Every day of every year, families in every state grapple with the drug problems of one or more of their members. Distraught parents, children or siblings appeal to the drug or alcohol user to please cease their excessive substance abuse without understanding that when substance abuse has progressed to addiction, most addicts need rehabilitation before they can quit. That is true no matter how much they promise they will end their drug or alcohol use. When a person is addicted, the addiction controls them rather than their controlling the addiction.

The slide into addiction very often has a consistent pattern, person to person. Problems at work, problems paying bills, unexplained loss of money; if the person has taken to dealing drugs to support their habit, unexplained cash. Missed family events, falling grades in school, secretive or accusative behavior are all common symptoms of the descent into addiction.

But these events are mild in comparison to what lies ahead when a person completes his or her full descent into addiction.

Drug or alcohol addiction commonly results in manipulative, abusive or criminal behavior; suicide; homelessness; overdoses leading to hospitalization or death. Addiction is frequently accompanied by serious or incurable health conditions: HIV, Hepatitis C, herpes, heart disorders, loss of teeth, abscesses, staph infections, liver disease and much more. Then there’s the constant threat of incarceration. The average sentence for drug felonies in 2004 was 51 months.

“Families often call or email us wondering what they should do to help someone they love who is addicted,” stated said Derry Hallmark, Director of Admissions and Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor at Narconon Arrowhead. Narconon Arrowhead is one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, located in Canadian, Oklahoma. “Unfortunately, many families try to help the addict by bailing them out of jail, helping them pay their bills or find a new job. The right thing to do is to help the addict learn to live completely drug-free by getting them into an effective rehabilitation program.”

Rather than substitute an addictive medication for an illicit drug problem, the Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program uses nutrition, one-on-one counseling and life skills training to help a person resolve 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.

“Not every drug addict is ready to ask for help with the family wants them to,” added Mr. Hallmark. “That’s why Narconon works with experienced interventionists around the country. These people are experienced at helping addicted people make their own decision to stop the pain and loss by getting help. That decision is really the first step in rehabilitation.”

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If you pay attention to government surveys, you’ll learn that more than 20 million people suffer from addiction to alcohol or street drugs, or they are dependent on prescription drugs that they have been abusing. But a recent survey of American adults shows that the effects of addiction stretch much farther than this.

In 2004, 63 percent of adults surveyed said that addiction had impacted their lives, most of them because of a family member’s battle with drugs or alcohol. That means that more than 135 million people struggle either with their own addiction or that of a family member or someone close to them.

This doesn’t measure the number of children who are without a father or mother because they are in jail, in rehabilitation or simply gone. Or the numbers of children who have parents at home but suffer neglect or abuse because of the drug use. It doesn’t measure the lost productivity or the number of businesses that have had to close because an owner lost everything to substance abuse or an employee embezzled enough to close the doors.

Substance abuse and addiction exacts a terrible toll on America. And successful rehabilitation programs can be few and far between. Many rehabilitation programs state success rates between 5 and 20 percent.

“The Narconon Program is very proud of its 70% success rate,” stated Derry Hallmark, stated Derry Hallmark, Director of Admissions and Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor at Narconon Arrowhead. Narconon Arrowhead is one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, located in Canadian, Oklahoma.

“In our forty years of delivering rehabilitation services and in our 120 centers around the world,” Mr. Hallmark added, “we have been able to return many thousands of people to drug-free lifestyles. Our drug-free program addresses the three primary barriers to addiction rehabilitation: cravings, guilt and depression. We employ a thorough detoxification that uses a dry-heat sauna plus exercise, vitamins and minerals to break through the cravings. Educational and counseling phases of this rehabilitation program enable those in our program to leave guilt and depression far behind and develop new life skills for a drug-free life.”

If you know anyone who needs help to overcome a drug addiction, please contact

Narconon Arrowhead

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Looking to become an addiction counselor, or some in the area of addiction, any ideas?

When the Soviet Union fell and greater freedoms became available to its citizens, an undesirable side effect of this change was greater access to narcotics. In particular, heroin. And, as in many other countries, along with a heroin epidemic comes HIV infections resulting from the sharing of needles used to inject heroin. Estimates of the number of heroin addicts vary from three million to six million of the country’s 142 million citizens.

Like in America, some Russian doctors propose the use of substitution therapy with methadone. But unlike America, the treatment of heroin addiction with methadone is illegal. In fact, the discussion of the subject is forbidden, as is the promotion of the treatment on a website. Sometimes, even the mentioning it in conversation can bring legal sanctions down on a person.

In 2006, an influential anti-methadone article was published in the Russian Medical Newspaper, then reprinted and distributed to addiction treatment specialists. The article claims that the methadone will be subject to illegal diversion and that heroin addicts are kept addicted while the pharmaceutical companies make a profit. Passions run high as medical and government officials bicker back and forth on risk reduction through substitute drugs that keep people from injecting heroin illegally, and other forms of treatment.

“If harm reduction is one’s only goal, then methadone may be a viable treatment,” stated Derry Hallmark, Director of Admissions and Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor at Narconon Arrowhead. Narconon Arrowhead is one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, located in Canadian, Oklahoma. “However, if a person’s goal is to live drug-free, then methadone may not be the best option to treat heroin or opiate addiction. Some drug treatment professionals may keep a person on methadone substitution for a long time, meaning that the person does not learn to live drug-free on their own.”

The Narconon program is a fully drug-free program, meaning that every participant goes through a withdrawal step at the beginning of the program, assisted by nutritional support and physical exercises that calm and extrovert the person and relieve the discomfort of withdrawal. This is followed by a sauna program that uses a dry-heat combined with nutrition and an exercise program. This step flushes out old drug residues that may be connected with cravings. With lowered or eliminated cravings, the former addict is now free to take part in the counseling that allows them to leave guilt and depression behind, and learn the life skills that can enable them to make drug-free decisions in the future.

“The Narconon program offers a viable alternative for the person who wishes to experience life without any reliance on drugs,” added Mr. Hallmark. “Our seventy percent success rate means that we are able to return many drug-free individuals to productive lives.”

If you know anyone who needs help to overcome a drug addiction, please contact us at www.stopaddiction.comhttp://www.stopaddiction.com

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I am well aware of the dictionary definitions of these two words. My question is, what is the difference, in psychology, between a psychological addiction and an obsession? It seems to me that the two are extremely similar. I do not refer to physical addiction, but to psychological addiction.

Also, how does one determine whether a person suffers from an obsession or a psychological addiction? Is it simply the preference of the one making the diagnosis, or is there a set of criteria that explicitly defines each?

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