Drug Addiction Stories & Info

Come Together and Beat Addiction

Send us your thoughts on addiction, post ideas, ways to help, and inspirational stories.  Millions of people are battling addiction every day, and for so many there is no one to talk to, no one to seek help from.  I am inviting the entire world to start talking about addiction right now, what ever your thoughts are, send it to us.  Share it on line here, there are people who will listen and provide advice, or just a kind ear. 

Let’s start making a change now, let us start inspiring those addicted to drugs and alcohol to get help, look for advice, or just talk about it.  If we continue to ignore the problem it will only get bigger.  It is all around, us impacting all walks of life, young and old.  I am challenging you to voice your thoughts, stories, advice, anything you can think of that will get people talking about.   

 I will start things off; here is an inspirational success story:

“The Narconon program has freed me from the shackles of my addiction; it has given me the strength to face my past demons that kept me locked in a hopeless losing battle with drugs.  It has brought me back from a helpless soul that was only just surviving, to a person who is not only surviving, but is living life and loving it.  That was an impossible task before this program how could I have loved life if I didn’t even love myself….  And that is the biggest gift that the program has given me!”

 ”I love what I see in the mirror now.  I have nothing to hide from the people in my life and it is amazing how easy life really is when you are not living a double life and by facing the things in my life and changing all aspects of my life. I have been able to talk about things in my past freely with the people who love me, all because I have forgiven myself while doing all the steps on the program, and I am truly in present time,  something that didn’t make sense to me till after I got home and realized how my addiction was really controlling me and every action I made…But no more   and never again…. ”

 ”Thank you Narconon, for finding me and bringing me back to life!!!!!!!!”

Two stories, not about recovery from drug addiction, it’s true, but nevertheless compelling tales about two young men who overcame adversity, found hope beyond despair, who each have something important to say to young people today.

Youth today faces challenge.  There is the challenge of drugs, challenge to the family unit as the cornerstone of happy communities. It can be a challenge to find appropriate employment, to maintain a positive sense of self worth and value in society today.

Many young people, who feel the pressure, might resort to negative behavior, rebellion, anger and drug use, not because they are bad people, but because everyone has a need to find identity, friendship and bonding somewhere within the community.

Young people are at risk of being misunderstood, when they engage in anti social behavior. There is always a better way to speak out, have a voice and make our needs known than by acting out in a destructive, self harming way, that ultimately causes distress to all,  and fails to heal our wounds.

Using the path of substance abuse to overcome despair does not provide the social inclusion and acceptance that we crave.

 The first story is about Nick Vujicic, born without arms or legs in the December of 1982. There was no reason, no particular cause as to why of all his siblings, Nick was born with the rare condition of Tetra-amelia Syndrome. His life could easily have become an endless night of helplessness, without hope of being able to live anything like a “normal” life.

Nick has his mother and father to thank for their grim determination, that whatever happened in Nick’s life – they would do their best to treat him as normal, and encourage others to do the same. Nick had no special favors, no demeaning pity – he went to an ordinary government school, studied the usual lessons, and managed to bear and overcome more than a fair share of teasing and bullying.

Life was not always kind, and by an early age Nick had faced up to the demons of loneliness and depression, had considered suicide.

However, Nick went on to graduate from Griffiths University in Accounting and Financial Planning, and wrote many inspirational books such as Life Without Limits. Nick has sporting achievements to his credit, has moved to live in California, where he runs the motivational charity, for the help of others, known as Life Without Limbs.

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Nick is a sought after motivational, public speaker in Canada, most recently appearing in Edmonton in January 2012, at the Shaw Conference Center.

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After a long relationship, and engagement to Kanae – Nick and Kanae were married in February 2012.

Another young man, who says that charity is and will always be part of his life, is Pacharo Mzembe.

Pacharo Mzembe was born in Zimbabwe and at the age of five became with his family, a political refugee, eventually settling in Australia. Although Pach has successfully graduated from an Australian High School, and since become a famous TV personality – starring as “Nigger” in the Melbourne gangsta TV series “Underbelly”, he is all too aware of the poverty, the lack of educational opportunties back in his homeland. 

Pach sees himself as having been favored with opportunities, denied to young people who live in Third World poverty.

What drives Pach to forsake his movie career – and run across Australia – hopefully covering just over 4,000k in around 70 days - participating in the Run of Awareness, is what he sees as an urgent need for all young people to be given a good education.

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As part of the run, Pach intends to visit at least one hundred schools and to speak to adults and children on behalf of the two charities – Room to Read, and Youth Off the Streets. He hopes to finish his run on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, and deliver a speech to children about the importance of education.

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Yet Pach, the only non-white in acting school, was told to expect limited acting opportunities for African people. However, Pach gained many roles due to his acting ability, and has also returned to Zimbabwe.

Pach says that aside from acting, he does everything that he can to help his father to build the school he has half -constructed in Malawi, in memory of his mother.

Two young men, two very different people, at first glance, but think again.

The biggest issues that we have to face in life concern relationship, belonging, and loss. At a deep level, all young people can relate to the themes presented of isolation, loss and separation.

Many young people have a need to create, with very little support, a life structure, and a purpose, and to find a way to come to terms with loss and grief.

Young people can use what they learn in the process to go on to become better, stronger more connected people.

Those who have chosen the road to substance abuse and addiction might see in these stories the light of hope – but not know where to go, to make a new start in their life.

Young people in Canada, who are into substance abuse and drug addiction, who want to build a better life can call a Narconon helpline – and discover what comprehensive alcohol and drug addiction recovery programs can do for you.

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Start with a comprehensive alcohol and drug addiction recovery program today – and move into a new tomorrow.

Throughout the world people have heard of self help alcoholic recovery group - Alcoholic’s Anonymous, and its founder Bill Wilson. Not as many people are aware that Bill Wilson promoted as a cure for alcoholism, the use of LSD.

The main limitation of Alcoholic’s Anonymous is that it is not primarily recovery focused. Alcoholics are considered to have a long term and incurable “condition” that means abstinence and intended recovery from alcohol dependence will at all times be a respite, the program providing mentoring and support to help people to deal with continued cravings for alcohol, even after having been with the AA program for many years.

The tension and frustration that can emerge in the life of the “dry” alcoholic, denied his usual refuge in alcohol drinking, can lead to abusive behavior in the home, problems in the work place.

Driving a path of sobriety through the minefield of triggers and temptations to relapse into alcohol use is extremely hard work, and the reason why many AA members accept the occasional relapse as being par for the course.

Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, and The Doors of Perception is said to have introduced Bill Wilson to the potential of LSD as a means to alcoholism recovery. Wilson took up with LSD as a “miracle cure” for the ailments of the soul, using LSD regularly during the 1960′s, developing a plan as he reached his 70th year to have LSD made available to all AA members.

Fortunately more sensible heads prevailed, and when the FDA declared LSD to be illegal some years later, that was the end of any plan to make LSD a part of the AA program.

The life and times of Bill Wilson, born in 1895, is recorded in an article in the Modern Drunkard Magazine – that sets out the highs and the lows of his chronic alcoholism, and the work that Bill Wilson did to promote alcohol recovery by developing the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program.

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Although many people have gained help and support by joining Alcoholic’s Anonymous, upon reading about the life of Bill Wilson, it’s founder, it is clear that following the precepts of AA, did not in fact bring him the peace, the tranquility, and contentment that he craved.

It is interesting to note that although Bill Wilson successfully stopped his alcohol drinking, he never quite resolved the issue of what should stand in its place. Although espousing a spiritual basis for ultimate recovery from alcoholism, the acknowledgement of and “surrender” to a higher power, Wilson himself professed no formal religious beliefs, dabbled in the occult, and continued to be a substance abuser, including use of psychedelic drugs.

 When alcoholism is defined as the symptom of a problem, rather than the primary issue, it becomes possible to look “behind” the drinking to see what might be its causes. It is in the resolution of it’s causes that alcoholism can be treated, otherwise, like Wilson, a person is essentially looking for an alcohol substitute, an antidote to feelings of negativity.

Perhaps the key to Wilson’s life long battle with alcohol is in the depression that came upon him in 1912, when his school friend and soulmate Bertha Bamford died unexpectedly following a routine operation.

 For three years Bill battled depression, and then when he injured an elbow, he sought refuge with his mother – who promptly sent him back to school – causing Bill to have panic attacks and an inability to do any physical education.

Doctors examined him and could find no reason for his general incapacity. He had earlier been abandoned by his father, who said he was going away on a business trip, but never returned home. Bill was brought up by his grandparents.

Born to a military/ business background, Bill found recovery in selling cars at his grandfather’s automobile agency – attempting to sell one of the cars to the parent’s of his lost love. It would seem that Bill never recognized the severity of his depression, his grief, and loss - a lonely, isolation that remained a motif in Wilson’s life.

Many years after AA was established Bill Wilson would complain that he did so much for everyone else – no one ever did anything for him.

AA was for Bill a means to recovery from severe emotional depression, and from losing all but the shirt on his back at the onset of the 1930”s financial depression.

 Clark Carr, the director of Narconon International, an alternative program for recovery from alcohol and drug abuse says that, in his experience, and most profoundly, drug addiction is a result of people lacking the skills in life to otherwise resolve their conflicts and frustrations.

Bill Wilson, unsupported in his early grief, seems to have carried the burden of his un-mourned loss, for the rest of his life.

In his later years, Bill Wilson sought therapy for his depression, and before his death was investigating nutrition as a possible cure for depression, including the now widely accepted niacin (Vitamin B supplement) treatment that helps to dissipate lethargy, and restores the nervous functioning that is very much depleted by chronic alcohollsm.

 Bill Wilson is a case study for a depression based theory of alcoholism, an addiction that could easily be resolved by the comprehensive methods, available today which see addiction recovery  as a voyage of personal discovery, in which we learn how to better communicate with others, to get our real needs met, to develop social skills for self improvement and the benefit of the community.

By resolving, and putting behind us, the baggage of our past, we are enabled to move on to a happy, contented drug free way of life.

Comprehensive programs provide drug detox, social and nutritional support, to enable complete addiction recovery.

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Narconon residential drug treatment programs  breathe new life, and purpose into depressive feelings from the past.

Bill Wilson died  1971, still reaching out for answers to the problem of alcoholism.