Substance Abuse Addiction

A condition characterized by repeated compulsive seeking and using of drugs, alcohol or other similar substances despite adverse social, mental, and physical consequences is a definition that can apply to substance abuse as well as substance addiction. When addiction sets in however it is usually accompanied by psychological and physical dependence where the substance is craved just to feel somewhat normal. Withdrawal symptoms, physical and mental usually appear to a greater or lesser degree when the substance is rapidly decreased or terminated. Substance abuse has moved into addiction when the substance use controls the individual rather than the individual controlling the usage.

What actually causes an individual to abuse a drug or alcohol? If you look or observe closely you will see that the person is attempting to handle pain of some sort. This could be mental, physical or a combination of both. It could be a shy teenager who starts using cocaine to be more outgoing (mental pain), or a construction working who starts using prescription painkillers for back pain and finds himself unable to break free from the trap (physical pain). The point to be made here is that to handle the abuse of drugs or alcohol the underlying causes need to be confronted and handled. Narconon Arrowhead Drug Rehab deals not with labeling the addict or alcoholic as ill for a lifetime but with empowering the individual to resolve these underlying reasons and achieve a drug free and productive life.

Addiction remedies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The word remedy means a way of putting something right or getting rid of something undesirable. From this we can see that there is much more to addiction remedies than simply getting someone to stop using. If we are going to put something right in terms of addiction then it is first important to find out what went wrong and then work on getting rid of the undesirable effects. Narconon Arrowhead specializes in not only ending use but in locating the root causes and working out solutions that give back to an individual a lifetime of happy drug free productiveness.

An effective drug abuse treatment center will competently deal with all levels of drug use problems whether abuse or addiction. If one is abusing drugs or alcohol then addiction has already to spread its tentacles around the user. Drug or alcohol abuse leading to addiction always starts as an attempted solution to some form of pain in life. This pain could be mental, physical, or both. It could start as simply of handling the pain of trying to fit in by going along with the crowd and using drugs, or perhaps excessive drinking as a supposed solution to unconfrontable home situations. There are probably as many reasons as there are abusers, addicts, and alcoholics. A good drug abuse treatment center realizes that unless the underlying reasons behind the addiction are handled the individual though now clean, will often finding themselves falling back into the trap of use and addiction as a false solution to handling the stresses that initially caused it to begin with - and never were handled.

Substance abuse generally starts with an attempt to handle pain. This could me mental or physical pain and does not necessarily need to be great. A teenager uses drugs for the first time and finds they helped with shyness and so uses them more and more often, as a false solution to the pains of adolescence. A mother finds relief from family stress with anti-depressants and so continues their use and even increases the dosages. Physical pain is relieved with prescription painkillers and so they are continued more and more frequently. All of these substances have their own particular side-effects which create new situations and new sources of mental and physical pain, and so other substances are now used in an attempt to handle these new pains. Thus most of those entering substance abuse treatment find themselves having problems with not just one substance but multiple substances. Narconon Arrowhead aids the individual in confronting and resolving the use of these substances as well as dealing with the underlying mental and physical pains which resulted in the original and now continued abuse.