Alcohol Addiction

Alcoholism is the usual term applied to someone with an alcohol addiction. The physiological and psychological affects of alcoholism can be quite severe. At high levels of daily alcohol use the user can run the risk of severe withdrawal called delirium tremens which can be life threatening. Such alcohol addiction requires full medical supervision until the threat to life is reduced. Most 28 day traditional treatment programs are only able to affect a success ratio of 16% to 20% in achieving lasting sobriety. Cravings, guilt and depression are the three factors preventing long term success with alcohol addiction, or any other for that matter. These three points usually require a more thorough address than that received in the shorter programs.

An inpatient alcohol treatment clinic is generally short term in nature, dealing in the main with medical complications as the result of extended alcohol abuse or alcoholism. The severity of delirium tremens that can occur with cessation of alcohol use in the alcoholic often require a medically supervised withdrawal process with a close monitoring of other medical complications or conditions. This approach, though necessary, is only the beginning in the rehabilitation process for the alcoholic. Cessation of use and drying out thing, full rehabilitation requires fully confronting and resolving the cravings, guilt, and depression that result from alcoholism and are more often than not contributing factors leading up to alcoholism.

Effective drug or alcohol rehab starts with really understanding exactly what rehabilitation is. Rehabilitate in its broad sense means to restore to a previous condition. Any rehab to be effective needs to address the three factors which lead up to and cause addiction to continue. These are mental and physical cravings, quilt, and depression. Drug and alcohol abuse stems from mental or physical pain an individual does not wish to confront or deal with. The drugs or alcohol only appear to alleviate these conditions and after a time contribute to them as well as creating new sources in and endless cycle and trap known as addiction. Confronting and effectively handling the conditions brought about by cravings, quilt, and depression allows the addicted individual to truly ‘rehab’ him or herself and so be restored to a previous condition or at least as close as possible. Narconon Arrowhead is much more than a detox center where the individual simply quits using for a period. Narconon Arrowhead drug rehab methodologies fully handle the above factors allowing one to truly rehabilitate a previous condition and so remove the need for further drug or alcohol use as a false solution to living the life they want.

Addiction has many faces. The alcoholic who can’t refuse that first drink; the teenager who finds himself craving methamphetamine to keep going after trying in on a dare; the single mom finding herself using more and more anti-depressants to deal with getting through the day; or the workman now using way to many painkillers to get through the physical stress of the workday. Most addiction involves more than one substance as addicts seek solutions to the original drugs adverse affects by mistakenly using other substances in an attempt to escape the harsh realities of addiction or an attempt to simply get back to normal. Each addiction can have its own symptoms and side effects. Cravings, quilt, and depression however are almost universally common denominators to addiction, any lasting recovery from addiction must confront and relieve or resolve these three key factors.

Many programs consider withdrawal from the particular drug of addiction to be detoxification. The is only a partial answer and when substitute drugs are given to replace the substance of abuse this is hardly detoxification at all and is often simply trading one substance for another, as in the use of some anti-depressants, or drugs like methadone, etc. Detoxification means to remove drugs, poisons and toxins from the body as fully as possible. Research clearly indicates that these substances will store in the fatty tissues of the body for months and even years. This in part accounts for drugged feeling and cravings appearing long after use has ceased. At Narconon Arrowhead we follow up withdrawal from use with the New Life Detoxification Program. This is state of the art detoxification embracing nutrition, exercise, and sauna routines to flush the stored drugs and toxins from the body. Many of the people completing this detoxification program report a complete handling and end of drug cravings, with rises in intelligence and ability demonstrated by actual test results.