Through years of treating addiction to drugs and alcohol, Narconon Treatment Center staff have seen that there a few places addiction will lead a person, drug and alcohol rehabilitation being the best of any of the probable outcomes. The way out of this lifestyle, no matter how long the individual has been living it, is a process not to be taken lightly. There is no ‘easy’ way out. Nobody has a magic solution to this timeless problem. If it were simple and easy, the reversion rate would not be near what it is. There is reason for why this process needs so much attention to affect a positive change in the lives of the afflicted.
Burdens of Life
As people live their lives they accumulate experiences. During the daily running of our lives we go through any number of situations where the end results are feelings such as; happiness, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, anxiety. For those addicted to drugs and alcohol these snapshots of times and places carry with them a hidden burden. As the undesirable experience passes, the impact doesn’t diminish as some believe. Instead it lays in wait for a similar experience in the future. As the new experience happens, the brain (having stored the prior circumstances) will reinforce the current happenings with that of the past.
This is a non-optimum response, due to the fact that the new circumstances are their own and being of a different time and probably place, so the response should be based on what is actually going on not some past moment in their life. The emotional effect in the average person is one where the current situation is evaluated and the correct response is experienced. With a drug addict, present time is meshed with the past and the response is clouded and often doesn’t fit the actual situation which is occurring right now. I am sure anyone with firsthand knowledge in dealing with someone addicted to drugs can think of countless times where they are not sure why the person is acting the way they are, because is far different from the way a healthy person would react to the same conditions.
Addressing the Past in Recovery
During the recovery process, there will be times where these past experiences rear their heads and progression forward is very hard for the person. The past dictates the feeling of wanting to use drugs or drink alcohol. This is what they have done in the past to deal with these types of emotions, and when given a skewed version of reality and the prior emotions take hold, the craving sets in as “solution” to alleviating those feelings. Often times when a person goes through a short term treatment the person doesn’t have enough time to let life bring these conditions to the surface and so they remain unresolved. Part of recovery needs to be unlearning all of these “knee-jerk” reactions they have grown accustom to utilizing in order to get by in life. Most of them are counterproductive to starting a new life.
The answer lies in gaining control of the moment in which they exist. In doing so, a person finds that life gives multiple solutions that are very fitting for the circumstances at hand. Programs like Narconon Vista Bay are using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy models and to great results. All of the addicts walking through the door have, as barriers to recovery, many different past situations which were distinct to them and cause definite hindrances to functioning fully in their present environment. While maintaining a hold of the “now” they become more capable beings. At Narconon Drug Rehab Centers, simply getting a person off of the substance they were abusing is not enough, they need to know that life will continue to give them experiences and they have the capacity to make their lives into anything they choose. Empowerment over life is opposite to what most addicts feel. So by increasing the self-worth of a person as they relate to world around them they will cease to let their past control their future. Narconon Treatment Center at Vista Bay, being a long-term treatment program gives the person the time to allow the past to become the resolved basis for a new life. This is key to effectiveness because at no point is the issue forced on the person. Life brought them the prior situations in its own time and when looking resolve the same is true.
At the end of any worthwhile drug treatment, the person returning to their lives needs to feel like they can handle any part of life. Making sure this has been accomplished gives way to all the wonderful times experienced by a sober person. When in search of the right substance abuse treatment for yourself or a loved one it remains important to look at the whole picture and understanding that drugs are not the entire problem, and that life behaves in a certain way and the person needs to evolve beyond their past to give themselves an actual and permanent road out for their future.
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