Archive for December, 2010

Narconon Drug Rehab Graduate

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

A graduate of the Narconon drug rehab program shares their story about how drug addiction had control of their life and how other drug rehabs didn’t work, Narconon Drug Rehab Successbut after going through the drug withdrawal process and completing the Narconon drug rehab program, was in control again and proud.

When I came to Narconon, my life was completely and totally out of control. The drugs owned me. I did whatever I had to do to get them and cared less who I hurt along the way including my family.

I had been in and out of rehabs, but could never find the answer. When I first arrived, I was beat down and never thought I could kick heroin without substituting with other drugs. The withdrawal team here is absolutely incredible, and they kept me busy so I wouldn’t get stuck in my head. The assists did wonders for my aches.

After withdrawal, words cant describe what happened. Book 1 was a blast and I learned so much from it. Sauna was amazing! I went in an addict and came out a new and improved man. I felt absolutely amazing. The rest of the program was definitely where it was at. I found out that the drugs no longer controlled me and I was in control again. My confidence grew and I once again walked around with my head held high. It felt amazing. I was proud to be me again.

RP

If you or someone you know need help with drug addiction or help getting into a drug rehab, please call the Narconon drug rehab toll free number at 1 800-775-8750 or visit www.narconon.org

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Despite Ups and Downs, International Drug Traffickers Ensure Cocaine Markets Expand, Cautions Narconon Spokesperson

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

International organizations analyzing cocaine use in the United States have been saying that domestic cocaine use is down. At the same time, there are reports Cocaine Usethat cocaine production in many South American regions has been declining in response to eradication efforts. So are the cocaine manufacturers suffering?

International statistics show that the area devoted to the coca crop fell from 211,700 hectares to 159,000. Along with that, seizures in South America increased from an estimated 28 percent of the supply in 2002 to 42 percent of the supply by 2008 - a major improvement and a testimony to the drug interdiction efforts of international law enforcement agencies.

On the other end of the supply line, American consumption gradually dropped from 10.5 million users in 1982 to about half that in 2008.

So how do cocaine manufacturers respond? They just find a new market and exploit it. In this case, Australia, where a very desirable exchange rate and a largely untapped market make Australia a golden opportunity.

Narconon director of drug education, Bobby Wiggins stated, "Australians don’t deserve a heavy influx of cocaine any more than any other population. The time to fight back is before these channels of trafficking get entrenched." Narconon is an international organization dedicated to eliminating addiction through effective rehabilitation and drug education.

Any efforts to crack down on this market face some formidable opposition. When cocaine crosses into Australia, the price is marked up 1000 percent. That’s a powerful motivation for unscrupulous drug dealers.

Australian media corroborate the influx of higher supplies of cocaine by reporting on the increase in seizures. In one decade, seizures increased from 50 to more than 600.

Since cocaine is a stimulant and is normally accompanied by a risky lifestyle, one hazardous effect being experienced by Australians is an increase in heart attacks. One Sydney hospital reported six cocaine-related heart attacks in December 2010 when they normally would have seen one per year.

Addiction to cocaine can destroy a user’s life through illness, death, incarceration or the kind of damage that naturally accompanies addiction - loss of job, family, self-esteem, businesses and friendship. Anyone who has a friend or family member who is using cocaine should help them overcome their addiction at the first possible moment. It takes effective drug rehabilitation to help a person leave addiction behind and forge a new, drug-free life.

Narconon drug recovery centers around the world help people reclaim their lives through eight phases of recovery, which includes a sauna detoxification program that helps flush out drug residues that may be involved with triggering cravings for more drugs. The Narconon drug rehabilitation program then provides each recovering addict with the life skills training that restores self-esteem and the ability to make drug-free decisions.

For more information on Narconon, visit www.narconon.org

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Narconon Director Reports on Costs of Drug Abuse and Addiction

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

It’s not just in jail and drug rehabs, reports Bobby Wiggins, director of Narconon ® International Drug Education Office. "The effects of substance abuse andDrug Abuse and Addictionaddiction show up in places you might not expect them," said Wiggins. "In hospitals to schools, in businesses across the country, addiction reveals its destructive effects." Narconon is an international organization dedicated to eliminating addiction through drug-free drug rehabilitation services and drug education.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that more than half the tax of substance abuse is carried by the non-abusing population through their support of government control efforts, education, insurance, judicial, healthcare and social systems. Each year, the total price tag approaches the staggering figure of $534 billion in the U.S. alone.

Employers shoulder much of the financial burden of substance abuse and addiction. Most addicts are gainfully employed for years of their addiction, at least until their ability to function is openly hampered by drugs or alcohol. Never the less those employees ordinarily generate more Workers’ Compensation claims and are involved in more workplace accidents that endanger co-workers. And addiction routinely reduces productivity among the addicted, meaning that co-workers also have to make up for their shortages.

U.S. healthcare costs related to alcohol abuse reach nearly $19 billion and drug-related expenses add another $10 billion more from treating cirrhosis, HIV infection, trauma and other substance abuse issues. Less than a third of this amount is dedicated to treatment.

On average, substances abusers tend to die younger than non-abusers, meaning that more families will lack financial support or other services such as child care. This shortfall places further strain on social services.

Nearly $25 billion in costs result from U.S. alcohol-related vehicle crashes. More than $13 billion of these costs are covered by auto or property insurance, increasing the rates for non-abusers.

"The tragedy is that all these damages and costs are avoidable," stated Wiggins. "By educating young people about the dangers of drug abuse, they can and will learn how to make better, drug-free choices. And by providing effective substance abuse recovery services at our centers around the world, we save lives and save families from suffering these emotional and financial costs."

At Narconon centers in more than 100 locations, graduates learn how to live drug-free lives by participating in the long-term, holistic drug recovery program. After completion of this program, seven out of ten Narconon graduates stay clean and sober after they get home.

For more information on the Narconon drug rehabilitation program, visit www.narconon.org

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Eliminating Alcohol Abuse Can Alleviate a Long List of Social Ills, Reports Narconon Spokesperson

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

In 2005, the World Health Organization published a comprehensive summary of the world’s social burdens that result from alcohol abuse. The list was long and Alcohol Addictionthe conditions suffered in greater proportion by alcohol consumers were serious and often life-threatening.

Overall, the WHO reported that 4 percent of disease and 3.2 percent of all deaths around the world were attributed to alcohol. In developed countries, alcohol was the third most common risk to health.

There is every reason to eliminate alcohol dependence or abuse and no reason to allow it to go on. Narconon is an international organization dedicated to the elimination of addiction to both alcohol and drugs. Narconon offers drug rehabilitation and drug education at its more than 100 centers around the world.

The list of the conditions stated by the WHO as being caused by or worsened by alcohol abuse, dependence or addiction:
Cancers of the mouth (lip, tongue), pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, colon, ovaries and liver
Cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure
Hypertension (especially related to heavy drinking)
Haemorrhagic stroke even at low levels of drinking
Liver cirrhosis
Prenatal exposure results in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders including physical deformities and mental retardation
Spontaneous abortion, low birth weight and prematurity
Injury due to falls, fires or traffic accidents
Self-inflicted injuries
Injury from alcohol-related violence or sexual assault
Risky sexual behavior resulting in sexually transmitted disease or unwanted pregnancy
Additionally, some studies show a causal relationship to female breast cancer.

Around the world, people in nearly every country are experiencing harm from the abuse of alcohol. Simply eliminating the compulsion to drink would save more than a million lives every year and even more serious health conditions that don’t result in death.

But what is needed to alleviate these ills is an effective alcohol rehabilitation program, one that results in long-term sobriety after completion. Unfortunately, the stated success rate for many drug or alcohol rehabs is only 10 to 20 percent.

The Narconon drug rehabilitation program administered in recovery centers around the world enables seven out of ten graduates to stay clean and sober after they go home. With that much success, many of these injuries, illnesses and causes of death don’t have to be the fate of those who were formerly addicted to beer, wine, whiskey, vodka and other types of hard liquor.

For more information on Narconon, visit www.narconon.org

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Death of Newborn Illustrates That Addiction Kills More than Just Addicts, Explains Narconon Director

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Little Maggie May never saw her first Thanksgiving or her first Christmas. She died after being added to a washing machine with a load of clothes - by Lindsey Fiddler, her drug-addled mother.

On November 4, 2010, Maggie’s great-aunt noticed that Lindsey passed out on the couch without having the baby anywhere around her. She went looking for the ten-day-old baby. Understandably, the washing machine was not the first place she looked. By the time she located the baby in the washer, the infant was dead. The mother is now in jail, awaiting trial.

According to the great-aunt, Lindsey had been up for days, probably using meth. When police questioned the mother, she said she didn’t know how the baby got into the washer and that she didn’t use meth any more. But a toxicology scan showed that she tested positive for methamphetamine, amphetamine, benzodiazepine and opiates.

Those who don’t abuse drugs and have never been addicted may not be able to grasp how this could happen. Narconon is an international organization dedicated to eliminating addiction through effective drug and alcohol rehabilitation and drug prevention services. But someone who is on four different drugs like these is going to be hugely out of touch with reality. Who knows what her perceptions were like? All we know is that they were terrible enough to result in the death of a beautiful child.

Unfortunately, Maggie’s story is far from the only one of its kind. Hundreds of thousands of children suffer neglect, injury or death at the hands of substance abusing parents. One survey stated that substance abuse was involved in 75 percent of all foster home placements.

The answer is drug rehabilitation that works, that enables a parent to live a drug-free, productive life. Of parents who come to Narconon centers around the world to recover from addiction, seven out of ten stay clean and sober after they get home. This means hundreds of children who have the opportunity to live safely in their own homes again.

For information on how you can help someone overcome addiction, visit www.narconon.org

 

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Just What We Don’t Need: Another New Drug Slipped through a “Legal” Loophole, Reports Narconon Spokesperson

Friday, December 10th, 2010

It’s not like we don’t have enough trouble with the illicit drugs currently on the market: heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, ecstasy Drug Dealand others are bad enough. A new substance has hit the market in the last year, promoted as "legal," and "providing the same high as marijuana."

A year ago, most law enforcement offices had never heard of "Spice," as this marijuana substitute was called. But as time went on, more hospitals were seeing cases of seizures and hallucinations resulting from use of the substance. And more people were turning up dependent on the drug. Still, none of the ingredients were illegal so law enforcement had no action they could take.

On November 24, 2010, the DEA announced that it was using its emergency powers to ban the five chemicals that were key to its manufacture. For one year, anyone possessing these chemicals without specific authorization will be subject to arrest. This will give U.S. government agencies time to determine Spice’s addictiveness and hazards.

“People who develop these synthetic drugs care nothing about the individuals they may harm by doing so," stated Bobby Wiggins, spokesperson for Narconon®, an international organization fighting substance abuse and addiction through drug and alcohol rehabilitation. "There’s no tests to determine potential harm to someone who uses the drug. If they can promise a high similar to something a drug user already knows about and they can also claim it’s legal, these manufacturers can really make a killing."

It’s not hard to understand the forces that drove some industrious individuals to develop this alternative to marijuana. Since 1996, the number of Americans using illicit drugs increased from 13 million to nearly 22 million in 2009. The largest drug of abuse is marijuana, with more than 16 million people using the drug every month. Any manufacturer who can put a cheap chemical substitute on the market has millions of potential users.

Spice, also known as "K2," "Blaze" and "Red X Dawn" has been sold online, in head shops and a variety of retail outlets. Sometimes the packaging identifies the contents as incense.

Unfortunately, one of the effects of this action by the DEA will be to drive this trade underground. When a family finds that one of their members, young or old, is using Spice and can’t quit on their own, they need to act immediately. By helping the drug abuser or addict find a drug recovery service right away, they could save their loved one from arrest, damage to their health or even death from a seizure or accident. At the very least, they will help their loved ones lead drug-free, productive lives again, if the rehabilitation service has been proven effective.

At Narconon centers across the U.S. and around the world, addicts find lasting recovery in seven out of ten cases. Get more information about the Narconon drug rehabilitation program by visiting www.narconon.org

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College Students Need to be Educated on Problems Related to Alcohol Abuse, Warns Narconon Director

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

When America’s young people go off to college, this is supposed to be the start of their adult lives and their careers. These young people should be getting educations that enable them to be the doctors, teachers, architects, software designers and engineers of our future.

What lies ahead for many of them is more than only classes, textbooks and exams. For many of them, years of alcohol street and prescription drug abuse will waste their talents and energies and impair their ability to get an education. Thousands of them will suffer injury, abuse or assaults related to alcohol or drug abuse. And too many will die.

A comprehensive report from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse states that half of America’s college students binge drink and abuse prescription and illegal drugs. Just what is binge drinking? It’s the consumption of five drinks in one sitting for a man and four drinks in one sitting for a female. Essentially, it’s drinking to get drunk or at least buzzed. Unfortunately, the culture on most of our college and university campuses not only condones this behavior, it encourages and enables it.

These students are at high risk for developing dependence on or addiction to the substances they are abusing. It’s common for college students to feel like they can handle heavy or frequent drinking in school. But in nearly every case, these young adults are poorly equipped to make judgments about how much is too much or to know when they have crossed the line to dependence. Few of them have any education on the hazards that can show up in a drunken party, for example.

The hazards can be disastrous. Every year, one hundred thousand women are victims of sexual assault or rape, related to alcohol abuse. Nearly three-quarters of a million students are injured in alcohol-related accidents. And 2,000 students die from alcohol poisoning or alcohol-related accidents or violence.

The media runs stories of deaths and injury from alcohol poisoning all too frequently. Like the story of Benjamin Harris at the University of Idaho who consumed as many as 15 shots on the night he turned 21. In July 2010, he was found unconscious at his fraternity and died before he could be gotten to a hospital.

And in August 2010 in Dallas, Texas, two girls who had participated in pledging activities at sororities were found passed out in their dorms. Both had to be treated for alcohol poisoning.

Heavy alcohol consumption has no more place in a college education than it has in any productive life. It’s up to parents to educate their children on substance abuse, particularly alcohol and prescription drugs. Open and honest communication about the problems that can result are essential in helping a young adult develop judgment.

It’s not something that colleges want to advertise that some of their students detour through a drug rehab before they can graduate. Many of them have made their ways to a Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. When they graduate from this program, seven out of ten go on to live clean and sober lives.

Centers offering the Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and the Narconon drug education curriculum exist in forty countries around the world. Since 1966, Narconon has been helping restore addicts to productive, enjoyable lives.

For more information on Narconon, visit www.narconon.org

 

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Rural Appalachian Counties Hit Hard by Drug Trafficking and Abuse Need More Effective Rehab, Warns Narconon Spokesperson

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Rural areas like the back hills of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are not headline news. In fact, they are pretty far off the nation’s radar. These areas are commonly thought of as being peopled by poor folks and it’s true that poverty figures in these states are much higher than the national average.

But what may shock some people is the fact that at the same time that poverty increased, drug trafficking, abuse and addiction has grown with it. Now, the Appalachian counties have some of the highest prescription drug abuse rates in the country.

In addition to opioids like hydrocodone (Valium) and oxycodone (OxyContin), alprazolam (Xanax) and diazepam (Valium) are frequently abused. As the Appalachian states get more vigilant about monitoring prescription sales, local drug dealers often travel to Georgia and Florida to purchase stock, where not as much progress has been made on monitoring programs.

Many states are stretched so thin trying to prevent distribution of these controlled prescription drugs and arresting and incarcerating drug offenders that they may short the effort to help people recover from their addictions. In these three states, only one person out of every 21 people needing it is able to find drug rehabilitation services. That leaves hundreds of thousands of people in the Appalachian states who need help.

In Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia alone, 648,000 people abuse a prescription pain reliever each year. Not only is the rate of abuse in Appalachia higher than the rest of the country, but the rate of abuse is growing faster than anywhere else in the U.S. For many people, abusing these drugs quickly leads to addiction. Females and those under 24 years of age are the ones most often seeking treatment for addiction to pain relievers in Appalachia.

In fact, in some parts of the Appalachians, more people die from drug overdoses than die in traffic accidents. And the drugs killing them are all too often opioids that should be used by prescription only. In West Virginia, "unintentional poisoning" or drug overdose deaths increased 550% percent in West Virginia over a ten year period, and 164 percent in Kentucky. In general, the more rural the state, the faster the rate of growth. Most of the growth was seen from overdoses to prescription drugs, particularly opioid pain relievers and sedatives.

For too many addicts, rehab centers have revolving doors. Addicts enter, hoping to recover, then go home, only to relapse and go back to rehab. This enables the rate of substance abuse to rise quickly as new people get trapped in addiction. What is missing is addiction treatment that really gets to the root of the problems that drove a person to substance abuse in the first place. The Narconon program is a long-term, residential drug and alcohol treatment program that enables each addict to not only face the life problems that landed him or her in addiction but also to learn the life skills to make drug-free decisions after they leave. For seven out of ten graduates, this means long-term sobriety.

The Narconon drug rehabilitation program is delivered in Narconon centers around the world and across the U.S. For more information, visit www.narconon.org

 

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