A Young Woman's Recovery from Devastating Addiction

This is the story of a young woman I recently met and had a chance to interview on her recovery from addiction: Three short years ago, I was smoking crystal meth and snorting OxyContin every day. I was completely hopeless and out of control. My life was spent dancing on a pole in a nightclub, just to be able to afford the next hit that I was going to take in the club’s bathroom.

Self-respect did not exist. Instead, it was replaced by a false sense of confidence that I exhibited to all those who came in contact with me. I hated my parents, my life, and myself. I thought that drugs helped me feel “normal.” I didn’t realize that the drugs just kept the more basic problems out of sight.

On October 9, 2005, I hit that "bottom" that you hear addicts talk about. That moment is as fresh for me as yesterday.

That moment came when I was all alone, sitting in a hospital emergency room. I was covered in blood and looking through my cell phone for someone to come help me. I saw the other people in the ER all had family or friends with them. None of the “friends” I had been getting high with for years would come help me. My family refused to have anything to do with me.

I’d started bleeding heavily a few hours before. Just before I drove myself to the ER, I shot up crystal meth and OxyContin. In the ER, I found out that I was four months pregnant and miscarrying. I was so out of touch that I didn’t even know I was pregnant.

For hours, the nurses monitored my hormone levels as I waited for my unborn child to die inside me. Finally, the doctor came in and let me know that last hit I had taken had killed my baby. Trembling and hysterical, I called my mother. She didn't believe anything I told her because, like a typical addict, I had been lying to her and manipulating her for years.

That was the moment I hit bottom. Instead of calling anyone else to help, I turned my cell phone around and took a video of myself, makeup smeared down my face from crying. I told myself in that video, “Remember this moment.”

For the rest of this story, please visit: A Young Woman's Recovery. Or visit the website for Narconon Arrowhead.

$60 Million Still Being Poured Into National Anti-Drug Campaign Proven a Failure

A study by the Rockville, Maryland research group Westat, validated by the General Accounting Office, showed that $1.2 billion of taxpayer money was pumped into a youth anti-drug campaign that failed to show a positive result. The campaign was the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign that ran between 1998 and 2004, created and run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a branch of the White House.

The Westat group measured improvements in drug use or opinions of drug use by students and found that the campaign, rather than lessening drug use, “may have promoted perceptions among exposed youth that others’ drug use was normal.”

Even parents receiving these drug messages were not impressed. The Westat review showed that more parents talked to their kids about drugs subsequent to being exposed to the campaign but did not monitor their children’s drug use any more vigilantly.

Still, the ONDCP was bold enough to recently ask Congress for another $130 million to continue the campaign. On their website they complain of a lack of support when the response was just $60 million for this failed campaign.

How many kids could Narconon drug education reach with $130 million? We'd even settle for $60 million. There are plenty of measurable results from our drug education outreach, based on the surveys done of students at the end of our presentations.

To read the rest of this article, please go to: $60 Million. Or visit the website at Narconon Arrowhead.

How Do You Help Someone Who Doesn't Want to be Helped?

If there was a disease suffered by one out of every ten Americans over twelve years of age, wouldn’t you agree that this disease was raging out of control? That’s exactly the situation that exists with drug abuse and dependence.

The government agency that monitors the statistics on drug abuse and dependence is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA). In 2006, SAMHSA estimated, based on tens of thousands of surveys, that more than twenty-two million Americans were suffering from drug or alcohol abuse or drug or alcohol dependence. This compares to the Centers for Disease Control’s estimate of 1.1 million Americans who are HIV positive and it’s twice the number of people who suffered from all types of cancer combined.

To read the entire article, go to Guide to Addiction Recovery for a Lifetime. Or visit the website at Narconon Arrowhead.

Understanding Addiction and How to Heal Addicted Lives

If you've ever been baffled by addiction, you're not alone. Family members and close friends are commonly baffled by the phenomena their loved ones go through -- often for years before they realize what they are up again.

The manifestations of addiction are very often missed by parents, wives and employers. All they know is that they are having problems with a loved one. They are missing work, money is suddenly in short supply, there are lost days and weeks and tempers are short.

To help educate the public on addiction so they seek help in time to save the addict, and to provide the true data about how addiction is truly eliminated, Narconon Arrowhead has published the booklet Healing Addicted Lives.

An article describing the availability of this booklet can be found here: Healing Addicted Lives article

The booklet can be read online at: HAL booklet