Free Articles on Freedom Plaza: Drugs
by Kieron McFadden
The fifth part of my series on the basic nature of drug addiction.
What are cravings? How does someone deal with drug cravings?
One must understand the bio-chemical dimensions of drug addiction. After taking a drug, something called "metabolites" are produced by and are stored in the body long after one has stopped using drugs. It is the creation of these metabolites that produces cravings and they are crucial to resolving the riddle of why addicts who stop using the drug revert to using them again.
When an addict uses drugs, his body's natural resources are disrupted and depleted, creating deficiencies in vital chemicals. Metabolites are formed and act as a substitute for natural body chemicals - unfortunately they are a very poor substitute!.
In the absence of nutrients key to mental and phycial health, the body begins to rely on these metabolites to play vital roles related to mental and physical well-being.
When the addict attempts to stop using these drugs, the body, damaged and depleted of its own natural body chemicals, will demand more of the drug so as to continue producing metabolites: hence the cravings. If he does not get the metabolites, he will experience profound mental and physical discomforts as severe deficiencies kick in.
One of the worst examples of this is the ache deep in the bones experienced by the methadone addict: prolonged methadone abuse causes the bones to deplete of calcium and be "replaced" by the methadone, which then conceals the calcium deficiency so long as the addict continues taking methadone. When the methadone stops, the chronic calcium deficiencies quickly show up.
In short, the person is caught in a trap steel-sprung by the agony of withdrawal and the seemingly insurmountable cravings. It is this that bars the addict from escape from his addiction.
The cravings are so intense and uncomfortable that they compel the addict to do almost anything to alleviate them.
Added to the pain, we then have a descending spiral of misdeeds and criminal acts comitted to alleviate the suffering and the addict's sense of self respect is steadily reduced to a state of complete confusion.
This very sense of self degradation and compounding misery fuels further the addict's need for drugs.
The addict is caught in a trap that appears inescapable unless effective intervention handles the condition.
Fortunately such an effective intervention is now possible and something CAN be done about all this. The metabolites can be flushed clean from the body and the body restored to health by a program of nutrition and that the person's self-worth and identity can be rehabilitated through effective social education.
Narconon has the solution. I have seen this solution at work. I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.
