Addiction Treatment

Addiction has to be distinguished from habit or experiment or party time. Addiction is the inability to predict what will happen in any day after the first use of a mood-altering substance or process. Will the person always - every time - be able to take it or leave it by choice or will an uncontrollable binge sometimes occur?

Habit is often related to home or social environment. That's the way things are usually done in the family, at work or socially.

Party time is what students and other merry-makers do. At times they go too far. Eventually they grow out of it or get bored.

Treatment will depend upon the cause: Party time is enjoyable just occasionally. Slow down if it is becoming too much of a good thing. Be concerned if you can't.

Habit is when you get stuck in a rut. Get out of it if it becomes tedious to you or to others. Worry about it if you can't.

Addiction is when you keep going back to a mood-altering substance or process after giving it up for a time. Be appropriately frightened if that is what happens to you or if you become depressed and angry when you are abstaining.

The three underlying influences in addiction are genetic inheritance, emotional trauma and social opportunity.

Social influences are treated by changing the environment. Abstain from anything and anywhere that causes you damage in any way.

Emotional trauma from the past is best treated professionally. EMDR is a psychological process that heals shame and promotes gentle acceptance of past hurts. NLP helps to re-frame past fear or sadness, seeing life in new ways. Psychodrama works on thoughts, feelings and actions all at the same time, enabling new insights and behaviours to develop.

Genetic influences are countered each day by choosing specific alternative behaviours. Obsession with self disappears when helping others with their compulsive or addictive behaviour anonymously.

Treatment of addiction through drug substitution, such as with Methadone or Prozac, simply creates another dependency. Treatment with CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) is helpful for people who were confused but who had no emotional difficulties. Doctors and therapists tend to like CBT because it shows how clever they are. Psychodrama, EMDR and NLP require imagination, creativity, training and skill.

There are many psychological techniques that can help people to settle their tormented spirits. The tortuous processes of analysis should be confined to history. Positive psychology looks at what people do well and builds on that.

The tailor-made treatment for addiction is the Twelve Step programme, first formulated by Alcoholics Anonymous but now applied to many addictions. One day at a time, as with the treatment for any chronic illness, we meet other addicts, we work the Twelve Steps, we read the appropriate books and pamphlets, we find a guide to help us, and we abstain from all mood-altering substances and processes that affect us.

We come to depend upon a higher power than ourselves, specifically as each of us may understand this concept, to restore sanity to our troubled minds and order to our disturbed lives.

Professional treatment aims to help sufferers from addictive disease of any kind to develop peace of mind in spite of unsolved problems, happy and mutually fulfilling relationships, spontaneity, creativity and enthusiasm.

Shocking New Study on Drug Dependent Newborns

A combination of studies and news stories has been going around the internet the past few weeks regarding the impact of opiate drugs not just on adults, teenagers, and the elderly - but on newborn babies. While many of these discussions and statistics kind of fall into the same fear mongering mindset of many reports on drug epidemics, one estimated statistic does certainly tend to make an impact on those that see it:

Every hour a baby is born addicted to opiates.

The study took place between 2000 and 2009 and was conducted by the University of Michigan. It found that regardless of the reason, a five-fold increase in the use of these drugs during the study period has resulted in an astonishing increase to babies born with an opiate dependency. While unwanted and poorly maintained pregnancies amongst drug addicted women is already a well-documented phenomenon, another factor is certainly those that are prescribed opiates for a pain problem and either can't quit it during pregnancy or think that nothing is wrong with that.

Well that is certainly far from the case as "neonatal abstinence syndrome" can result in feeding intolerence, irritability, seizures, and breathing problems as well as low birth weight. Newborns who are cut off from the opiate supply they get in their mother's womb can start to experience these withdrawal symptoms within hours of being born.

Addiction to oxycodone and hydrocodone is one of the worst man-made health crises America has ever seen. While used all the time for pain-relief that would otherwise be impossible, it's danger to the overall public is extreme. Countless people are legally prescribed the drugs and immediately become addicted. Still others use them recreationally and end up in the same experience. Chronic addiction, overdose, death, and imprisonment are all common results of opiate abuse.

Hence a taskforce specially assigned to investigate this phenomenon in Florida. The suffering this problem creates is immense and deplorable. Some part of the blame for this must lay at the manufacturers and prescribers of these drugs - because unlike other addiction problems, this problem will occur even for those that are being safely medicated by an addictive substance and are not abusing it. While it is a slightly lesser problem, there are also millions of Americans taking CNS depressants that are looking at a difficult situation should they become pregnant and still be taking these drugs.

There is little information available for people facing this problem - in fact, many Americans today still think little of exposing pregnant women to cigarette smoke. Combined with other 21st century health catastrophes such as obesity, and the millions of people suffering increased rates of cancer, asthma, allergies, and other problems attributed to poor lifestyle choices and pollutants, opiate dependency in newborns is yet another pharmacological nightmare that America can ill afford.

Find out more about the dangers of prescription drug abuse and how it can be treated.