AHS Views

It’s the day after Christmas. I’ll bet there are millions of people in the U.S. – and around the world – who wish they’d made sure that someone in their family had gotten addiction help before the holidays. Well, it’s not too late, and it’s never too early, to make it happen.

I remember many Christmases from my young years. Although the mornings were great – basically a happy family having breakfast, opening presents and so on – as the day wore on and the drinking started, the spirit was kind of ruined for some of us. Either someone in the household or someone who was visiting got nasty or way too melancholy – sometimes to the point of crying over everything they regret or how nice people were being to them and they didn’t deserve it – or there were fights, upsets, and so on.

This wasn’t just my family – it was also the families of many of my friends in our middle class neighborhood.

And then there was me when I was older. Showing up at my parent’s place stoned on one drug or another, or leaving early because I couldn’t stand going without drugs any longer.

Sometimes there were no drugs on Christmas day but, since my mother didn’t see me that often in those bad times, she wanted to talk about it. She was so happy to see me straight – but, at the same time, you could see the sadness behind her smile, she knew things were ‘normal’ just for the day.

It broke her heart. And worried her to no end.

Fortunately, I got off drugs shortly thereafter and that was followed by decades of a very good relationship. I never got into trouble after that, never gave her anything to worry about. It was my mother who first took the initiative to get me into drug rehab for the addiction help I needed. And once I got off drugs, I never went back. The treatment program was excellent, very successful, and deserves a lot of the credit for my never relapsing. And that’s why it’s important to choose the right drug rehab program.

But several years were wasted. Frankly, I was lucky to have lived through those drugs days. Many of my friends and acquaintances didn’t. And many of those who did were never able to re-establish their family and other relationship – they’d burned their bridges.

Do you want to save your kids? Your spouse? Your family? Your marriage? Your relationships?

Call Addiction Help Services – our experienced counselors have helped thousands of people from all walks of life and with all different types of alcohol and drug problems. They will help you find the right alcohol and drug addiction treatment program for your situation. And do it now, don’t delay as you probably have so many times in the past. Things aren’t going to change, except to get worse, unless something is done.

Do it now, and next year’s holidays will be what you really want them to be.

Why do parents worry when their kids are drinking? For the most part, it’s either because their kids change when they drink and become somewhat obnoxious, or because they’re afraid they’re going to drink and drive or get into a brawl. All very good reasons for finding out how to get them the addiction help they need – and there’s no doubt that anyone drinking like that, regardless of the consequences, needs alcohol rehab.

But those reasons are not the only things you have to worry about.

A study in Australia (and there’s no reason to believe the situation in America isn’t either as bad or worse) showed that one in five deaths by injury involved alcohol.

Someone drowns – there’s a one in five chance alcohol was involved.
Someone gets poisoned – again, one in five chance alcohol was involved.

Have an accident with tools, a fall that causes an injury that either kills someone on the spot or later, caught in a fire – at least one in five of all of these involve alcohol. In some case, it’s more. For example, alcohol is involved in one in three burns or fires.

It’s quite amazing when you think about it that it’s legal to drink alcohol. It is so destructive.

If someone in your family needs alcohol rehab, get them help now before the situation gets worse.

Parents are excited when their kids go off to college, but they are also a little worried. How will their young man or woman cope with being away from home? Will they do well? Will they behave themselves? Will they get involved in things that might cause them trouble? Now, more than ever, that is a very real concern – especially when they go to a ‘party school,’ so named for the alcohol abuse. Drugs are a factor, too, but alcohol is the big one.

Party schools are defined in Wikipedia as “a college or university that has a reputation for heavy alcohol and drug use or a general culture of licentiousness.”

Not exactly what you had in mind when you put that ‘college fund’ aside, right?

Every year, several publications publish their research on party schools and come up with rankings. You, or your kid, can look up the rankings on line – just search top party schools.

The most well-known list is published by Princeton Review. Here’s their top ten for 2011.

Ohio University
University of Georgia
University of Mississippi
University of Iowa
University of California, Santa Barbara
West Virginia University
Pennsylvania State University
Florida State University
University of Florida
University of Texas at Austin

The statistics for young people who drink at college are pretty gruesome – more girls get raped, more students (male and female) have sexual encounters they would not have had were they sober, more injuries all around, more DUI’s, skipping classes because of being hung over, not doing well in exams, turning to ‘study drugs’ like Adderall and Ritalin (very similar to methamphetamine or cocaine) to be able to stay awake and cram for the last few days before exams because they were too busy partying to keep up with their studies properly during the semester, or the entire year.

It’s not pretty.

So, as parents, what do you do with this information? Here are a few suggestions:

Don’t ignore the problem and just hope or trust things will be okay. Not only are your kids likely to have some nasty things happen to them, and definitely not get the most out of their education, it also sets them up to be alcoholics as adults.

Educate your kids on the dangers of alcohol and drugs. Make sure they understand they are poisoning their bodies, and know the statistics and the consequences.

If your kids are already drinking, get control of it before they go to school. If they won’t stop, get them through an addiction help program before they go to college. Same goes with drugs.

And keep a very, very close eye on things. Be very direct about it, and don’t just give up thinking ‘kids will be kids’ and so on. Statistics show that kids are drinking or taking drugs for an average of two years before their parents even find out about it.

Peer pressure in college is at its peak. And it’s hard to resist. It is expected and, if a student doesn’t live up to those expectations, they can be socially ostracized.

Those with a really sense of self and purpose have less chance of being intimidated in these surroundings, although even they can get trapped in the drug and alcohol scene.

But someone who is already drinking or taking drugs already will almost certainly get even worse. It’s like throwing them into the lion’s den.

Getting into a good addiction help program now will not only get them off drugs, it will help with the issues they have that are driving them to alcohol or drugs. With these issues successfully resolved, they should be able to get the education they’re attending college for, and have a lot of sober fun doing it.

I read a news item about Baron Geisler, an actor in the Phillipines, who’s going to get addiction help for alcohol. The story says he lost an acting job because he showed up on the set with a few drinks under his belt. It also said he has a history of drunken brawls but, since his mother sent him to alcohol rehab, he’s ‘no longer like that’. He ‘slipped’ because his girlfriend left him. He said ‘never meant to hurt anyone or show any disrespect’.

But out of the blue (in his statement about the recent incident) he also denies his involvement in the shooting of a co-worker he’d recently nearly come to blows with – provoked when Baron insulted the other guy’s girlfriend - and he’s up on sexual harrassment charges filed by his roommate’s daughter.

So, in fact, he is still ‘like that.’

He says he’s just ‘very emotional.’  Sounds innocent enough, but it’s obvious that he’s causing his own problems. And until he stops doing that, it’s going to be virtually impossible for him to stay sober.

If he wants a girlfriend who will not get him ‘very emotional’ by leaving him, he’s going to have to stop doing things that result in sexual harrassment charges from other women, refrain from insulting people to the point of them wanting to beat him up,  and get himself into a position where he doesn’t have to deny his involvement in a shooting.

Maybe then his girlfriends will stay with him and he won’t therefore feel compelled to drink.

A facility that offers full addiction help services would have to help him handle those aspects of his personality.  That’s real rehabilitation.  If you’re looking for a facility that will do that, give us a call.

I’m in Ontario, Canada visiting family and friends for the holidays. Boy, they really take drinking and driving seriously here. They have a program called Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere – R.I.D.E. Teams of police are assigned to spot check drivers and if the driver says they’ve been drinking, AT ALL, or if the police can smell alcohol, you do a breathalizer. If you blow above the legal limit (recently reduced so it’s the same as the U.S.), you’re taken away – I’m not sure to where since I don’t know if Canada has drug courts where someone can get addiction help or if they just go to jail, etc.

What’s different about this program? First – it’s a spot check. You don’t have to have done anything suspicious to be stopped. Second – if you’ve been drinking AT ALL, even though you’re within the legal limit, they can still take your keys and your car for 24 hours.

I think the actual R.I.D.E. program is officially over, but the actions taken to prevent drunk driving continue – and the DUI laws are getting even tougher, especially on those who are ‘nearly’ at the legal limit.

Sound steep? I’m sure the hundreds of thousands of people and their families who were injured or killed in DUI-related accidents would say ‘absolutely not.’ I would tend to agree. Better safe than sorry. And I’m sure this must lead to a lot of people availing themselves of addiction help services instead of drinking and driving and getting a stint in the slammer. Nothing works like zero tolerance.

And if it wasn’t meant to be, why did God invent taxis and designated drivers?

A new study shows that alcohol shrinks the brain. Millions of people need drug and alcohol addiction help, and we’re spending millions finding out this useless information.

Why do we need it? We already know that just one drink can impair abstract thinking for a month, we already know it causes a gradual deterioration of the body and people die before their time, we already know it’s involved in most domestic violence incidents, we already know it’s ruins families, lives, careers. Shouldn’t we be spending our money making sure people get the addiction help services they need?

Getting someone who needs help with alcohol or drug addiction can be difficult. In fact, 95% of alcohol and drug treatment candidates think they don’t have a problem. But, they do. They have a problem with alcohol or drugs, and they have the problems that got them into alcohol or drugs in the first place. And the only way to resolve those problems is through a successful alcohol and drug rehab program.

But how do you convince them of that fact? Sometimes the addict is afraid the person will think less of them if they discuss it, sometimes they think the person couldn’t possibly understand what they’re going through, and sometimes the relationship between the addict and the person trying to convince them to get help is not that great.

That’s when you need outside help – someone who understands what the addict is going through, has worked with hundreds or thousands of alcoholics or drug addicts in the past, and can convince them to get into alcohol or drug rehab.

If you need help getting someone into treatment, call a drug rehab program counselor. They’ll help you determine if an interventionist is needed, and will also help you find the right treatment program.

Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers has checked into a rehab facility to keep up with his recovery from alcohol abuse. Meyers, star of the current Showtime series The Tudors, recently finished shooting his upcoming flick ‘August Rush’ opposite Terrence Howard and Robin Williams in New York.

Rhys has scheduled his next project to start after he completes the alcohol rehab treatment program.

Seems drug and alcohol rehab is becoming quite the celebrity trend – others who recently checked into rehab include Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss and Desperate Housewives heartthrob Jesse Metcalfe.