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The Downward Spiral

No one wants to be a drug addict or alcoholic but this doesn't stop people from getting addicted. The most commonly asked question is simply, how? How could my son, my daughter, my father, my sister, or brother become a liar, a thief, someone who cannot be trusted? How could this happen? And why won't they stop?!

The first thing you must understand about addiction is that alcohol and addictive drugs are basically painkillers. They chemically kill physical or emotional pain and alter the mind's perception of reality. They make people numb or "better". For drugs to be attractive to a person there must first be some underlying unhappiness, sense of hopelessness, problems or physical pain.

Peer pressure plays a big role in getting young people addicted to drugs. It is often potrayed that the "cool kids" have the courage to do drugs. Some teen agers go through a phase of dabbling with drugs while others get addicted. For those that do get addicted there is almost always undelying issues. They have some problem or problems that they have a hard time dealing with, or things have happened to them in the past that they prefer to forget. The drugs or alcohol gives them "relief". They become more and more dependent and get to the point where there is no real relief, but they need the drug or alcohol just to feel normal. Then the drug and alcohol becomes the problem because the person start delveloping physical problems and start lying, cheating and stealing to keep up the habit.

It starts with having fun, or trying to get some temporary relief and then develops into the person being in a complete trap that he or she cannot get out of. As a person takes the drugs their bodies also become more and more toxic. Drugs and alcohol metaolises just like anything else we put into our body. Small residues (called metabolites) stay in the fat tissue of the body even years after someone has stopped using drugs. That causes a person to have a very hard tome to get back to their previous level of energy and zest for life.

Longterm treatment is neccessary to bring a person from the depth of addiction back up to who he or she was before and then also help them fix the reasons they were using in the first place. There are many treatment modalities that simply labels the addiciton as an incurable disease because they do not address all the aspects of the addiciton so a person leaves treatment without fixing a part of the problem. It is like sending a car from the repair shop with a flat tire. It can bump along, but not run smoothly.

We see many people over the years that have become addicted to opiates because they have a back injury, surgey and even dental work done. There was severe physical pain. The doctors gave them strong opiate painkillers which masked the physical pain and also made present mental and emotional pain seems less. It does not take long for a physical addiction to develop and so may people are surprised when they decide to stop taking the painkillers and then find out that they have both physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. Many people cannot confront these withdrawal symptoms so will either keep finding doctors that will keep their prescriptions going or start buying the painkillers in the street. A recent trend is to go from use of various painkillers to heroin as it is now cheaper in most places. We now have a person who was just living a normal lives suddenly being an addict and they start developing the common symptoms of addiciton, such as withdrawing from family and social funcitons, lying, stealing. All of that builds up guilt and depression and he person becomes more and more dependent on the drug to just feel decent both physically and mentally.

For others it has been as innocent as having a drink of wine with dinner and drinking socially. Mabe the person gets some kind of problem or stress in their lives and takes a drink to "relax and feel a little better". The porblem is that once the aocohol wears off, the problem and stress is usually worse and then the solution becomes to drink a little more until an addiciton develops and the perosn cannot even function without drinking. A person may get along for a while being under the influence of alcohol, but it will eventually catch up and usually starts with not geting up and going to work, loosing interestin family and friends.

There are others that started using cocaine at the nightclub or bar and swore that they would never do it on are regular basis. Unfortunately, their definition of "regular" changed over time and they found themselves unable to function without the drug. Some of these people used methamphetamines to pick them up from a long cocaine run while others turned to crack cocaine.

It matters very little which drug you are using, the outcome is always the same. The person first find the that the drug took away his inhibitions and made him feel that he was in his "A" game, but in time, he used them to feel normal and later you used them to just get out of bed. This is the typical Downward Spiral of addiction that has take countless numbers of people to an early grave and for those that made it, the road back has been arduous and many time seemed unattainable.

The good news is that there are longterm drug treatment programs available today that can bring the addicted person back to where you were before you ever started and give him or her another chance to live life on its own terms and not through the delusion of alcohol and other drugs.

The key to an effective rehabilitation program is to find workable alternative solutions to the problems that the individual is trying to handle by using alcohol or other drugs. We can help you locate a successful long-term drug rehab center that can work to result in a successful, permanent recovery.

Call us at 1-888-781-7060 to locate a long-term drug rehab center.

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