AHS Views

Diet pills - one of the worst ideas around. A friend of mine did what she called a ‘medical diet’, which meant she got pills that are basically speed from her doctor. She lost weight, no doubt about it, but when she stopped taking the pills she gained it back pretty rapidly. Thak God she was able to get off them - many people can’t do it without addiction help services. She was educated on the subject of prescription drug addiction.

If you’re looking for a diet that will help you lose weight without drugs - check out Take Diet Fads Lightly. But realize that her approach will not work for everyone. There are many physical conditions that can prevent weight loss - thyroid problems, which are very common, bad digestion, eating foods you’re allergic to, thyroid problems, which are very common, and problems with other organs and functions.

However, not all doctors are qualified to find these problems nor will they look for them. You usually need an alternative health practitioner.

If you’re doing things right and you’re still not losing weight, realize that something’s wrong. Your best bet is to find out what it is. Then you can get in better shape, healthier, and lose weight without risking gettng addicted to pills and needing addiction help to get off them.

Matt Stevens, a British soccer player who was due to play in the 2011 World Cup games in New Zealand, was suspended for taking drugs. He’ll get the addicton help he needs, but since his suspension could be for as long as two years, there’s not much hope he’ll be able to play by that time.

The coach believes it’s due to becoming a celebrity. It’s true that being a celebrity opens doors that may otherwise have been closed, and there may be more temptations - more invitations to take drugs, spending more time in drug-oriented environments - you don’t have to be lined up to play in the World Cup to be offered drugs or to be a celebrity.

Playing football in college, for example, opens you up to the same temptations, and the same celebrity, even though it’s on a smaller scale. If you’re on a popular team, you’re going to be adored by fans and they’ll try to get hooked up with you one way or another - sometimes it’s with an offer of drugs.

In either case - and parents whose kids are going off to (or are in) college and will be (or are) ‘on the team’ should pay special attention to this - the person has to be prepared.

If your son, or daughter, is already taking drugs prior to going to college they should get prepated by getting addiction help services before they go. They already have problems that are driving them to drugs and those problems are likely to get worse in college where the environment is even more challenging.

Treatment for drug addiction or abuse gets down to the bottom of why the person is taking drugs in the first place and addresses those issues so they are no longer a problem. So, when they are offered drugs in college, they’re more likely to be able to say no.

Parents hope that going to college will straighten their kids out. But exactly the opposite is often true. Any problems they have now will be magnified. Get addiction help before they go - don’t wait until the problem is worse.

When a person has a problem with drugs or alcohol they’re sometimes not motivated to do anything about it. Despite the fact that they may be temporarily numbed to the issues that drove them to addiction in the first place, those issues are still there. They couldn’t cope with them before, so what reason do they have to think they can cope with them now? That’s why people need someone else to take the reins and get them addiction help.

Once they’re there, get off the drugs or stop drinking for a while, they can get into actual alcohol or drug rehab then they’ll start to change their mind. That is - if they get into a program that will find and directly address the things the person was having trouble with and help them figure out how to live happily.

But until they get into addressing those problems, they may not have enough motivation to find addiction help on their own.

Sometimes a disastrous occurence in life is enough to spur them on. People have been known to just quit, cold turkey, when the motivation is high enough. But that’s pretty unusual - they may want to quit but when they start going through withdrawal, the pain or discomfort pushes them in the other direction. And getting off some drugs, and even alcohol, can be pretty painful.

At Alternative Choices, the drug rehab program run by the drug court in Tooele County, Utah, there stands a suit of armor at the entry way. The message? “Prepare for Battle” The people doing this program have motivation - rehab or prison. And the program works well - 85% of those who start actually hang in there and graduate.

Your son, daughter, spouse, family member or friend, hopefully, will not need the threat of prison to get help, but expecting them to do it on their own is like expecting someone with the flu - fever, chills, aches and pains all over the place and exhausted - to run a marathon.

They need you to do the running for them until they’re up to it. At Addiction Help Services we can help you find the help, and strength, you need.

A bill in Massachusetts proposes to increase the taxes on things like non-nutritious snacks, sugared drinks, alcohol, tobacco and similar products. They’re trying to make money so they can avoid further budget cuts. What does this have to do with drug rehab and addiction help? A lot, actually.

I believe one of the reasons people are driven to drugs is because they are basically unhealthy. They’re eating junk food, for example, which doesn’t supply any nutrients and actually causes the body to deteriorate. And can make them sick. 

Even if they don’t actually get ’sick’, they’re not going to have the physical or mental energy and stamina needed to think clearly, be motivated or feel good about themselves.

Will that drive them to drugs? Absolutely. College kids using amphetamines to focus during exams might not be having such a hard time if they had a good diet, exercised, got enough sleep, and so on, as a regular routine. But instead of being diligent about their physical health, which affects their mental health and acuity, they often live on junk food and beer until a couple of weeks before exam time then take drugs to help them make up for the damage caused by those earlier bad habits.

But it’s not only college kids who are affected. Generally speaking, people who are in really good health feel better about themselves and do better in life. When confronted with life’s problems, they’re in a much better position to deal with them. And, consequently, don’t turn to drugs or alcohol as a solution.

The increase in taxes in MA will hopefully deter such behavior, and people will be better off for it. They’re less likely to end up on drugs and less likely to need addiction help services.

That, in turn, will probably save the state millions of dollars in drug addiction or drug abuse related health care costs, law enforcement, prisons, and so on.

Recovery homes for drug addicts frequently come under attack - as is the Kramer Center in Newport Beach. In this case, it might be deserved: the center doesn’t even have a license. The administrator of the center says there’s a misunderstanding about what licenses are required. Perhaps - but someone running a facility like that should make sure they understand the legalities. It’s their business.

The issue of recovery homes in residental neighborhoods is controversial: on one hand, it’s vital that people who are trying to stay off drugs have someplace to go where they can be productive, cared for, and won’t be tempted. That often does not describe the environment they came from - which might be why they were on drugs in the first place.

On the other hand, it’s possible that some people sent to recovery homes aren’t really ready for it. They may have stopped taking drugs, but they may not have gotten down to the bottom of why they were taking them in the first place and worked out how they’re going to cope with those issues in the future so they can live a life without drugs. 

People who have addressed those issues are ready to be productive members of society.  They’re not a threat to their environment. In fact, they often have more to contribute than others. They want to help. But they might need a temporary place to stay while they get a job, get a place, and so on.

Drug addicts who aren’t ready for that yet didn’t really get the full addiction help they needed, and they could be disruptive to a community.

Perhaps the real issue to address is the effectiveness of the addiction help services addicts are getting prior to going to a recovery home.

If I were a cop I think one of the most difficult situations I would have to face would be what children of drug addicts go through. Actually, I don’t need to be a cop to see it - I’ve witnessed some of it myself, but nothing as severe as the stories I’ve heard.

What happens to the kids of parents who need addiction help? They get taken care of by court-appointed special advocates (CASA) who do their best to help the parents keep the kids and, if the parents are too destructive, find them another home.

If finding kids another home the right thing to do? As much as some experts agree that being with natural parents is healthy, there’s nothing health about being with parents who are snorting coke, smoking grass, or using speed or heroin. Not only is it a dangerous environment, it is often emotionally unstable, kids don’t get the attention they need, or the quality of family life that ensures they’ll have a good start, and a good future.

There are plenty of people with kids taking drugs. In a sober moment, consider what the ideal would be for raising those kids, and look for addiction help services. The alternative may be, one day, having your kids taken away from you and putting them up for adoption.

Every once in a while I get a comment from someone who tells me drug rehab doesn’t work. I don’t know what kind of addiction help they’re actually getting in the facilities they’ve been to, but there are studies galore showing otherwise.

The latest was published in the Scientific American. It’s a review of several studies on drug rehab - and they were done on people who’d been in prison; pretty hard core heroin addicts who you would think would be the most difficult to help.

What did the studies find? Addicts who don’t get treatment in prison are seven times more likely to become addicted to heroin after they leave prison, and three times more likely to commit another crime and go back to prison.

Fortunately, not all people who use drugs are in prison. But if you’ve ever been told, even by someone who’s been through rehab, that it doesn’t work - this should give you hope.

However, it is important to find the right program for your situation. Addiction Help Services can help you do that.

I’m constantly scanning the news looking for information on the drug scene. A few times a week I see news items about funding being cut for drug courts and other programs aimed at rehabilitation. These programs not only get people the addiction help they need, they also cut down on crime considerably since a lot of crimes are committed either because the person was on drugs or was trying to get them - or get money for them.

It amazes me how little focus there is in the U.S. on rehabilitation. True, there are millions of dollars put into drug prevention programs here and there, and some put into rehabilitation, but considering that we have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other country, and much of the crime is drug-related, and it’s more expensive to imprison someone than to rehabilitate them, you’d think the government would make some serious changes.

We’ve been imprisoning people for non-violent drug-related crime for a long time. Obviously, it’s not working. If it were we’d have few people in prison, not more.

I’d like to hear others’ ideas about why our country is so oriented towards punishment instead of rehabilitation. And what it will take to get the government oriented toward addiction help services instead of simply imprisoning them and then sending them back out into the world with even more problems than they came in with

A study recently done in the UK - interviews with young adults about drinking - found that young people consider planned drinking, including getting drunk, to be a fun leisure activity - the way people who don’t drink would plan a vacation or a night out to dinner and the movies. Interestingly enough, Professor Christina Griffin of the University of Bath in England, who carried out the study, said her first step to handle the problem would be to “Stop demonizing and making generalizations about young people and their drinking. We also need to listen and incorporate their views and perspectives,” - which doesn’t sound like she’s viewing their drinking as ‘entertainment’, the way the study participants do. She’s looking at them as troubled people who need addiction help.

A friend of my son’s who can easily knock back eight or 10 beers when he comes home from work told me that he drinks that way because he likes to ‘come home from work and have a few beers.’ That was his only explanation, and his only understanding of why he did it.

There was no concept of stress at work, no idea that he was troubled in any way, no idea that he was trying to relieve whatever pressures being mentally alert brought to bear. He just likes to ‘have a few beers.’ Which, to him, is eight or 10 of them.

He did this for many years. He needed some kind of addiction help, and he had absolutely no awareness of it whatever. That’s how far things had gone. And I believe that’s the case with many people who drink a lot.

Their close friends and family probably know better - they can see the destruction the person is engaged in, they often know when the drinking started and what incident or set of circumstances in the person’s life set them off on that course.  But the drinker can’t see it at all.

It is said that one night of drinking impairs critical thinking for a month. It’s obvious that, in this person’s case, his ability to think has been so severely impaired he doesn’t even really do it anymore. He just drinks. Because he ‘likes to come home and have a few beers.’

It’s important to get these people into addiction help services before their brain is totally pickled. Today they can’t think well enough to know why they drink, tomorrow they might not be able to think well enough to hold down a job, or take care of their family, or keep themselves from falling off a building or drinking so much they pass out and have to be taken to emergency. Whatever …. they need help. Don’t buy their ‘entertainment’ thing.

You have to wonder how many people there are who have a family member in need of addiction help services who just can’t get it. Like Jared’s family - Jared died of an overdose the night before he had agreed to turn himself in for violating parole. His father convinced him to do turn himself in, thinking that at least his son would live for another year because he’d be in jail.

His family struggled for a long time, coping with their son’s heroin addiction all by themselves. No one they turned to could help them, and there were no support services available in their community who could give him them proper guidance.

Jared’s heroin overdose was something his father had been afraid of for a year and a half. Every time the phone rang he thought it might be someone telling him his son was dead.

If you know someone with a drug problem, call Addiction Help Services to find out what can be done. You never know when that overdose will come.