You feel like you always have a rough time dating, always fighting and cheating on you. You’ve been addicted to drugs for a long time, but you always thought you’d have to go through a lot before you found someone worth dating. You’re right, and it might be drug treatment.

You Only Pick A Someone As Healthy As You Are

People are attracted and well matched with someone who is as emotionally healthy as they themselves are. Of course, there are some random exceptions to every situation. But consider the dynamics at work here. Would a confident successful woman with good self worth spend much time with a guy who spends most of his free time getting drunk and changing jobs? By the same time, would a drug addicted woman consistently pursue a well-grounded man with a good job and dependable friends?

The answer to both is “no”. Once the healthy person spent a short amount of time with the unhealthy person, they would quickly realize it was a waste of their time. Or perhaps it would be fun to run into them at social gatherings, but never to date. No way. Also, the drug addicted woman wouldn’t know what to do with the confident grounded guy whose main life drama was debating about college football teams with his buddies. She wouldn’t know how to handle his honesty and emotional balance. And once he knew she used cocaine – he’d be out the door anyway.

What Happens When Someone Decides to Get Sober and Healthy

According to the paragraphs above, you are only a well-matched pair (by emotional health) as long as you are both fairly unhealthy. If one of you has an addiction, the other is likely to also have an addiction or some other deep emotional needs. When one of you decides to get healthy, you may have a deal-breaker.

This may be a tough idea to accept, but think about it. If you are no longer getting drunk or high every day, your mate’s personal problems will be much more obvious, such as a whiny “poor me” attitude, neediness, or switching between emotional extremes. You may realize you really can’t tolerate their personality or behaviors now that you are making positive changes for yourself. Likewise, if your mate decides to improve their personal accountability while you remain addicted to drugs, they may be the one to walk away.

Drug Rehab Can Open the Door To Healthy Relationships

If you have a serious drug addiction problem, you may need to look into drug rehab. As long as you remain in your unhealthy habits, mindset, and surroundings, you are very unlikely to get better on your own. Drug rehab is an investment in yourself and your future relationships. That sounds kind of corny, but this is what it boils down to. The healthier you are as a person, the better you’ll be at wisely picking a mate, treating that person well, and keeping things going during difficult times. You may have to put off dating for a while, but the wait will be worth it.

Drug Addiction Out of Control

Everyone knows about it, so why won’t somebody do something about it? Saying anything to an addict about their behavior is risky – you’ll be labeled the “bad guy” for accusing them of having a problem, or family members might reject you for attempting to get involved and rocking the boat.

In America’s DIY culture of the twenty-first century, needing help from outside sources can be viewed as a weakness. But knowing there’s a problem that needs fixing and knowing how to fix it are two different things entirely. When your conscience keeps pushing you to speak up, there’s probably a good reason.

When to Get Involved When Drug Use is Out of Control

The best time to get involved is anytime – tomorrow may be too late: violence, accidents, incarceration, and suicide are all very real risks for someone struggling with an addiction. You never know where their quest for drugs might take them or if they’ll steer clear of getting buzzed before getting behind the wheel of a car. Simply possessing an illegal substance can lead to an arrest (not to mention the costly legal proceedings involved) and because drugs alter the fundamental chemistry in the brain, mental illnesses are fairly common in long-term users.

Children in the care of an addict are especially vulnerable to bizarre, unpredictable treatment. Small and powerless, children are often the mute recipients of an addict’s attempts to control their environment. They are on the front lines and in the trenches, and the sooner you step in and speak up can make all the difference in whether they escape a nightmare.

How to Approach An Addict When Drug Use is Out of Control

Off-the-cuff confrontations are a disservice to everyone involved. Verbally attacking an individual (even when they’ve done something wrong) won’t get you heard. If you truly want to help, start by reaching out with an olive branch. Focus on emphasizing your love and commitment to your spouse/child/friend/family member. Remind them of all the tough times you’ve been through together and all the good times you’ve shared. Reiterate that you want to share more of those good times and get through the bad stuff – together.

Having done your homework will help things run smoother. Research the addiction by reading books and websites, visiting forums and chat rooms, and participating in AlAnon or NarcAnon meetings. Make a list of the specific points that you want to discuss with your loved one and ask for feedback from a professional. Rehearse what you want to say along with responses to potential rebuttals as many times as it takes until you feel comfortable with the material.

What to Do for an Addict When Words Don’t Work

Keeping your composure doesn’t always guarantee success in convincing someone they need help. Here are a few suggestions in case talking about it doesn’t illicit the response you were hoping for:

• Present information from local health clinics
• Accompany them to AA or NA meetings
• Make an appointment with a physician for them to discuss medical concerns
• Seek out professional counseling and/or drug treatment centers
• Consider contacting children’s services if neglect or abuse is suspected

Tell Us: What are some other ways you can think of to motivate a loved one to get help for their drug addiction?

Nutrition and Drug Rehab

Think of your brain as the Internet. Every brain cell is a different PC that needs a modem (or, in this case, a synapse) to connect to all the other cells on the neurologic network. But as any IT expert can tell you, plugging in the right wires is only half the battle. Power has to be turned on for the machine to be able to function.

Chemical messengers called neurotransmitters must be running at peak performance for information in the brain to be processed correctly. Four specific neurotransmitters handle all communications relating to our emotional well being and tranquility: serotonin, endorphins, GABA, and dopamine.

Genetic Mutations Set the Stage for Drug and Alcohol Addiction

When the synapses or neurotransmitters fail to function like they should, transmission gets garbled and we begin to feel intense loneliness, stress, anxiety, and depression. Most often this malfunction happens because of genetics. In fact, an estimated 33 percent of people have some type of genetic predisposition to addiction.

Drugs and alcohol make us feel good because they stimulate neurotransmitter functioning, which is why we keep going back for more. It is a false sense of euphoria, however, because addictive substances eventually deplete the neurotransmitters necessary for healthy functioning.

What’s more, drug and alcohol addiction impedes on the uptake of vital nutrients our body needs to stay alive. When drugs take over, changes in appetite bring malnutrition which exacerbates the awful symptoms we try to avoid. We can’t get enough because we never actually feel good anymore.

Prime the Mind for Successful Drug Addiction Recovery

If you could jump-start your body into feeling good again without the need for addictive substances, you could essentially erase all cravings and free the mind to focus on behavioral and cognitive improvements.

Amino acids have been found to be the stuff neurotransmitters are made of. Supplying the body with an abundance of specific amino acids can help restore their functioning, reduce cravings, increase sensations of wellbeing, and minimize relapse.

Brain Food for Drug Addiction Recovery

Amino acids are found in foods high in protein. Below is a list of specific amino acids that have been shown to alleviate symptoms of addiction, and the most commonly available food sources from which they come:

• L-tryptophan – Egg whites, spirulina, atlantic cod, raw soybeans, parmesan cheese
• L-5 hydroxytryptophan chromium salts – Minute traces in turkey and cheese, supplements derived from the seeds of Griffonia simplicifolia
• L-Glutamine – Meat and dairy products, beans, beats, spinach, parsley, and cabbage
• L-phenylalanine – Cow milk, goat milk, aspartame sugar substitutes
• L-tyrosine – Cheeses, spirulina, soy protein, egg whites, salmon
• Phenylalanine – Meat, poultry, fish, soybeans, dairy products, nuts and seeds

The body is a sucker for sweets and carbohydrates when it’s lacking other vital nutrients. Replacing sugar and refined starches with just some of the foods listed here can help restore balance and emotional integrity to an otherwise stressful situation.

Along with psychological and spiritual therapies for overcoming addiction, nutritional support and dietary supplements are quite literally the food our brain needs for enhanced recovery.

Tell Us: What’s your favorite recipe using some of the foods mentioned above?

Drug Addiction Recovery Month

September 2008 marks the 19th anniversary of National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

People around the country just like you are organizing events to bring awareness to the fact that treatment really does work and the chances of recovery from addiction are higher when individuals and families have access to the right resources.

Enlist Community Groups and Leaders

Addiction counselors, pastors and clergy members, employers, friends and family, recovery groups, treatment centers, and social service organizations can all benefit from sponsoring, planning, organizing and participating in Recovery Month outreach campaigns.

Public Awareness Events

Educational and anecdotal articles for the local paper, banners on your personal blogs and websites, sporting events and athletic marathons, radio interviews, school presentations, information booths at health fairs and farmer’s markets are all excellent ways to get the message of recovery into the public eye.

Publicity and Media Outreach

Focusing on the people affected by substance abuse brings a real face to the concept of “addiction” and highlights the fact that it is a disorder that impacts people from all walks of life. Speaking to the media about your personal experiences touches people who may otherwise never get past their own prejudices about alcohol and drug addiction.

RecoveryMonth.gov offers tips on crafting media advisories, press releases, op-eds, proclamations, and public service announcements that can be submitted to your local media networks for publication or broadcast about your event.

Drug Education for the Masses

Downloadable documents that discuss everything from commonly abused substances, the importance of treatment for a person addicted to alcohol or drugs, and audience-specific materials that speak directly to a group’s interests will help aid your message during Recovery Month and all year long. Print them out and pass them around wherever you go to spread the word about addiction and recovery.

Connect with Other Event Organizers

Advocating the importance of recovery methods is just the beginning. Connecting with the people around you who encourage and support your efforts to stay clean keeps shame from beating down your personal resolves. Coming to face to face with other addicts who struggle with similar internal demons creates a bond that acknowledges the triumphant effort involved in the work of recovery.

Tell Us: What are some ways that you celebrate your recovery? And if you haven’t taken the plunge yet, what are some ways that you will celebrate your recovery?

You’d better fasten your seat belt – the road of addiction recovery can have some surprising turns and bumpy spots. All this new awareness and the realizations, it can all seem like too much to absorb at once. How do you keep on the straight and narrow without getting overwhelmed with it all?

Addiction Keeps You in the Dark About Yourself

Well, there is no guaranteed way to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. For quite a while, you’ve been shutting out your self awareness and the truth about your own life. Seeing these things for the first time can feel like a sharp change in the weather, like a sudden stiff breeze from the north. Add a few more new discoveries, and you may feel like you’re about to be blown over flat.

When the mind does feel overwhelmed, it tries to shut things out again. This is a fairly normal self-protective action taken by your brain. It’s the same process that keeps us from actually attending to every single bit of stimulation in our environment. You need to be able to “tune out” certain things to be able to pay solid attention to other things. But when you have a drug addiction, you do way too much of this. The important stuff goes right out the window with the trivial things. That’s really how you got to this narrow crooked viewpoint in the first place. It was shaped by your addiction, and when you are in recovery it can be shaped again.

Balancing New Ideas and Not Being Overwhelmed

It can be challenging to know when shutting out new ideas is helpful and when it resembles your old addiction way of thinking. This is why AA, other support groups, and professional drug treatment can help you get and keep your bearings. This kind of support is especially important in the beginning of your addiction recovery. During drug rehab, you most likely had professionals surrounding you and able to help at any moment. When you are back into “real life”, you will still need some help as you get started.

Is it the exact topic that you are thinking about that is overwhelming, or is it just the amount of new things you are trying to process? What triggers are getting lit up because of your new awareness? Talking to a support person or writing down your thoughts about what overwhelms you can get it off your mind for a while. You may not really be ready to deal with everything yet, which is OK. Digest smaller amounts at first so you can keep moving forward. You can revisit your list or notes again and see what you’ve learned since you wrote them down.

You may not really be ready to deal with everything yet, which is OK. Digest smaller amounts at first so you can keep moving forward. You can revisit your list or notes again and see what you’ve learned since you wrote them down. This gives you peace that you’ve acknowledged these important thoughts, and you won’t forget them. You are not ignoring your insight, just keeping some aside for a short while.

Self Discovery Helps Everyone Not Just Recovering Addicts

Learning how to manage self-discovery and emotional stability is a skill everyone needs, not just people recovering from a drug addiction. Don’t be concerned that you are singled out or a real loser if you struggle with this. Everyone struggles with it! You have been out of touch for a while, and you’re getting yourself back in the game. New perspectives can be scary, but they are also filled with opportunity.

Having a drug addiction lifestyle isn’t something most people aspire to. It tends to come with images of dangerous neighborhoods, red bloodshot eyes, jail cells, and people of questionable reputation. Not exactly inspiring. So why do so many people go too far with drugs and alcohol? One word – escape.

It may start out as a pursuit of crazy fun with friends – partying until dawn, getting drunk while watching the game, sneaking out of the house to get high with buddies. But most people are searching for some kind of escape when they drink or use drugs frequently. Having a couple of social drinks now and then for mild relaxation or with dinner isn’t part of this discussion. We’re talking drinking and drugging as a primary social activity in and of itself.

Or an addiction may not have such fun-loving beginnings. You might be drawn to the blurred disconnected feeling of getting drunk, the carefree feeling of smoking marijuana, or the energetic pleasure you get from some stimulant drugs. When you seek those to counteract your current emotion, spending more time drugged or drunk might start looking good.

Addiction Keeps You Out of Touch With Emotions and Reality

Any way you may have gotten there, using drugs and alcohol frequently often leads to an addiction. When this happens, you spend an increasing amount of time out of touch with reality. You don’t know half of what’s going on anymore, and you don’t want to know. You are OK with being out of touch -that’s the point. Blurring your emotions or over-charging your brain cells will certainly distract you from uncomfortable feelings and thoughts for a while. But everything has its price.

You can either have painful awareness and greater personal power, or you can have less awareness of the pain but much less personal power. This is just another way to say that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. To have your cake sitting around to look at means you can’t eat it. And to enjoy eating your cake means you can’t have it anymore.

You Can’t Have Bliss With Emotional Ignorance From Drug Addiction

Really, if ignoring emotions really made problems better, having a drug addiction wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. The impulsive self-protective part of your mind wants to hide from trouble. But the more mature big-picture part of your mind has the ability to see the wisdom in this approach.

If you are trapped by drug addiction and can’t find a way out, drug rehab can teach you about facing emotions. Drug treatment can help you get out of the emotional ignorance habit. Learning to face your emotions and the reality of drug addiction can save your life.

Meditation During Drug Rehab

While the stereotypical approach to meditation involves brown-skinned bald men in orange robes sitting cross-legged on a mountain top, meditation benefits every person who makes the time to practice simple ways of relating with the world around and within them. Buddhist monks are the Olympic athletes of meditation, and you can choose to devote your every waking moment in the quest to cultivate enlightenment, or you can seek balance and renewal while you wait for a red light to change during rush hour.

What is Meditation and How Does it Enhance Drug Addiction Recovery Efforts?

The stereotypical image of Buddhist monks deep in meditation is just that – an image. Assuming the posture can alert your senses that something different is about to happen, but active meditation is much more than a sitting pose. It is an exercise of the mind that aims for detached contemplation, focused observation, expanded awareness, and letting go.

Just thinking about un-thinking can bring immediate relief. Your muscles loose their unconscious tension, your breathing becomes relaxed, the brain slows down to let everything pass. Sound familiar? The feeling is probably very similar to what you experienced when using depressant substances. The difference is no harmful side effects. Meditation can’t kill you because it’s what your mind does anyway when you’re not actively using it.

Turning inward offers you insider information as to how your body is handling the stress of rehab and recovery, and actively participating in the practice of meditation gives you something to focus on whenever you start feeling the urge to use again. It’s free, it’s always with you, and most importantly, it puts you in control quickly.

Types of Meditations that Enhance Drug Addiction Recovery Efforts

Visualization – Find the center of your cravings; imagine drawing an outline around the edges. Sit with it for a while; don’t try to push it away. Let it be. When the time is right, let it go.

Breathing – Bring awareness to your breath, focus on one area of your body (such as your head, your neck, your shoulders) and release any tension you find along with every exhale.

Rhythmic sounds – Moving water is one of the best ways to encounter the natural rhythms of the Earth and allow your personal rhythms (breathing, heartbeat, digestion, brain waves) to become harmonious with their surroundings. Drums, bells, singing bowls and chanting mantras are all further ways to find a peaceful rhythm you can connect to.

Moving in mindfulness – Walking, stretching, dancing, yoga, qui gong, swimming, even lifting weights can all combine the effects of the previous techniques for an all-around exercise in mental as well as physical transformation.

Tell Us: What are some other meditation methods you’ve found for helping you stay clean?

For as long as you can remember, you’ve had a pretty hot temper. It’s no coincidence that your assault arrests have happened while you were drunk. People keep telling you to get your anger under control, but they don’t understand. This is coming from a place so deep and dark you can’t even see the bottom. You’re angry, but you now there is something else there, too.

Anger Is a Scapegoat When You Have an Addiction

Anger is the scapegoat for a lot of problems in our world. If people would just do some “anger management”, they’d be a lot better off. Well, true enough. But sometimes people only pay attention to the behaviors connected with anger and not the true source. More than likely, it isn’t even really anger creating such a well spring of intense emotion.

Anger is the feeling that is on the surface, the red flag that something inside doesn’t feel right. Anger never acts alone – it is always a two-part emotion. Think of the last time you were angry about anything – gas prices, waiting in line somewhere, your kids talking back to you, your football team missing the game-winning field goal. Take a moment and think what other feeling came right before or during your anger. Were you disappointed? Reminded of past hurts? Regretting how much you over-scheduled your day?

Self Medicating With Drugs and Alcohol Covers the Problem

The problem of self-medicating depression with drugs and alcohol is that the chemicals affect how a person shows their anger. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, which means you have less hesitation about jumping into a fight or provoking someone. Also, your judgment is impaired. You may know that fighting in a bar will make problems for your probation, but when you are drunk your mind may justify your anger and let you get involved anyway.

People generally don’t set out create an addiction, but when there is endless fuel for the fire such as an untreated depression, it can spin out of control in a short time. As long as you focus on just the surface details like the constant conflict and your selfish desires, you keep yourself from honestly addressing the real source of your troubles – your depression and addiction. Before long, you become a hazard to yourself and others. You are driving straight at the side of a mountain with a blindfold on. It’s just a matter of time before you crash head-on.

Drug Rehab Can Get Addiction and Anger Out of Control

If this situation sounds like you, then dual diagnosis drug rehabis your light of hope. This is bigger than just you. If you could have gotten it under control, you would have by now. It doesn’t mean you are weak, incompetent, or a hopeless mess. It’s just time to take off the blindfold, put on the brakes, and get off the path to disaster. Intense anger usually means some form of depression is afoot. Don’t let it stay in control of your life – take control by starting drug rehab.

Grief is such a heavy complex emotion. It is sadness mixed with longing, and often questions. Why that person, and why now? How can I ever get through this? Can I ever love that much again? Can I make it through tomorrow? An addiction can take you away from the pain for a while, but the pain is still there.

Escaping The Pain of Grief With Addiction

When you lose someone close to you, it can tear you apart. In order to have such a strong reaction, you must have invested yourself a lot in a relationship with them. The depth of your grief is a measure of how meaningful that person is to you. Think about it – if you hardly knew a person who died, you may have compassion and sadness but you wouldn’t linger on it long. A close friend dying could take a long time to recover from.

Grief is not a place people like to stay in for long. It hurts, it just plain hurts. And who wants that? But anytime you try to think about this person who was in your life or in your memories, you can’t help but face the reality that they are gone from this earth now. Doing that means consciously revisiting pain. If you have an addiction (or addictive tendencies), it’s very likely you will be tempted to escape the pain and reality through alcohol and drugs.

Addiction is Just a Bandaid For Grief

An addiction is a temporary fix turned into a bad habit. Drugs and alcohol will cover or distort your feelings of grief for a while, but eventually they create a bigger problem than they solve. Not only does a drug or alcohol addiction cut you off from being aware of your emotions, it pushes the grieving process out in front of you longer. In other words, it doesn’t let you skip your grieving. It’s put on hold until you face your emotions more honestly, and then you get to go through the grieving process for real. Otherwise, you are completely shutting off your grief any time it gets close to the surface.

However, a person with an alcohol or drug addiction often ends up hurting their body with the chemicals they ingest or inject. And if you already have a mental illness such as bipolar or intense anxiety, adding grief to the mix can really crank up your addiction. If you have been sober for some time when your grief hits, you are at a serious risk for addiction relapse.

The only way to really cope with your grief is to face it and learn how to live with it. The empty place in your heart may never go away. But the terrible sting can be softened, making your loss something you can put aside when you need to and visit for periods of time if you want. This takes time and emotional honesty. You can’t be emotionally honest with yourself or anyone else if you have an active addiction.

Drug Rehab Can Help You Come Back From Addiction and Relapse

If you are in this spot, you may need drug rehab. A person facing grief and a dual diagnosis can really benefit from the specialized support of drug and alcohol rehab. Grief may knock you sideways for a while, but it doesn’t have to completely suck your life away. Drug rehab can offer hope in the presence of painful grief.

Drug Addiction Treatment Prescriptions

Using drugs to fight off drug use seems contradictory, especially when some medications (such as methadone) are synthesized from the same addictive compounds as their hardcore cousins. Dependence on prescribed medications has far fewer side effects than those of addictive substances, though, and allows for a controlled landing that minimizes harmful or permanent side effects.

The Need for Managing Withdrawal Symptoms with Medications

Cold turkey withdrawal from a severely chronic addiction can be deadly. The body finds itself suddenly void of the chemical messengers it relies on to ferry information around the nervous system and launches into a neurologic tailspin. Every function is on overload because suddenly the “wires” in the brain have lost their “insulation” and everything starts to short-circuit.

Severe depression, anxiety, agitation, hallucinations, nausea, tremors, and even seizures are the hallmarks of drug and alcohol withdrawal. Most symptoms sprout up after six to 12 hours following the last session of use and can continue for upwards of 4 weeks. After this initial period of intensity, cravings may still sneak up on you weeks, months, or even years later.

Without prescribed medications, the first sign of withdrawal symptoms can send the user right back to the original substance of abuse.

The Fundamentals of Managing Withdrawal Symptoms with Medications

Electrolytes are the most commonly available “medications” for treating withdrawal symptoms. Found in popular sports drinks at every gas station and grocery store, electrolytes are the ionic charge your muscles, organs, and nerves need to maintain optimal functioning. IV supplements are sometimes used to offset extreme cases of electrolyte depletion.

Additional medications used for treatment and gradual weaning of withdrawal symptoms can include:

• Benzodiazepines (Valium, Librium, and Ativan) – Low doses administered for alcohol withdrawal calm the nervous system without excessive euphoria
• Phenobarbital – Anticonvulsant for controlling seizures (especially necessary when the addiction includes barbituates)
• Clondine – Antihypertensive given to opiate addicts to ease muscle cramps
• Methadone – Also for combating opiate use, a long-acting analgesic that binds to pain receptors in the brain, making other opiates ineffective and useless for getting high
• Naltrexone (Vivitrol) – An opiate antagonist that reverses the effects of opiate substances, used primarily for rapid opiate detoxification (ROD) while a patient is anesthetized, sedated, or unconscious due to overdose.
• Buprenorphine (Suboxone) – An analgesic combination of opioid agonist and antagonist, meaning it binds heavily to opioid receptors, but only to a degree. Any attempts to reverse the effects are met with only partial success, although studies have shown it to be more effective than methadone with fewer doses.

The Importance of Drug and Alcohol Rehab after Withdrawal

Detox might just be the scariest ride of your life, and potentially more violent than anything you’ve ever experienced. But when the worst is over, it’s over. Walking through fire burns away the impure aspects of the self and leaves the essential elements of our inner nature free to be reconfigured. Rebirth brings a chance for renewal.

Detox leaves us feeling scared and vulnerable, which is why competent counseling services are so desperately needed. Therapy teaches valuable new skills for managing in the world, finding answers to our problems, and coming to terms with the pain in our lives without relying on substances to numb the mind.

Detox rids the body of lethal toxins, and then it’s up to each of us to choose the path we take from there.

Tell Us: What’s the most terrifying thought about getting clean and staying sober for you? The change in surroundings at rehab? Going through detox? Therapy? Coming home? Or just being without drugs or alcohol for the first time?