Drug Abuse

But let’s be clear about this much: Beating drug abuse isn’t easy. Drug abuse treatment only succeeds by virtue of concerted effort and eternal vigilance; drug abuse recovery is and can only be a function of struggle and strain and individual sacrifice. No drug abuse victim, simply put, ever gets better without working for it, and there isn’t a drug abuse rehab program in the world that can ever do the heavy lifting for you.

The obvious corollary, in a practical sense, is that the successful drug abuse treatment patient is very often the informed drug abuse treatment patient. You can’t fight what you don’t understand, after all, and only a firm working knowledge of drug abuse itself can help you overcome the disease. Before you can get sober, you’ve got to get smart: You’ve got to learn how drug abuse works, and how drug abuse treatment combats it; you’ve got to recognize drug abuse for what it actually is, because nothing short of the truth can show you the way to long-term recovery.

The following text lays out a brief sketch of drug abuse and drug abuse treatment, one that will hopefully give you a rudimentary sense of the road ahead. The struggle against drug abuse is invariably a long one, and the information here is but the tip of far larger iceberg, but know this much: You’ve got to start somewhere. The fact that you’re here says that you have a sense of what’s at stake, that you understand how serious the problem is. Let today be the day you commit yourself to beating drug abuse once and for all.

The personal impact of drug abuse is obvious. Chronic drug addiction and drug abuse, simply put, ruin lives; drug use and abuse end careers, and tear families apart, and deprive individuals of those edifying emotional experiences which make life a meaningful and vital thing. Hardcore drug abuse leaves drug addicts unable to relate to anything except their desire to use drugs, with the obvious consequence that the world, for a drug addict, is a place stripped of everything except inveterate and insatiable need.

But drug abuse is not a strictly personal phenomenon, and the effects of drug abuse are not strictly personal in nature. On the contrary, drug abuse entails a substantial social cost in the United States and around the world, one that should and does involve entire populations in the fight against the disease. Individual drug abuse drives down economic output while increasing rates of criminal activity, and saps social wealth by placing an undue strain on prisons and hospitals. Drug abuse effects all of us, in the end, and it’s only through concerted collective effort that we can ever hope to do anything about it.

An important part of that going, in turn, is predicated on your understanding of drug dependency itself. It’s important to understand that drug abuse is the product of a disease, a clinical condition that is no less a bona fide illness that diabetes, or hypertension. What that means, in plain terms, is that drug abuse is not a function of individual choice, or personal agency; drug addicts use drugs because they have to, not because they want to. Think of it like this: A diabetic doesn’t decide to have low insulin levels, and a hypertension patient doesn’t decide to have high blood pressure. The situation, unfortunately, is no different for a chronic drug abuser.

By the same token, drug abuse can’t be defeated by a simple act of volition. If drug abusers could somehow choose to stop abusing drugs, the world wouldn’t be so full of chronic drug addicts, and overfull drug treatment centers. The truth, of course, is far different: No drug addict can simply decide to stop being a drug addict, any more than a diabetic or a hypertension patient can opt for full health. The fight against drug abuse, like the fight against any disease, can only ever be won with the help of trained doctors and professional caregivers. Drug abuse treatment can’t work unless you make it go, you might say, but you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t seek assistance along the way.

And make no mistake: Physical drug abuse treatment is but a part of an any successful addiction recovery plan. Again, drug abuse is the product of both physical and emotional causes, and effective drug abuse treatment is that which accounts for both the physiological and psychological health of its patients. As such, it’s fair to say that addiction counseling is in an important sense the lynchpin of any drug abuse treatment program: Without achieving extensive personal growth, no drug addict can expect to gain any kind of lasting upper hand on drug abuse and drug dependency.

Of course, and to emphasize a point made earlier, such personal growth is ultimately a function of personal effort. No drug abuse treatment program can heal a person with substance use disorder who doesn’t want to be healed; you can lead a horse to water, as the old saying goes, but you can’t make him drink. Drug abuse treatment is ultimately and at best a facilitator of drug abuse recovery, a vehicle for addicts who must, in the end, take responsibility for the success of their own drug abuse treatment plans. Drug abuse healing is up to you, when you really get down to it, and no one else can ever get you all the way to where you need to go.

Some drug abuse treatment facilities purport to have discovered a single way for helping treat drug abuse, a blanket solution that works for every addict to whom it is applied. Those drug abuse treatment facilities assume, implicitly, that all drug addicts are the same; the notion of any kind of universal drug abuse treatment plan would seem to suggest some kind of universal drug addict, a figure reified common experiences of all drug abusers. Unfortunately, such an assumption is flat wrong, and is deeply inimical to the drug abuse recovery process; every drug addict is unique, and no drug abuse treatment program should ever presume otherwise. You know the truth, after all: You are you own person; you are yourself and no one else. No one has ever experienced drug abuse like you have, and no one’s drug abuse recovery experience could ever be quite the same as yours. In the end, that’s not how addiction works, and that’s not how healing happens.

And so, finally, a word on choice. Given the number of drug treatment options on the market, the search for drug rehab in Los Angeles is a particularly difficult one. Remember, though, that successful addiction treatment is and can only be that which caters to your individuals needs, and that the California drug rehab that’s right for you will ultimately be the one which presents you with a uniquely-crafted recovery program. Getting better, all told, has got to be a thoroughly personal process, a journey which begins and ends with you, an experience that’s real for you and no one else. The fight against drug abuse depends only and ultimately on you: your effort, your resolve. To win it, you need help from a drug abuse treatment program that’s committed to you, and to your needs. Please, for your own sake, let today be the day you start looking for what you really need.