy of our dorms or better yet the apartment of two of our buddies.  Our sophomore year of college, though, something went tragically wrong one night.  Justin had lost about four games and had to drink beer plus he was guzzling plenty from the kegs as well.  He had challenged yet another set of friends who had arrived at the party late and was drinking like crazy.

“Suddenly he started having a seizure and throwing up.“

Everyone was either laughing or staring at him, not sure what was going on but I knew something was not right.  I told my girlfriend to call 911 and she just stood there in shock.  I took out my cell phone and called 911 and both the ambulance and the campus security arrived at about the same time.

Justin had stopped breathing by then, so a friend and I got him breathing by doing CPR just as the paramedics rushed in.  The campus police talked to all of us and said discipline may be a result.  I did not care.  It was not so much that it wasn’t my dorm as the fact that I just wanted one of my best friends to be okay.

The next day we were told that Justin was out of danger but had come perilously close to dying from alcohol poisoning.  His parents thanked us for our quick thinking but I was still shook up.  What if I had been drinking as bad as some of my friends? I hadn’t because I was on some pain meds for a fractured collarbone.

Still, a couple of weeks later at another party, when the list to sign up for Beer Pong came out, I just shook my head and passed it along.  Justin was doing well, but I was not going to take any chances.  I reached for my girlfriend’s hand and we walked out of the party and decided on a movie instead.

He was also called “The Dame” and was recognized for this ‘glam rock’ status in the 1970’s.

Many do know that David Bowie was stuck in cocaine addiction, and even did come out of the frightening ordeal. Not surprisingly many associate addiction to stardom and most especially in the music and entertainment industry.

Bowie; however, does describe his cocaine addiction days as the most darkening periods of his life, although when he was high on drugs he came across like he could possibly do and get away with anything. Ironically he mentions that due cocaine his memory is not what it was. He says that his memory is like Swiss cheese, with parts of it missing and unknown, which caused him extensive emotional damage.

In 1970’s Bowie was at the height of his addiction, he lost most of his weight and looked skinny and white.

The addiction not only reflected in his work, but his personality began to differ, his health worsened and his life was even more erratic and controversial and sent the British press in a tizzy. In one of his interviews he does mention candidly that he picked up his drug addiction when he was in the United States for one of his albums. Another reason cited is because of his rough marriage to his first wife Angela Bowie.

One of his early releases that included the ‘Laughing Pedognome’ was critically acclaimed and received with controversy since it showcased his dealings with his drug addiction and paranoia and had a very distinct nasal tone. He had a couple of alter ego names, namely; “The Thin White Duke” and “Ziggy dust”.

In 1970’s Bowie was at the height of his addiction, he lost most of his weight and looked skinny and white. He confessed to surviving on cocaine, red peppers and milk. All he weighed during these bleakly peak times was 95 pounds, a far cry from what he was. This earned him the title of “The Thin White Duke”. During the late 60’s and early 70’s he even masqueraded as an alien, this put him in the spotlight, he decided to exploit this celebrity status and so he started a drag act that was called “Ziggy Stardust”.

In 1974 he had the opportunity to choose between a better lifestyle and cocaine. Sadly he chose the wrong one, which led him to a twisted habit called the nervous tic. This caused him to use his legs in a dramatic fashion and goose-march. Regardless of the time or place he would follow into a full right arm salute, and also began using a fake German accent all this done in a delusional state of mind.

However, he has managed to come clean after several years, and now enjoys a full complete life free of addiction.

People take medication for a physical problem and before they know it, they end up addicted.  How did it happen?  When medication becomes a drug addiction, Drug Rehab Centers always can help you,  so you can get your life back on track.

Many times, it has to do with how our bodies and our brains deal with pain.  Truthfully, they don’t handle it in good way.  Any pain relief is seen as a godsend and the brain tells the body it wants more pills so that there is no hint of pain coming in.  This has a person unwittingly taking a higher dosage.  Unwittingly in this case does not mean not knowing the consequences; it means thinking that addiction just cannot and will never happen to him.

Doctors always have a critical decision to make when prescribing medications.

Doctors can often find themselves in a catch-22 position.  A patient will come in complaining of pain.  This is the leading cause of most doctor visits.  The doctor then has a critical decision to make: How does he prescribe an opiate-based pain reliever when so many of them are addicting when not taken properly?  This judgment call has too many Doctors under prescribing, which can be detrimental to someone in pain as well as those who over-medicate themselves when their doctor does give them a proper prescription.

People who have never been hooked on drugs have similar stories; a severe pain following an accident or chronic back problems has them suddenly addicted to medication when they had lived their entire lives free of such addictions.

* How is this possible?

The brain tells the body it needs the medication before the first dose has worn off so the person innocently takes a little “extra” and before he knows it, he is doubling and tripling his dosage, leading to addiction.

* What does a Doctor do?

Some religiously monitor their patients.  They do not want them to suffer needless pain but they look them in the eye and tell them that they are going to monitor them closely and keep them on the straight and narrow for their own good.  If you have a Doctor telling you this, consider yourself lucky that you have a caring one who wants to alleviate your pain and keep you from becoming addicted to your medication.  Because the truth is, when medication becomes a drug addiction, you are in a different type of pain that can be a lot harder to overcome without help.

Families in Massachusetts have the benefit of the Commission behind them.  Shouldn’t other states have that, too?