Addicts Start Early

Studies reveal that 90 percent of adults with a substance abuse or addiction problem started using before they were 18 years old (with half starting before the age of 15). What does that mean to you as a parent? That it is exceptionally important to talk to your kids about drugs and alcohol at an early age. Far too many parents wait until the late teen years to sit down with their child and explain the potential dangers of substance abuse.

Addiction is Only Part of the Problem

Most teens struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction also have a co-occurring psychological disorder such as depression, anxiety, behavior problems or suicidal thoughts. Addressing these “dual diagnosis” issues is often the key to successful teen addiction treatment.

It’s Hard to Stop Using without Treatment

Most teens who use drugs or alcohol are able to stop on their own when they feel it is impacting their lives in a negative way. This, however, is NOT the case for those adolescents who have an addiction. For them, drug and alcohol dependence does not stop until they have gone through a treatment program -often, more than once.

What Happens After Teen Rehab is Important

While teen drug and alcohol rehab programs help a young person get clean (and learn how to stay that way) it is the aftercare programs that they engage in that can really make a long-lasting impact on their lives. 12-step groups, follow up counseling and relapse prevention all play a key role in the ongoing sobriety of the individual.

Teen Addiction is About More than Just Peer Pressure

Once upon a time, people thought that the only teens who used drugs were the ones who gave into peer pressure. And while an adolescent’s peer group still plays a role in whether or not they will experiment with drugs and alcohol, we now know that a number of other factors are involved as well, including: academic pressure, self-image issues, coping with physical or sexual abuse and other problems in the home environment.

If you suspect that your teen is abusing drugs or alcohol, contact a professional rehab center immediately. And if you’re the parent of a pre-teen who is moving quickly towards adolescence, remember, it is never too early to talk to your child about the dangers of substance abuse.

How differently the unspoken volumes of this painting would reflect if the wife, mother of two young children, and sister -were to come forward with the truth about her alcoholism? What if she stopped hiding bottles of liquor around the house, in ceiling tiles and behind toilets. Free to experience her mental illness in its authentic state, she subsequently sat with the family as she desired, double fisting glasses of Chardonnay.

If the photograph was in high-definition, modern-day digital form, would we suspect she needed professional help? Her broken capillaries and dented spirit would have certainly penetrated the lens.

Female alcoholics have had a tough time fighting the stigma against their demographic. Although modern-day alcoholics are far better off than their 1920′s predecessors, they often remain active in their disease as a byproduct of shame. The inability to expose the reality of their alcoholism keeps them drinking secretly -alone — and at odd hours of the day. Take the aforementioned woman painted in the 1920′s portrait. Maybe she chose to keep a perpetual souvenir of her family’s existence through the medium of paints, rather than photography, in an effort to skew reality. By swapping photography for paint, she could further bend the perception of herself -and her family. After all, she had grown accustomed to pretending to be fine, when really she was suffering tremendous amounts of inner pain.

Thankfully for women battling alcoholism, the stigma has been lifted -to a tolerable degree. However, many women continue to hide their drinking habit in an effort to save face. They feel they must live up to societal expectations. A typical homemaker believes that she must be a good mother, raise her children with values and morals, and have dinner ready for her hard-working husband upon his return home from the office.

Sound too 1950′s for your taste? Unfortunately, such expectations often do linger in modern-day family systems, leaving a bitter taste in the female alcoholic’s mouth.

The husband who works a 9-5 job, with a hefty salary to boot, takes pride in the fact that his wife can stay home with the children during the weekdays. He enjoys living vicariously through the mobile uploads his wife posts online for him to view.

In a recent New York Times article, Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, speaks up about the link between women and hidden substance abuse problems. “Because [women] hide it more often, frequently drinking alone, the problem is not only harder to spot but more acute when it is discovered. Women are often deprived of the normal red flags that the rest of the population enjoys.” He continues, “Men who work 9 to 5, they often come home late, and sloppy, and people notice. They may lose a job, but their lives are saved.” In other words, family members of alcoholic men pick up on their drinking problem, resulting in a positive outcome for all parties involved. The man who shows signs of alcoholism gives his family the gift of insight. Thereafter, his wife and daughter use the knowledge to their advantage. They stage an intervention, encouraging their beloved alcoholic to seek treatment for his disease.

The working husband of the homemaking, alcoholic mother appreciates his capacity to. In the event that her battle with alcoholism is revealed, she is worried the family will fall apart. She will disappoint her husband, herself, but most of all -her kids.

What many practicing alcoholics do not realize -as a byproduct of their denial — is that their intoxicated state prohibits them from being the mother they would otherwise be. Their passions, livelihood, and physical endurance are compromised. Constantly floating in and out of an inebriated state of mind wreaks havoc on an active alcoholic’s body and soul. If only women were not hindered by society’s expectations rooted in gender, they could come forward about their inner struggles.

Alcoholism is a mental illness that deserves professional attention. Left untreated, it leads victims to three possible outcomes -incarceration, institutions, or death.

We hope that continued education and awareness related to alcoholism will motivate some women to pop out of the booze closet. Female alcoholics can emerge — in all their brokenness — with a renowned sense of strength. When an alcoholic understands that he or she is not alone, this often serves as the first step toward long-term abstinence. Would it be self-indulgent to admit that I hope even one blog reader finds the courage to verbalize her disease in between the lines of this article?

Part of the problem is that addiction is not just a social problem or a medical problem. It is both.

Addiction Straddles Two Types Of Science

Effective medical treatments are being developed and used, but there is no physical “cure” for addiction. Social networks and support groups are essential to sobriety, but sometimes they aren’t enough.

Some people also believe that if you’ve been warned not to do something and you do it anyway, then you deserve what you get. Others believe that people who really push their limits with drugs and alcohol are to be admired. With all the mixed messages circulating about drugs and alcohol, it’s no surprise society has a mixed opinion of people seeking addiction treatment.

It helps to consider how chemical we are as human beings. Our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are triggered by natural chemicals in our bodies. So wouldn’t it make sense that adding chemicals from the outside could affect someone’s life profoundly, even their emotions and motivation for daily life? If we treat thoughts and emotions as if they are removed from the context of the human body, this biochemical connection gets lost.

Social Stigma And Personal Beliefs

Social stigma is a truly unfortunate thing to attach to a person. However, people have free will and the means to develop their own beliefs about their world. Cultures also have different ideas about how “social ills” like mental illness and addiction arise.

When something is not easily understood, people draw their own conclusions. These conclusions are either supported or rejected by the people around them. Public educations messages can gradually sink in over time for some people. But others, depending on their personal beliefs and social culture, may not change their minds about alcoholism or drug addiction.

Understanding Addiction – A Work In Progress

Drug rehab is a place of hope and second chances, but many people still avoid telling anyone for fear of being judged. Not likely the case if they were receiving cancer treatments or getting tested for a heart condition. The sympathy and concern is often not as universal. Even friends and relatives may have mixed feelings about a loved one’s addiction.

It will take some time to develop a better understanding of addiction in our modern society. In many ways, the stigma has improved from decades past. Many communities do a great job delivering drug treatment and alcohol rehab services to those who need them. But there is still much work to be done about the perception of addiction and treatment.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction – Working To Break The Stigma

As scientists continue to study addiction, improved treatment methods and better outcomes may help turn the tide of social understanding. You can help by going against the stigma when you see it. For more information about how drug treatment really helps people today, give us a call.

Obsessions and Compulsions About Alcohol

An alcoholic doesn’t just want to drink – they have to drink. They have a constant stream of thoughts in their mind about drinking. Sometimes it’s more obvious and other times it’s in the background, but it’s always there. They wonder about when they could have their next drink, how much alcohol they have left, whether they need to stock up on more, and how they will get it. Everything they do during the day is built around their drinking.

While the obsession carries on, the alcoholic will frequently have a compulsion to drink. This seemingly irresistible urge tells them it’s time to drink right now. Each time the alcoholic gives in to the compulsion, the cycle continues to roll along. They set up their life so they can answer these compulsions as often as possible. As a result, they become less patient, less able to value other people’s needs, and less able to control their drinking.

An alcoholic may easily binge on dangerous amounts of alcohol when they respond to these frequent impulses. Will power is often not enough to help someone break the pattern. The entire mind and body is wrapped up in a dangerous cycle of self-destruction. Obsession plus constant drinking equals a dangerous life of alcoholism.

Alcohol Treatment Necessary For Sobriety

Alcoholism recovery is all about learning. An alcoholic has learned to used drinking as a quick-fix for escaping life’s troubles. They need to undo this pattern while also learning new habits. They need to understand how to develop patience, avoid triggers for the obsessions and compulsions, and cope with their emotional needs in healthier ways. It’s not just about changing one bad habit, it’s about changing a lifestyle.

Alcohol treatment helps a person observe their thoughts and feelings. Each person in recovery gets support as they changing their behaviors. As treatment progresses, an alcoholic understands more about the problems that sparked their addiction.

Many recovering alcoholics lived through years of abuse. Some have been depressed for a long time. Others have grown up with alcoholism and learned few other ways to cope with difficulty. No matter what the reason, alcohol treatment can help a person understand why they drink and how to make different choices.

Alcohol Addiction – Not A Personal Weakness

As you can see by now, alcoholism is far more complex than a bad habit. It is a destructive force that takes over a person’s life. When an alcoholic becomes open to change, they have a new chance at a healthy life.

Pushing Feelings Down Makes Them Pop Back Up

People have ways of protecting themselves from things that are painful or difficult to face. That’s normal and everyone does it at times. But sometimes people choose to block out the truth instead of facing it directly. Someone may have experienced traumatic events, had a chaotic family life, or endured a devastating loss. The problem begins when a person uses drugs and alcohol to help them cope.

The ironic thing about painful feelings is that the more you push them away, the stronger they seem to fight back. Imagine trying to keep an inflated ball underwater. If you let it float, it seems light and moves around gently on its own. It may bump into you at times, but it will also float away from you after a while.

But when you try to submerge the ball, suddenly it pushes back with a lot of upward force. It’s constantly trying to pop up, and you need to expend a lot of energy to keep it completely below the surface. You may never be able to keep it all the way down, even if you put all your weight on it.

This is similar to an addiction. You put a lot of effort into keeping away your painful emotions by using drugs and alcohol. You have to stay almost constantly drunk or high to keep them at bay. When they pop up, you drink or use again. It quickly becomes a vicious cycle. As the addiction takes over your life, it continues to feed itself at all costs.

Facing The Truth In Drug Rehab

For this self-destructive cycle to stop, you need to learn how to face the truth and stop using drugs. That can be tough on your own. Most people need some type of drug or alcohol treatment to get this pattern turned around. Sobriety is more than just not using addictive chemicals. You need to learn healthier ways of coping with emotions throughout your life. And that’s exactly where drug and alcohol rehab can help.

Group therapy helps you learn how to connect with others and communicate. Individual therapy gives you private personalized help. Aftercare programs and support groups help you keep your good habits long after treatment has ended. Your life changes forever once you have experienced an addiction. But with courage and support, you can have a more honest and healthy life. Drug rehab helps you face the truth and learn how to live with it.

Emotional Pain – Sharing vs Keeping It Inside

When someone has alcoholism, they want to keep a lot of their concerns to themselves. Most keep their deepest feelings and thoughts private from absolutely everyone. Privacy is also very important for people going through alcohol treatment. However, this kind of privacy is a little different. Alcohol treatment is an emotionally safe environment where everyone is expected to participate or express themselves in some way.

Holding everything in makes sobriety more challenging.

Sharing can be a real struggle for some people, even if they are assured confidentiality and no judgement about what they express. Talking directly about emotions can be difficult at first. Most alcoholics have learned long ago to protect their feelings from the scrutiny of others. They survived by keeping their vulnerabilities to themselves because they couldn’t count on others to support them. This hesitancy is pretty normal when starting alcohol treatment. It can improve with time, patience, and courage.

How Alcohol Treatment Protects Your Privacy

Health information privacy laws have recently put additional barriers around everyone’s personal health data. Employees at an alcohol treatment clinic may also have limited clearance to see private notes or personal details. Only people with a need to know will have permission to see your records in any form. This keeps the visibility of sensitive information as low as possible.

Your privacy is also protected from people on the outside. If you want certain individuals to be able to leave a message or get your records, you will give specific written permission. You might want to include family members, your doctor, or maybe your lawyer. Or, you may not want anybody know that you are getting treatment. If someone calls about you and they aren’t on your list, the clinic will simply not acknowledge that they have any information about you.

Privacy And Alcohol Treatment

Privacy gives people protection in alcohol treatment. It allows each person the opportunity to express themselves honestly. Yet that may be the thing recovering alcoholics struggle with the most. It can take someone a while to feel comfortable sharing feelings with others, even in a private setting.

Alcoholics can feel pretty vulnerable until trust is built up during treatment. With patience, alcohol treatment counselors can help people open up. When someone learns they can lean on another person, they don’t have to live with their emotional pain all by themselves anymore.

Quality Drug Rehab Programs

Above all else, drug rehab center have to have quality service. It means well-trained professionals to keep up on the advancement drug addiction treatment. They look to research to guide their programs can are open to positive change.

Just a decade ago, drug rehab counselors took a very different approach to people with dual diagnosis disorders, and addiction with a mental illness. They were advised to treat the addiction first in the mental illness later.

Thanks the awareness and flexibility of many professionals, this position has been reversed. Now it is well known that treating both conditions at the same time is much better for preventing relapse. Well-informed drug rehab centers will keep up with research-based changes like this.

Drug Rehab Centers Help With Aftercare

It’s not enough just provide good rehab services will person this program. In the long term, of a drug rehab just a blink of time. The transition between rehab services and regular life very important for sustaining sobriety.

A good drug rehab center will have some form of aftercare available. They will either make recommendations to various local clinics with outpatient services, or they will provide services themselves. Some rehab centers even have connections with sober living homes. These are transitional homes can bridge the gap between rehab and independent living.

Drug Rehab Success And The Individual

Ultimately, the success of any drug rehab program comes down to the individual person going through it. Professionals can give the best counseling, provide the most nutritious foods, and give most well-planned treatment. But if the person is ready for committed, they may not have access drug rehab time.

Perhaps they haven’t truly realize the depth of their problem. Maybe they thought they were ready, the reality is too hard. Or maybe, they need a different type of service that they didn’t use during their first time at drug rehab. It doesn’t mean that the people involved didn’t do their best. It does mean that each addict needs to learn from your experience.

Did they have unrealistic expectations? Did they do drug rehab for someone else not themselves? Did they hide important information that could help them? Or did they simply need something different or something more?

Successful Drug Treatment

When someone is critical of drug rehab, they often say that drug rehab “didn’t work” for them or someone they know. But that doesn’t mean that drug rehab can’t work for them ever in a lifetime.

It takes an open mind, some critical thought, and perhaps another professional opinions help understand why drug rehab doesn’t work sometimes. By the same token, a person who has success from their drug rehab experience needs to be very aware of why it worked well.

Drug rehab can make a huge difference in a person’s life. If you need more information about starting today, pick up the phone call now.

Drug Addiction Hurts Your Family

You may think that since you keep away from your family, your not causing any trouble. in fact, you may believe you’re saving them a lot of frustrations and problems. Most of the time you just fight anyway, so staying away has helped.

But what would happen if you were using drugs anymore? Would you have the same kind of fights? Could your relationships be better? How much do you think they worry about you when they don’t hear from you for months?

Not all families are ready for the kind of honesty sobriety required. But in many are. If you got sober, you may start a chain- reaction of positive change in your family you may never have dreamt possible.

Drug Addiction Hurts The Community

Do you recall why you keep such a low profile from the police? because you’ve been seen around too many people long rap sheets. you may think you are returning anyone because you don’t pull a knife or shoot a gun. But if you are part of the drug addiction culture in a community, you help to keep it going.

As long as you keep drug dealers and business, they can continue feeling of the people in the community. When you crash at your drug using friends houses, you keep that neighborhood unsafe and unsettled. The police use valuable time and resources to track down people causing drug related crimes. Even though you don’t see a victim, your drug addiction activity contributes to the bigger problem in your community.

Drug Addiction Hurts You

You have probably excused it, rationalized it, minimized it, reinterpreted it, and flat-out ignored it. But none of that erases the truth. Drug addiction hurts you. Your body can only take so much, and your mind can only take so much. When you learn how to live a drug addiction lifestyle, you give up on the more uplifting parts of you.

Your ability to be generous, your ability to help others in their lives, your ability to make a lasting contribution in your community, your potential and your natural gifts – all of these are squandered when you continue your drug addiction.

Your very existence is at risk. Drug addiction does all kinds of damage to your body, increasing your risk of heart disease, liver disease, breathing problems, and death from an overdose. After all this, do you really believe that your drug addiction isn’t hurting you?

Drug Addiction Hurts Everyone Involved

Drug addiction hurts so many more people than you may realize. Your family, your community, and your own life are at stake when you allow your drug addiction to continue. Getting sober takes courage, but it’s worth it. If you need help getting started with drug rehab, call today for more information.

It isn’t about trying to marginalize or shut off your emotions, it’s about managing them. This may be the opposite of what you were expecting (or hoping). When you face your emotions and learn to manage them, you give yourself a great chance at sobriety.

How Your Emotions Led To Drug Addiction

Most people end up getting caught in a drug addiction because of their emotions. They have some kind of bad situation that seems overwhelmingly painful, and they can’t find a good way to feel any better. They may have grown up in an abusive home, had depression or an anxiety disorder, had chronic pain, or made some dramatic lifestyle changes against their wishes.

When this gets to be too much, some people turn to drugs and alcohol. At first, it may be just a way to feel more relaxed and socialize more. But after a while, the drug and alcohol use may take on a life of its own. Soon, it’s not about being social or having something fun to do, it’s about being stoned, drunk, or high on a regular basis. It becomes an escape from their daily misery.

Learning To Face Your Feelings

One of the things an addict wants to avoid is facing their feelings. An addict may have come to believe many things about their emotions. I can do without them, they are better kept hidden, they are wrong and shameful, they mean something bad about me, or they are too hard to control.

The more you push emotions down or away from your awareness, the more destructive they seem to be. Just learning how to face them is critical. You can acknowledge that you feel embarrassed, cheated, lonely, or whatever, and then let the emotion pass on by.

The more mindful you are of your feelings, the more you can notice their ebb and flow. And when you see how they eventually flow into something different or in a less intense way, you can see them as more tolerable.

Find Ways To Calm Yourself

Once you acknowledge your emotions, you can do many things to keep them from taking over your life. Notice the thoughts that go along with these emotions. If they are negative, challenge them with something more positive. Tell yourself that your feelings will come and go and that feelings are a normal part of life.

Get good exercise to help you get more comfortable with your body. Listen to music that predictably changes your mood. Do the opposite of what you feel – if you are angry, do something generous for another person (even when you don’t feel like it).

Managing Your Emotions Key To Sobriety

When your emotions are hidden and pushed away, they can have extraordinary power over you. But when shed light on them and let them move freely, you can live a more balanced sober life.

It’s the same way with drug addiction recovery. You may think certain things aren’t much of a big deal, but they could cost you your sobriety if you don’t respect them. Take a look here and see if you are ignoring any important blind spots in your recovery.

You Hang Out With Old Friends Sometimes

Don’t think it will matter if you still see your old drinking buddy from high school on the weekends? That’s where you could be putting yourself in harms way. Old friends with addictions or substance abuse problems aren’t friends that have your best interest at heart.

Your emotional ties will make you think you are an exception to the rule, that you can take these risks and nothing will happen to you. Unfortunately, you are likely to be proven wrong about that one. Someone may say, “just one drink,” or you may start having cravings just seeing an old hangout. Before you know it, you are staring relapse right in the face.

You Don’t Go To Meetings Or Counseling Anymore

You may think that going to support meetings is pointless and counseling doesn’t work anymore. Perhaps you need to take a slightly different persective on this. You may be slipping into some typical addiction all-or-nothing thinking.

If you aren’t in a meeting that feels like a good fit, you are less likely to stick with it. And if you felt like counseling wasn’t doing anything for you, take a look at why you stopped. Was it really time for you to stop, was it not a good counselor fit, or did you get bored?

Keep in mind that counseling and support groups aren’t really there to do things for you. They are opportunities for you to do things differently and learn about yourself. Getting isolated socially and mentally can take you right down the path of relapse. Contact someone you trust about this and see about getting reconnected with the services and support you need.

You Have Quit Doing All Those Healthy Things From Rehab

You learned a variety of healthy habits at drug rehab that would help you stay sober. Some of these may have been really foreign to you like yoga, eating new foods, and getting active outdoors.

If you find yourself being pretty sedentary, eating plenty of junk food, and not getting good sleep, you may be setting yourself up for trouble. Your drug addiction was at least partly based on your body’s physical sensations from taking drugs. When your body doesn’t feel that great, you may be tempted to get a zing from something you know will work – drugs and alcohol.

Staying On Top Of Addiction Recovery Blind Spots

Nobody likes to admit they have blind spots, problems they excuse, and good advice they ignore. When problems trip you up, it can be tough to acknowledge that you should have known better. Pay attention to these every day and don’t let them take your sobriety off track.