Addiction affects the victim’s entire life: relationships, profession, health, and psychological welfare. Successful treatment is dependent on developed new lifestyle and tackling the causes that baits the victim into the temptation of drugs. It may have been brought by powerlessness to cope with anxiety, in which situation the victim will need to discover healthy approaches.
1). Constancy and continuity.
Drug addiction treatment is not an overnight process; the longer and more intense the drug use, the longer and more intense the treatment is needed. Thus, long-term follow-up care is vital to recovery regardless of the treatment program’s length whether it is weeks or months.
There are many places to rely on for help
Medically supervised detox or an extensive period in rehab is not everybody’s requirement. The level of care is dependent on addict’s age, drug use history, and other medical or psychiatric conditions. Clergy members, social workers, and counselors also offer addiction treatment services other than doctors and psychologists.
It’s also imperative to get treatment for any other medical or psychological issues that the addict is going through while seeking help to combat addiction. Acquiring from the same treatment provider or team of combined treatment for both the substance abuse and mental health problems is the addict’s best chance of treatment.
Solid support system is important whatever treatment approach is chosen; the more constructive stimulus acquired in the addict’s life, the better chances for recovery. With significant others that addict can approach to for support, direction, and attentive ear make recovery a little less difficult.
Count on friends and family – Obtaining friends and loved ones’ support is a priceless positive feature in recovery. If disinclined to ask for help from family members because of disappointment you have caused them, going to couples counseling or family therapy can be an alternative.
Develop an abstemious communal set of connection – Make some new connections if previous communal life is concentrated on drugs. Having sober friends who supportive for recovery is significant. Experiment with taking a class, connecting with a church or a civic group, volunteering, or attending community events.
Stay in a sober living home – Sober living homes give a harmless, helpful place to live while on drug addiction treatment. They are a good choice if the addict has no stable home or a drug-free living environment to go to.
Prioritize making meetings – Join and attend recovery support group meetings consistently. Hanging out with people who could relate to your struggles can be very curative. One can also profit from the collective experiences of the group members and discover their approaches to sobriety.
3). Find out healthy approaches on stress management
One still needs to face the problems that led him/her to drug problems even once they have recovered from drug addiction. Were you tempted on taking drugs to put out distress, pacify yourself from an encountered quarrel, loosen up after a bad day, or run away from problems? After the victim has become subdued, the negative feelings that he/she used to reduce with drugs will come back.
One needs to also resolve these causal issues for long-term sobriety and effective treatment.
Conditions like worry, seclusion, dissatisfaction, annoyance, embarrassment, anxiety, and despair will linger into one’s life even when she/he is no longer using drugs to suppress them. However, she/her will be in a hale and hearty position to finally deal with them and ask the needed help.
4). Alleviating anxiety devoid of drugs
Drug abuse usually starts from reckless attempts in dealing with anxiety. A lot of individuals fall back on alcohol or recreational drugs to loosen up and chill out after a nerve-racking day, or to conceal hurting memories and feelings that bring to be beleaguered and unstable. However, there are better approaches to regulate anxiety, through work out, prayers, relaxation by using sensory strategies, simple breathing exercise practices, and confrontation though self-defeating thoughts.
Approaches for quickly alleviating briskly devoid of drugs
Drugs are not the ultimate way out to handle repulsive emotions. Everyone can survive complexities without depending on addiction. Various fast anxiety alleviation approaches are effective to some than others. The secret is to look for something that best fits, and helps pacify in times of a stress feeling and devastation. Once there is confidence in the ability to promptly de-stress, confronting tough emotions isn’t as threatening or devastating.
Work out discharges endorphins, alleviates anxiety, and helps emotional welfare. Step outside and savor the warm sun and fresh air or enjoy a beautiful view or landscape while running in place, jumping rope, or walking around the block. Prayers and meditation are excellent ways to shatter anxiety and obtain stability.
- Play with the dog or cat and take pleasure in the pet’s hair calming touch.
- Tune in to a relaxing music.
- Light a scented candle.
- Sniff some scent of fresh flowers or coffee beans, or be delighted in a scent that reminds you of a much loved trip.
- With closed eyes imagine a serene site, like a sandy beach. Or see in your mind’s eye a warm-hearted throwback, like your child’s first steps or exciting moment with friends.
- Savor yourself with a hot cup of tea.
- Skim through a favorite family album.
- Reward yourself with a neck or shoulder massage.
- Douse in a hot bath or shower.
Although restraint from drugs is a significant first step, it’s only the initial of the recovery process. While on sobriety, the brain requires time to pull through and restructure relationships that was modified by addiction. Drug cravings can be strong during this time. The addict can support her/his persistent sobriety by making a conscious effort to avoid people, places, and situations that trigger the cravings, through the following approaches:
Shun from old drug pals. Never slip up with spending time with old friends who are still doing drugs. Shield with people who could support sobriety, not those who could tempt to return to old detrimental routines.
Keep away from bars and clubs. Avoid them even if alcohol is not a snare on you. Drinking which reduces shyness and ruins prudence can easily lead to relapse. Drugs are usually close at hand and the temptation to use can be intense. Stay away also from any other moods and circumstances connected with drug use.
Be honest about drug history when looking for medical treatment. When medical or dental procedure is needed, tell the truth about drug history and look for a provider who will work with you in either prescribing options or the absolute minimum medication needed. Never feel embarrassed or humiliated about previous drug use or be denied medication for pain; look for another provider if it happens.
Be watchful with prescription drugs. Avoid prescription drugs with the potential for abuse (painkillers, sleeping pills, and anti-anxiety medication) or use only if needed and with extreme carefulness.
Drug Cravings Management
Occasionally craving cannot be evaded, thus, finding techniques to cope with it is indispensable, through different approaches:
Join diversionary leisure interests. Reading, a pastime, watching a movie, exercising (jogging, biking) are good patterns. The cravings leaves once get fascinated in something else. Drug craving can also be confronted effectively by eating (only be careful with the type of food taken, as eating junk increases stress and inches to your waistline).
Relate the temptation that occurs. Talk to loved ones or friends about craving if it takes place as it is be very useful in finding the source of the craving. In addition, talking about craving repeatedly lends a hand to release and lighten the feeling and helps to re-establish sincerity in relationship. There’s nothing to feel bad about craving.
Be a surfer who rides the wave of drug craving. A lot of people make an effort to contend with their cravings by gnashing teeth and toughing it out. But others are just overly prevailing to take no notice of the temptation. If this occurs, it can be useful to remain with the craving until it slips away, an approach called urge surfing. Picture yourself as a surfer who rides the wave of your drug craving, remaining on top of it until it peaks, goes down, and becomes fading, frothy wave.
Confront and modify brain wave. A lot of people have a propensity to recall only the positive outcomes of the drug and overlook the negative results. Hence, the addict may find it effective to jog your memory that you really feel bad using it and that you rise to lose a whole heap. Occasionally it is effective to list these benefits and corollaries on a small card that will serve as a reminder.
Support drug treatment and protect from relapse by having leisure interests that give enjoyment and meaning to life. Addiction loses its charm when addict’s life is overflowed with purpose-driven and worthwhile routines by:
Choosing a new hobby. Do something you’ve always wanted to try which challenge ingenuity and ignite thoughts.
Adopting a pet. Caring for pet is accountability but fondness and care makes you feel treasured and wanted. Also, pets can also get you out of your home for a work out.
Join in a community. Substitute addiction with drug-free groups and routines. Be active in church or faith community, or be involved in a local club or neighborhood group.
Establish goals carrying great weight. Aspiring for something that is life purpose-driven, whether it is career, personal life, or health can be effective cures to drug addiction.
Watch over your health. Daily exercise, enough sleep, and healthful nutritional regime keep energy levels up and stress levels down. Drugs are much less of a temptation when one feels good. The more you can preserve health, the simpler it will be to remain sober.
Relapse is a usual part of the recovery process from drug addiction. Although relapse is reasonably provoking and disappointing, it can also be an occasion to realize from errors and amend treatment program.
Causes of Relapse
Several “triggers” can place individuals in jeopardy of returning to old precedents of substance use. Causes can differ for each individual, which ordinarily includes:
- negative emotional condition (anger, sadness, trauma or stress)
- physical distress (withdrawal symptoms or physical pain)
- positive emotional conditions (in need to feel even better)
- checking personal restraint (“I can have just one shot of drink/substance”)
- strapping enticements (cravings to use)
- discord with others (quarrel with a spouse or partner)
- social temptation to use (places where it look as if everyone else is drinking or using other drugs)
- good times with others (having fun with friends or loved ones)
The implication of the statistics
The point of warning the drug addicts to surrender is to minimize drug-related crime (e.g. murder, rape, stealing, etc) which is an isolated case if we’ll base it on the aforementioned statistics. If there are an estimated 1.7 million Filipinos hooked on drugs compared with smoking-related death which is 240 death per day, then why is tobacco appears to be pampered by regulating it only through huge excise tax while the other end up in daily atrocity?
This is not to advocate Mao Tse-tung’s methods, but if we’ll look at it, the giving up of 20 million people from drug addiction[7] simply implies that there is a cure for this obviously because of awareness to submit to Mao’s calling.
It does seem that his success tells us something very important about addiction. Mao didn’t say, nor would it have made sense for him to say that he would execute anyone who suffers from hypothyroidism, or rheumatoid arthritis; and therefore there must be a category difference between illness and addiction.
To illustrate more, during the Vietnam war, tens of thousands of American soldiers addicted themselves to heroin affected by terror and boredom but two years after their return to the States, their rate of addiction to heroin was no larger than that of the recruits who were expected to go but never got to Vietnam because the war had ended.
Take into consideration that it talked not only one or two cases, that is to say exceptions, but of millions and scores of thousands of cases. Furthermore, the evidence is quite conclusive that even in more normal circumstances huge numbers of addicts give up without any assistance whatever: in fact, my father was one of them, who gave up smoking at the age of 71 after more than 40 years of smoking. Regrettably, he couldn’t give up the harm it had done him but that is another matter entirely: that was a matter of real illness, caused by his habit.
Most people think that addicts are ‘hooked’ by their drug, but this is nonsense. Heroin addicts, for example (and heroin addiction is the pattern that mostly think about addiction) spend on average 18 months taking the drug on and off before they are addicted to it. Among other things, they must overcome a natural unsettled stomach to a substance that makes them nauseated and sick. It is untruthful that they are ‘hooked’ by heroin, then, as if they were fish in a sea ingesting a baited hook without any awareness of what they are doing; it would be more accurate to say that they hook heroin than that heroin hooked them. The reality that it takes a substantial effort and willpower to become addicted has been known ever since, in which how one took laudanum once a week for ten years before one became addicted to it.
Hundreds and possibly thousands of heroin addicts when asked how they started taking heroin, almost consistently they would say, ‘I fell in with the wrong crowd,’ but no one will ever meet any member of the wrong crowd itself.’ This notion of passively falling into the wrong crowd, by some kind of social gravitational force, is absurd so to speak.
The notion of addiction as illness cannot perhaps put in plain words why, in the 1950s, there were at most a couple of hundred heroin addicts in the U.S., and why now there are possibly 250,000 of them, 150,000 of them injecting. The National Institute on Drug Abuse in the United States propagated the idea that addiction was a disease - a chronic, relapsing brain disease, which is in fact chronic and relapsing. The Institute’s director at the time, Bob Schuster, did not believe that it was, in fact did know that it was not. Nonetheless, ‘happy for it to be conceptualized that way… for selling it to Congress,’ that is to say to acquire more funds for research, he pointed out. This was because Congress would provide funds for research into a bona fide illness but not for a problem that was obviously more psychological, economic, social and spiritual in nature in a broad sense.
Addiction is not something that happens to anyone, it is something that one does, that provides meaning on one’s life or disguises the absence of such meaning. The need for meaning is a permanent human one, but it is not effortlessly pleased. When the lives of impoverished heroin addicts are examined, for example, one would find that their existences are not powerless alternations between hopelessly looking for a vein in which to inject themselves to avoid the pains of withdrawal on the one hand and the bliss of the oceanic feeling that comes with injecting heroin on the other. Addicts are very busy people, with obtaining their drugs from dealers and acquiring the resources to pay for them. Criminality is much more a cause of addiction than vice versa.
For example, addicts get up early every morning to go out to work. They called it work, but in fact it is robbery, which they do from nine till five. No matter what one calls this pattern of behavior, it is not illness.
What are drug use problems?
Drug use problems refers to using drugs (e.g. cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines, cocaine and/or heroin) at levels which are associated with short-term and/or long-term harm.
Problem drug use is not just a matter of how much drug the person uses, but how their use affects their life and the lives of those around them. No one can assume that any use of drugs necessarily means that the person has a drug use problem. Alcohol is also a drug.
The short-term and long-term consequences of drug use problems include:
- Adverse effects on the person’s judgment and decision-making
- Family or social difficulties (e.g. relationship, work, financial problems)
- Legal problems
- Injuries while using drugs (e.g. as a result of accidents, falls, violence, road trauma)
- Mental health problems (e.g. panic attacks, psychosis, suicidal thoughts and behaviors)
- Physical health problems
- Difficulty on controlling the amount of time spent using or the quantity used
- Carving for more of the drug to get the same effect
- Problems in reducing or controlling use
- Experiencing unpleasant symptoms when stopping or reducing use
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