Are you searching for the truth about the effectiveness of drug addiction treatment programs? It has taken me 3 years of research to get the answers I needed to help my own son.

Why go to a drug addiction recovery program that has a low success rate? You are wasting time and money and your life may be at stake.

The chart below shows that conventional drug treatment programs have low success rates for the long term - 8% - 38% !

Most people do not know that there are alternative medicine choices that have high success rates for addiction recovery - at least 60% according to the chart and I have seen results of 80% and more! (Chart provided by Dr. Joan Mathews-Larson)

You do have options!

But you have to use the holistic health approach and treat the whole person - mind, body and spirit.

Sign up on the form to the right and have access to my special edited eBook that gives you an overview of what a drug treatment program should have including the few locations in the country that offer a complete highly successful recovery program.

You can also find out more about the multi-media product that tells you everything you need to know about integrative and alternative health drug and alcohol treatment programs by clicking here >> Addiction Solution Center

Popularity: 87% [?]

Chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence, which is a critical period of ongoing brain development, is associated with poorer performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability.

Research supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows that it is evident even after a month of stopping marijuana use. There may be partial recovery of verbal memory functioning within the first three weeks of abstinence from marijuana, but complex attention skills continue to be affected.

Not only are their thinking abilities worse, their brain activation to cognitive tasks is abnormal. The tasks are fairly easy, such as remembering the location of objects, and they may be able to complete the tasks, but the adolescent marijuana users are using more of their parietal and frontal cortices to complete the tasks. Their brain is working harder than it should.

Girls may be at an even greater risk than boys.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

It is possible to overcome drug addictions but you will probably have to look outside the box of “conventional” addiction treatment programs to find the answer. Standard treatment programs often don’t take into account the "physiological basis" of drug abuse, an oversight some see as the main reason for their low success rates.

Although it isn’t logical to enter a program where the success rate is low, people have been doing so for years. Part of the reason may be that most people don’t realize that alternatives exist - viable alternatives with excellent success rates using the holistic medicine approach.

Dr. Joan Mathews-Larson, one of the pioneers in the holistic treatment of alcohol addiction, stated: “the conventional treatment system is antiquated because it isn’t based on science. It’s based on someone’s notion that there is some psychological flaw in alcoholics and that if we talk to them long enough, we’ll straighten them out”.

The following graph was adapted from Dr. Joan Mathews-Larson’s book, "Seven Weeks to Sobriety". Dr. Larson was the first to show that the Orthomolecular Medicine approach, when added to a conventional psychosocial treatment model, could double and even triple the expected long-term recovery rates for alcohol and drug addicted people.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

Psychotherapy is an important tool in the struggle to overcome Drug Abuse. Various forms of psychotherapy have been employed to help individuals understand the past and learn problem solving strategies for dealing with many of life’s pressing problems.

Psychotherapy is known by different names such as therapy, talk therapy, counseling, and psychosocial therapy. Psychotherapy is an important part of a comprehensive drug treatment program and any program you enter should include individual as well as group counseling sessions.

Psychotherapy can help in many ways. Some of these include:

* Discovering effective coping techniques and new possibilities for solving problems. Many substance abusers report using drugs to help them cope with life. Discovering alternative ways of dealing with the ups and downs of life is vital to lasting recovery.

* Understanding some of the reasons for abusing substances.

* Learning to identify and change behaviors and/or thoughts that can adversely affect your life.

* Exploring important relationships and experiences and learning how they may be helping or hindering your recovery.

* Learning to set and reach realistic goals. Understanding how to think in terms of goals is an effective strategy in overcoming depression.

Psychotherapy is important in alleviating symptoms of mental illness that may be underlying factors in substance abuse. Therapy may be short-term or long-term, depending on the individual situation. Psychotherapy sessions can be conducted in group, family or individual therapy settings.

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For much of his adult life, Robert Downey Jr., 43, was caught in a ruinous cycle of drug addiction, imprisonment and disgrace. (This post has excerpts from an article in Parade Magazine)

Raised in a show-business family, Downey claims that by 8 he already had used drugs with his dad, a filmmaker.

"I was mercurial and recklessly undisciplined and, for the most part, I was happily anesthetized."

"You use whatever rationalization you can to justify the fact that you're not living truthfully," he observes about substance abuse. "You make this death machine seem glamorous so you can get on to the next moment. But it isn't glamorous, and it isn't fun."

"Now it's all about becoming rooted in the mundane, in the day-to-day stuff," he continues. "Life is 70% maintenance. I think of myself as a shopkeeper or a beekeeper. I'm learning the business of building a life."

"Instead of getting instant gratification by getting high, I push my nose as far into the grindstone as I can. The honey, the reward, is the feeling of well-being, the continuity, the sense that I am walking toward a place I want to go."

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Popularity: 20% [?]

The book, Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff, is a heartbreaking and wrenching story of a father's journey through his son's drug addiction. He states that he was addicted to his son's addiction. Any parent who has had a child abuse drugs will be able to identify with this story.

I know I did. Even though my son did not use Meth (thank God) and did not disappear for weeks at a time on the streets, there were still many anxious moments wondering if he was OK.

David Sheff mentions early on how he confronted his son, Nic, about smoking Pot (Marijuana) and at first Nic lies and denies it. Then Nic admits that he is using some drugs "like everyone," "just pot," and only "once in a while."

Over time, Nic gets more and more involved in using drugs including Meth and is in and out of rehab several times. Nic is in denial that he is an addict.

In recovery, Nic Sheff states that "a using addict cannot trust his own brain - it lies, says, 'You can have one drink, a joint, a single line, just one.'" Nic learned that he could not trust his own brain.
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Popularity: 21% [?]