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!!!!!!!!”

It would seem that for Dylan Thomas being a poet, using words was his way of communicating with other people in the world, a means of evoking feelings in them, a way to make himself heard.

 Not for Dylan the usual rough and tumble, interaction of childhood – with a mother who was protective of him, treating him as an invalid – and a father who seemed emotionally remote – a school teacher at the local Grammar School who thought himself worthy and deserving of a better academic position.

His father taught him poetry at the age of two, and Dylan could recite Shakespeare by the age of four.

As Dylan wrote later, to a friend:   “I had come to love just the words….what mattered was the very sound of them, as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and quite incomprehensible grown ups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world.

By the age of eight or nine he began to write his own poetry – entering the Grammar School in 1925 as a quiet and introspective lad, he wrote many articles for the school magazine.

At 16 he went to work for the South Wales Daily Post. Writing what were often scathing reviews of local plays and concerts, Dylan also spent time in the pub at night – reciting offbeat jokes, stories and obscene limericks. Dylan never wanted people to read his poems – he wanted them to hear him read them.

What Dylan’s father had given him was the gift of poetry – and it was the poetry of words, in their purest form, that Dylan had grown to love.

In 1934, Dylan moved to London and there published his first book 18 poems, it got rave reviews and in 1936, he published a second book 25 poems.

Dylan married a “mother figure”, Caitlin in 1937 and they were like “twin souls”, moving to Laugharne in Wales where, until war broke out, Dylan’s writing flourished. They were poor, but happy.

 Aside from his poetry,which was always acclaimed, Dylan had a difficult time in the real world. He attracted the patronage of a Mrs Margaret Taylor, her continued support led to the family eventually living in a boathouse in Laugharne that she purchased for them.

Having avoided conscription in the war to some extent Dylan was regarded as a draft dodger by many, a deranged ex commando once shooting up a cottage in which he was entertaining friends. His marriage was fraught with rows about possible mutual infidelity, and Dylan himself was given to drinking.

Despite the passion and fire of his poetry, Dylan became a heavy drinker. The marriage lasted, despite the drinking, and relative poverty.

 With a third child born in 1949, an offer for Dylan to visit the USA, and be paid well was one not to be missed. In February 1950, he was off to America. His irreverent, capricious drunken behavior was a trial to his sponsors – he ended up one night driving a carful of revellers into the tennis nets at a private house party.

Despite this, there was money to be made, if not all by Dylan, and he went on a further tour in 1952, and another in early1953, followed by a series of television appearances..

 By then Dylan’s father and sister had died, and his marriage was as rocky as ever.  Dylan continued to drink heavily.

In late 1953, Dylan was returned to America, to begin a fourth tour. Dylan was taken ill after complaining for weeks of exhaustion and depletion from his alcoholism and respiratory problems.

Given at first cortisone and then a high dose of morphine, by a doctor that Dylan’s agent had arranged to be responsible for Dylan’s care – Dylan died later in hospital, in the USA in the November of 1953.

 Full article :

 In a book entitled Fatal Neglect, author David Thomas comes out to say that it was greed and neglect on the part of Dylan’s American agent that led directly to Dylan’s early death. Thomas describes the American tours as “a tragic tale of how a sick poet was exploited for financial gain, and academic prestige.

 The book says that:

At the time of the fourth tour, he already had a history of blackouts, and chest problems, was using an inhaler to help with his breathing.

The book goes on to say that between Dylan’s agent  Brinnin and his assistant Liz Reitell, Dylan was literally worked to death in the lead up to the intended production of Under Milkwood, in New York, with Brinnan keeping away, busy with other interests.

Dylan had collapsed after two  Under Milkwood performances, a work that was put on stage before Dylan had actually finished writing it, and Dylan also walked out of a dinner held in honor of his birthday because he was feeling unwell.

 While an inquest put the death down to swelling of the brain due to pneumonia, and it was widely reported that Dylan had drunk himself to death – the truth lies somewhere between.

see full article:

Brinnin, two years after Dylans death received the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Poetry and on the 25th anniversary was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, enjoying in the end a comfortable retirement in Florida.

Dylan was that flawed genius, a brilliant poet from Wales, an alcoholic who died in New York, after drinking 18 glasses of whisky, at the age of thirty nine.

Most of us learn how to be a mother by example. Naturally, as we are growing up, we learn from watching our own mother. How she acts, reacts and generally lives plays a big part in what kind of parent we ultimately become. I, like many others, learned how to be an alcoholic mother. I am not myself an alcoholic. In fact, I have consciously avoided alcohol much of my life because I saw what it did to both of my parents. However, since my mom was an alcoholic, that is the example I had to draw upon when I became a parent.

As an adult, I cannot “blame” my own mother for my parenting mistakes. I can, however, understand how and why I made many of the decisions which affected my parenting. The irrationality that IS alcoholism was a big part of my decision making process as a parent. Interestingly, I made just as many  mistakes trying not to be like my own mother.

I must point out that my own mother was a success in many ways. She was a financial genius. She was also brilliant when it came to investments, and was a top notch bookkeeper for some very influential people. So, in many ways, she was a very unique person, especially given the fact that she was indeed an alcoholic. I never want anyone to think of my mother as a “bad” person. She just had one very bad practice, and that was substance abuse. Sadly, that is something I simply could not understand as a child. She was just “Mom”.

That being said… it was the basis of many decisions I made and actions I took being a parent. I learned to over-react, disassociate and continue the dysfunction. I learned to avoid confrontation, which is something my mother thrived on. As a result, I never learned how to effectively communicate with my own children. Again, my mother’s influence also had a positive affect in that I did learn how to communicate with outsiders and business people… just not family.

My mother loved her children. Of that, I have no doubt. I didn’t think she did when I was younger, but I am wiser now and understand much more. By the same respect, I know that my own children have suffered as an ultimate result of alcoholism. I loved (and love) my children, some of whom are grown, with all of my heart. I guess I just wasn’t very good at showing them many times. I did try, however, to hug and otherwise show affection to them, which was lacking in my own mother/daughter relationship.

I don’t blame my mother. I do, however, to some extent blame alcohol and drugs. My mother was an alcoholic who also was very fond of codeine. I can still remember that huge bottle of codeine being in our linen closet next to the bathroom. Back then, the dangers of codeine were not as well known, and it was very easy to obtain. I also remember that my parents had a “beer refrigerator”. They had a separate refrigerator for their alcohol. Of course, when I was young, I didn’t realize that was odd.

Physically and mentally, I believe I have many signs of being the child of an alcoholic. I was the youngest, and evidence points to the fact that my mother drank throughout her pregnancy with me. Doctors and Psychiatrists have gone over with me how that ultimately effected my brain development. Back when I was young, however, there was no ADHD or other conditions. One was either normal, or different. I was “different”. Many have also told me that the youngest child of two alcoholics often becomes a psychotic. Thankfully, that is not what happened with me. Thankfully, I also did not become an alcoholic, a fate which has already begun to affect more than one of my children.

I’ve long since forgiven my mother, who is now deceased. I understand much more about alcoholism and drug addiction, and have done a lot of reflection and investigation into my own actions and feelings. Alcoholism has greatly affected me, and my family. I can’t use that as an excuse to justify my own mistakes, but it helps to understand them. One of my own daughters is now a Mother. I worry how alcoholism will interfere with her parenting.
If wishes were rainbows, the world would be beautiful. However, the realities are that wishes don’t change much. I wish my own mother had gotten rehab at some point in her life. I wish I had gotten help with dealing with being a child of two alcoholics. I wish I had done a lot of things differently with my own children. What I CAN do is forgive, which I have done. I can also educate myself and others on the dangers of alcoholism and how it affects families. I can apologize to my own children, and try to explain. Actions do speak louder than words. Sadly, substance abuse is an action that far too many parents choose.

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These reflexions from a mother was brought to you by Narconon. To know more about Narconon and what it is doing to help resolve the drug problem in our society, please visit narconon.org.

If you need help to beat a drug or alcohol addiction, please call 1-877-782-7409 to learn what are your different recovery options.

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