http://www.captaincynic.com/forum/health-wellness-forum/108/rehab-addiction-drug-alcohol.htm Many people suffer from addiction problems. Often addictions can become so sever that a person and their family's lives can be ruined. This document contains some general information about how addiction problems might be dealt with.
1. Addiction Can Be Overcome
Addiction Is A Condition
Many of us have another person in our lives who suffers with
addiction. For a long time it was thought that self-destructive
actions such as compulsive gambling, unsafe sex, and
substance abuse was caused by a lack of morals. Today
doctors acknowledge that addiction is actually a condition, and
that is good news for addicts. Thinking of addiction as a
condition offers hope, rather than giving addicts an excuse for
their behavior. Those of suffer from addiction are able to seek
methods to get better through addiction rehabilitation
programs and become normally functioning people, with the
acknowledgement that addiction is a disease.
The Effects Of Addiction
There are many different of ways that that addiction can
surface – but the condition at the core is the same, no matter
what behavior a person specifically struggles with. It may seem
harder for the addict participating in prostitution or crime to
2. enable a habit of street drugs, than it does for those whose
disease of addiction is quieter and easier to hide, and this is
part of what can make addiction difficult for concerned family
and friends to comprehend. The nature of addiction keeps the
people who need help most from asking for it and seeking
addiction treatment and rehab. Instead, those with the disease
of addiction exist in a world of isolation and desperation,
cloaking their issues from society. Loved ones become overly
stressed attempting to assist those of suffer from addiction in
their lives, but as much as they love their family members or
friends struggling with addiction, they lack the understanding
of the disease of addiction that would enable them to make
more of a difference. The disease of addiction is a treatable
disease and many addicts recover, but helping the still sick and
suffering addicts is not always easy.
3. Family Should Not Enable The Addiction
The very first thing that family members and friends should do
to assist the addicts in their lives is to entirely refrain from
enabling the addict's addictive behaviors. Often it is the
addict's spouse or parents that will feel guilty and helpless, and
end up providing the ways and means for the person to keep
using, but it could be anyone. Addiction makes addicts do
things they don't want to do, to get things that they don't
want to get. This includes manipulating the loved ones they
care about the most, so that they can keep up their harmful
behavior. Once the enablers in an addict's life refuse to be
complicit in their loved one's addiction, the suffering addict
has no choice but to look at the harsh reality of their disease.
Now begins an uncomfortable period for family and friends as
they see someone they love deeply experience pain and can
not give help, but it is crucial for addiction rehab and recovery
that they do not interfere and offer an easier softer way.
4. Difficult Times
This is a time when the people in an addict's life need to learn
that they too are powerless over their loved one's condition.
The friends and family who have been standing by can step in
and start helping them recover, when an addict has run out of
methods to get more and is willing to get help. Addiction is an
insidious condition and the last person to really realize just
how horrible things are is usually the addict themselves.
Addicts are masters of selective memory, rationalization and
justification. Many endure through decades of the disease
while believing that it's "not that bad". Any help given before
the addict arrives at a point of desperation and reaches out for
help on their own is usually futile. But, once this point of
willingness is arrived at, recovery can begin. The best thing
that concerned loved ones can do at this point is to help the
person they love enter an addiction rehab.
5. Rehabilitation Centers
Besides helping addicts get through detox, spending time in an
addiction rehabilitation gives addicts several other building
blocks for their recovery. Becoming a member of a recovery
community within the rehab gives the addict a feeling of
belonging and shared experience that they very likely haven't
felt long since their addiction commenced. The treatment
center staff provide hope and guidance, especially in
counseling sessions when the recovering person get a chance
to vent and explore issues that they may have hidden because
of fear or feelings of shame. Maybe most importantly, staying
in a rehab can prepare the addict to go back to society, by
exposing them to supportive communities such as addiction
recovery groups.
