How To Get Drug Free.
The traditional view of drug use is that people use drugs because they want to get high, live a life of abandonment of traditional values, with no responsibility. People who choose to use drugs against the social order, contrary to directions given on their prescription medication, do so in the spirit of rebellion.
Drug supply and abuse is considered to be immoral, and attracts criminal penalties.
It is recognized that drug use is self harming, no one in good mental health engages in self harming behavior.
Therefore, it has been suggested – people who take drugs are engaging in self harming behavior and must have something wrong with their brain. The behavior needs to be corrected.
If we can find out what is wrong with the brain, and medicate it, the person will feel happy, and not want to use drugs again.
For years medical science has looked for a malfunctioning gene, a root cause for the choice to use drugs, and has not yet found a gene that cries out for a hit of heroin, or for a gin and tonic. Medical science has effectively abandoned its search for a specific gene that mandates drug abuse.
The failure to find any genes that cause abuse of drugs means that the genetic disease theory of drug addiction cannot be sustained.
Instead, scientists have now discovered that, regardless of the reasons why people first turn to drug use, the repeated use of drugs changes the chemistry of the brain – so that a person gets a chemically induced “craving” for drug use. They don’t have any choice in it – they feel compelled to use drugs.
The reason for this chemically induced craving is said to be that drug use creates a high, and that the person remembers this “high” as being a desirable feeling.
This revised traditional view is that the brain gets rewired with constant drug abuse – so that eventually there is nothing else that the rewired brain thinks to be important in life than to go chasing the dragon.
Instead of genetic disease, as a cause of addiction, we now have drug induced neuroplasticity.
Both views of the causes of drug addiction place responsibility for drug use and addiction otherwise than with the user. Neither model informs users how to get drug free.
Against this somewhat fatalistic attitude towards the causes of addiction it has to be remembered that except in the most extreme of cases – addicts remain able to maintain limited control around their drug use. Sometimes addicts, feeling better, will not use for months, only to relapse with a resounding crash that medical science cannot fathom.
The traditional view of drug use assumes that conditions in life are such that we should all be “happy” – if we are not, then this situation is somehow our fault. If we try and seek happiness outside of the prescribed “ways” of our community the situation can be remedied by behavioral modification techniques designed to get us to find our pleasure within the social order, and abandon our illicit drug use.
It is important to note that if addicts find fulfilment in another area of life – their drug craving subsides. Some addicts experience a spontaneous recovery from drug use because their life has finally, and in spite of drug use, improved and feels more rewarding.
A modern view of drug abuse, based on what the addicts say, is that most addicts want to give up their addiction, and live a normal life. However, they feel that drug use has taken over, and they don’t know how to get drug free.
Addicts don’t use drugs to get high, they use drugs to make themselves feel better, use drugs to try and feel “normal”.
It is not so much the possible high, but attempted control of emotional pain that drives the drug abuse.
A model of addiction based on a need to overcome emotional pain is both encouraging to the addict, and gives them something to work with.
If it is only our feelings of negativity that lead us to drug abuse, and that people with inate confidence and self esteem consider drug use to be disempowering, have a “natural immunity” – then anyone who chooses to deal with their pain – can overcome their drug use.
Dopamine release makes people feel “good”, normally a natural response to positive social interaction and stimulation. It is not a good situation when the sole stimulus for the release of “feel good” chemicals in the brain has become the ingestion, or an intravenous injection, of drugs.
However, when the mind has become emotionally blocked, and defensive against potential emotional pain – some people defensively prefer to maintain “control” of their emotions and their life – by using a psychoactive chemical product.
Clearly the mind that directs such abuse, is in need of help to overcome its self harming negativity.
Comprehensive alcohol and drug addiction recovery programs are the answer to drug abuse and addiction, working at three levels :
detoxification from all psychoactive and chemical substances,
re inventing a “positive” mind set,
enabling positive feelings to flow into a positive life.
The more that people progress with a comprehensive “journey”, the more positive and empowered they feel, eventually coming to a realization that they are no longer dependent on drugs – that they have a life of their own.
Graduates from comprehensive drug addiction recovery programs are not trapped in the twilight world of drug addiction recovery.
People who graduate from comprehensive drug programs have overcome their negativity – no longer think in terms of drugs to get the natural highs that come with happiness and good times.
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