Free Articles on Freedom Plaza: Drugs
by Kieron McFadden
Better than drugs: the approach to addiction that involves the use of psychiatric medication has proven unworkable and is now rendered obsolete by more advanced knowledge and modern methods that achieve far superior results. When you are an addict, the addiction controls YOU, rather than you controlling the addiction.
Very few people who are not themselves addicts can visualize the hold that drugs have on those who are and they underestimate the effort required to break that hold. Addicts live in a personal hell from which there can seem to be no escape. Kicking drugs, once the stage of addiction is reached, requires an awful lot more help than distraught pleas from loved-ones to ‘please quit.' Like most challenges to human survival, beating addiction is a TEAM effort. That team comprises family members friends and loved ones, rehab professionals AND, yes, the addict himself working together towards the common goal. Given that team effort and a workable technology of rehabilitation, addiction can be beaten and IS being beaten daily.
Of course, even better would be to catch the thing early. Recognize the telltale signs that a loved one is sliding into addiction and deal with it there and then before full-blown addiction sets in and matters become a whole lot harder to handle. The symptoms of someone slipping into an addiction to street drugs, alcohol or "legal" psychiatric drugs are fairly consistent from one person to the next: problems at or with work, unexplained disappearance of money, problems paying bills or, if the person has taken to dealing drugs to support their habit, unexplained cash. There will also be missed family events, declining school performance, and the person will become furtive and accusative in their behavior.
Full-blown addiction makes the aforementioned symptoms seem mild in comparison. The addict will manifest manipulative, abusive, dishonest or even criminal behavior. There may be attempted suicide and drug abuse always carries with it the risk of overdoses resulting in hospitalization or death. The Addict frequently develops serious health problems such as HIV, Hepatitis C, herpes, heart disorders, loss of teeth, abscesses, liver disease and so forth. If you are wondering how to help someone who is addicted or on the way to full addiction, the first thing to realize is that you can skip the pleas, appeals to reason, bribes, exhortations, warnings, threats, none of these things work with addiction.
There is ONLY one workable way to help the person: get him into rehabilitation and get him OFF drugs.
Here are the key steps to take to get someone you love off drugs:
1. Do not delay, ACT NOW.
2. Contact NARCONON immediately and get advice from one of their counselors. FOLLOW the advice you are given. The Narconon program is in my view the very best available in rehabilitation technology, a quite remarkable and highly successful program that gets people off drugs WITHOUT using drugs.
3. Recognize that the addict is NOT mentally ill and does NOT have a defective brain. Do not therefore allow anyone to tell you or the addict otherwise and do not let him fall into the hands of a psychiatrist. Do NOT let anyone treat the addict with a course of psychiatric medication. The goal is to get the person drug-free, not addicted to or further damaged by more drugs
4. Recognize that NUTRITION is safer and more effective than drugs. Along with good, standard medical treatment and new knowledge about the mind and life, it provides a means to resolve problems of the mind, the specific problem of addiction included, that renders the use of psychotropic drugs obsolete.
Rather than the antiquated muddle of replacing an illicit drug problem with an addictive medication, the Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program epitomizes the more enlightened approach. It successfully brings to bear upon the nightmare of addiction nutrition, one-on-one counseling and life skills training to affect first a smooth withdrawal, followed by thorough detoxification. From there the person progresses upward to a new drug-free life through a steady resolution of the real reasons they started using drugs in the first place.
The result is that 70 percent of Narconon graduates remain drug-free after graduation.
A word of warning though: if the person is already ON psychiatric medication, do NOT withdraw him from the medication without proper medical supervision. Contact Narconon and get him to a medical doctor first.
