Drug Addiction Stories

It is a story that Narconon and other rehabilitation drug centers hear all the time because it is true and it is unfortunately, easy to do.  Someone takes medication for a physical problem and before they know it, they end up addicted.  How did it happen?  When medication becomes a drug addiction, Narconon steps in to help so you can get your life back on track.

A lot of times, it has to do with how our bodies deal with pain.  Truthfully, they don’t handle it in good way.  Any pain relief is seen as a godsend and the brain tells the body it wants more so that there is no hint of pain coming in.  This has a person unwittingly taking a higher dosage.  Unwittingly in this case does not mean, not knowing the consequences; it means thinking that addiction just can not and will not happen to him.

When Medication Becomes a Drug Addiction

Doctors can often find themselves in a catch-22 position.  A patient will come in complaining of pain.  This is the leading cause of most doctor visits.  The doctor then has a critical decision to make. How does he prescribe an opiate-based pain reliever when so many of them are addicting when not taken properly?  This judgment call has many doctors underprescribing which can be detrimental to someone in pain as well as those who over-medicate themselves when their doctor does give them a proper prescription.

People who have never been hooked on drugs have similar stories; a severe pain following an accident or chronic back problems has them suddenly addicted to medication when they had lived their entire lives free of such addictions.  How is this possible?  The brain tells the body it needs the medication before the first dose has worn off so the person innocently takes a little “extra” and before he knows it, he is doubling and tripling his dosage, leading to addiction.

What does a doctor do? Some religiously monitor their patients.  They do not want them to suffer needless pain but they look them in the eye and tell them that they are going to monitor them closely and keep them on the straight and narrow.  This is for their own good.  If you have a doctor telling you this, consider yourself lucky that you have a caring one who wants to alleviate your pain and keep you from becoming addicted to your medication.  Because the truth is, when medication becomes a drug addiction, you are in a different type of pain that can be a lot harder to overcome without help.

How did you find out about the Narconon program?
I found out about Narconon because of an overdose:  While I was in Toronto I would come home sometimes for a few weeks and then run away again and hitchhike back.   One time while I was in Toronto, I overdosed on heroin and my parents were there, which was very embarrassing.  They arrived at around 2:00am after they got a call.  They decided that they would find a solution for me – and this was Narconon.

At the time (1998) Narconon was just getting set up in Quebec Province so I was one of the first people on the program here.  At first I was scared and by the third day I wanted to go back to drugs, of course.  For the first two weeks I was staying at home while on the program, as it was not fully set up, and all I talked about during this time with friends on the phone was heroin.  That’s all I thought about and all I talked about.  My life was heroin and I still sneaking it, even though I was on the program.  I convinced people I knew from high school that it was a good thing to do, so they would do it with me.  My motivation was to have people doing it with me; people would not give me a guilt trip or try to get me off it because they were doing it too.

Did you stick with the program?
I eventually ran away back to Toronto and started panhandling and doing drugs every day.  It got so bad it even got up to twice a day.  I remember getting sick when I stopped using and thought it was just a cold or something, but of course as soon as I took drugs again all the symptoms disappeared – so then I knew what was actually happening.

I recall someone afterwards offering me cocaine, but I said “no thanks,” as I was not interested anymore. I knew then that the Narconon program is really effective.

After a couple of weeks I woke up one morning all depressed and everything hit me: what I was doing to myself, what I did to my parents by running away and so on.  Then I was overwhelmed with a lot of grief.  I called my mother but I couldn’t even talk because I had this knot in my throat.  There was my pride and at the same I felt broken from my own doing.

She told me to call the director of Narconon in Canada, who fortunately was in Toronto, and I went to see him looking and smelling like a dirty street kid.  He was really cool and very understanding of where I was coming from.  After that I was on the bus that night and in the morning when I arrived in Montreal, someone from Narconon picked me up and that was it.

So now you wanted to get off drugs?
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get off drugs; I just didn’t know what I wanted at all.  I didn’t even think I had a problem because I was doing drugs which is what I thought I wanted (back then) and that was it.  But I was depressed and I did the program because I felt bad for my mom and dad.

Then at some point, while I was at Narconon, it turned around for me: I no longer cared about drugs – my only interest was doing the program.  The Narconon staff had a lot to do with that because of their knowledge, experience and their understanding.

I recall someone afterwards offering me cocaine, but I said “no thanks,” as I was not interested anymore.  I knew then that the Narconon drug addiction rehab really effective.

What benefits did you get from doing the Narconon program?
One big win for me occurred one day during the Detoxification program: I actually remembered my past!

Before that I had not realized that I did not really have a past or a future.  I was not in present time and I was just kind of “there.”  In the sauna, all these memories of me being a kid with my parents – all these happy memories came back.  And that was a huge win.  It was like “Oh my God, I was a kid at one point!”

Another win was being rehabilitated in other ways: I was a vegetarian before I started drugs and when I was living on the street, the more drugs I used the less I cared about my health or what I was eating.  Free food was free food and I would eat whatever.  While I was on the program I started caring again about what I was eating.

I also remembered that I was an environmentalist (as well as a vegetarian) and that I cared about all these things.  I would then go through Narconon to make sure that the recycling was properly separated from the garbage; I would ensure that I was eating healthy again and so much more.  I actually cared once more!  And this included wanting to help people – and this was because of the Narconon drug rehab program.

TO BE CONTINUED…

A Teenager Confesses How Her Drug Dependence Drove Her Across The Continent In Search Of Heroin, And How Narconon Brought Her Back From The Brink Of Oblivion

For more than 40 years thousands of addicts have been given their life back through Narconon – people who had submitted to their addictions found new hope and a new life.  Indeed, that is how Narconon started four decades ago when an incarcerated heroin addict, William Benitez, decided that he had to try something new to save himself from his addiction as well as to help other similarly afflicted friends. He requested permission from Arizona state prison officials to start a drug rehabilitation program with 20 addict inmates, but was at first denied. Thankfully, he persisted because on February 19, 1966 he was finally granted permission and founded what he called Narconon, meaning NARCotics-NONe.

The program Mr. Benitez founded grew and, in 1971, the first Narconon center outside prison walls opened in Los Angeles. Today Narconon’s services are available at 39 drug rehabilitation and drug prevention centers in Canada, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, England, Russia, New Zealand and South Africa.  It is officially recognized in several countries as the most effective drug rehabilitation available and receives government funding in a number of nations. Narconon has an unsurpassed success rate, according to independent studies, with up to 72 percent of its graduates still off drugs after two years.

She started using drugs as a teenager and rapidly escalated from marijuana to heroin. Within two years she was emotionally dead, not caring about friends or family.

In this interview 26-year old Sabrina Andrews provides her personal testimonial of Narconon’s effectiveness.  She started using drugs as a teenager and rapidly escalated from marijuana to heroin.  Within two years she was emotionally dead, not caring about friends or family.  This is her story, one that gives hope to countless teens who suffer from addiction.  She did the program at Narconon Trois-Rivieres in Quebec, Canada.  And like William Benitez and many others she got her life back.

What were you doing before you did the Narconon drug addiction rehab?
That was 10 years ago: I was about 16 years old and living on the streets.  I ran away from home and was doing drugs.  I lived mostly in Montreal but moved around a lot including Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.  I lived like this for about two years.  Before that I was going to high school and living with my parents.

When where you first introduced to drugs?
In high school there were many students using drugs, including pot smokers.  I pot with them (I was hanging around older students) but idn’t like the “buzz” at all.  There was also alcohol use but that was not a big item for me.

My idol was the rock band Nirvana and Kurt Cobain (the lead singer) and he was doing heroin.  So to me that was really “cool,” or at least that’s what I thought then.  I admired him a lot and for some reason I adopted the idea that anything negative and destructive was really cool and if you looked horrible, well that was cool too.  In fact it was “aesthetic,” in my viewpoint at the time.  So that’s what I went after.

Were you attracted to drugs from the beginning?
Initially I didn’t want to do any drugs, as my father had already given the “the talk.”  I refused to do drugs mainly out of fear because he had his own drug history – although he was clean since my birth – and I knew that he would be able to spot it.  As there was no way to “get away with it,” I stayed away from drugs.

TO BE CONTINUED…