The Road to a Miracle: From Hell’s Angel to Helping Addicts Achieve Drug-Free Lives

It was a long road from being a Hell’s Angel addicted to amphetamines to finally becoming a productive drug-free individual spending his life helping others get off drugs.

The road started in New Jersey where George Veliskakis grew up. It then led through the Hell’s Angels and amphetamines and then through a heroin addiction George battled while running a boxing gym. Fortunately, the road finally arrived at a drug-free life in which he could help others overcome the addiction problems he had suffered from.

George’s first encounter with drugs came after he lost an eye while being abused by other kids. “They were teasing me about being Greek and one of them accidentally stabbed me in the eye with a knife,” George explained. While in the hospital, one of the nurses convinced George that he needed a painkiller for the eye injury. “I only realized years later what happened,” he went on. “The nurses wanted to get some morphine for their own use so they got me to ask for a painkiller when I wasn’t even in pain. They gave me a little, laughed when I got high then they got high themselves. Many years later when I got injured and actually needed painkillers, these memories came back to me and I figured out what had been going on.”

In his 20s, George joined the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. He began to use and sell amphetamines and other drugs and spent two terms in jail. After the second jail term, he decided to get clean and return to the athletic world that had helped him succeed when he was a young man.

To read the rest of this article, please go to: From Hells Angel to Helping Addicts Achieve Drug-Free Lives. Or visit the website for Narconon Arrowhead.

Young Vancouver Musician Restores His Goals After Overcoming Cocaine Addiction

I recently had the opportunity to interview one of our graduates, Jordan Field. Jordan is a very talented young musician from Vancouver, British Columbia. His story is a reminder that is it possible to leave addiction behind if you have the right program. Here's the beginning to his story. To finish the story, just click the link at the bottom.

Like a lot of teenagers, Jordan Field was rebellious in his teenage years. However, not every rebellious teen becomes addicted to cocaine when they hit their early twenties, but Jordan did. Fortunately, Jordan found a drug rehab that taught him the life skills he needs to live drug-free from now on, freeing him to concentrate on his musical talents.

“I’ve been a musician and a dancer most of my life,” Jordan said. “But when I got into using cocaine and ecstasy, I lost sight of my goals completely.” Somehow, Jordan managed to keep his drug use a secret from his family. “I was staying up for three or four days at a time on cocaine. Finally it hit me that if I want to succeed in life and in my musical career, it won’t involve drugs.”

To finish this story, please go to: Young Musician Restores Goals. 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.

New Booklet Supports Efforts to Conquer Addiction

New Guide to Addiction Recovery for a Lifetime Supports Senator Jim Webb's Efforts to Conquer Drug Abuse and Addiction. As acknowledged by Senator Jim Webb in this month’s hearing of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, America’s drug war has failed to curb the numbers of citizens abusing and becoming addicted to drugs.

The most recent National Survey of Drug Use and Health reported record-breaking levels of illicit drug abuse. Other federal agencies report rapidly multiplying numbers of Americans in custody and hundreds of billions of dollars spent each year in a vain attempt to curb the problem.

In 2006, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 23 million Americans aged 12 or older needed treatment for illicit drug or alcohol abuse. The Bureau of Justice Statistics cites more than half a million more were in custody for drug charges.

“These raw figures by themselves don’t tell the whole tale,” stated Gary Smith, the Executive Director of Narconon Arrowhead, one of the country’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, located in Canadian, Oklahoma. “You have to look at the fact that those needing treatment have families and that more than twelve million of them are employed either full-time or part-time."

For the entire press release, please go to: New Guide to Addiction Recovery for a Lifetime.. Or visit the website at Narconon Arrowhead.

The Five Stages of Drug Use

Every minute of every day, around the clock, five people try an illicit drug for the first time. That adds up to nearly three million people per year. Tragically, more than half of these initiates are under 18.

People using drugs go through several stages on their way to full-blown addiction:

Stage 1: They’re curious about drug use; they may ask questions or ask to join those using drugs. They willingly listen to stories about the effects of drugs. They watch others obtaining drugs or using them.

Stage 2: They experiment with drugs and discover the effects. This is usually social, recreational use carried out as part of a group, usually on weekends. The peer pressure of the group use is enough reason for many people to continue to use drugs.
To read the entire article, please go to: Five Stages of Drug Use. Or visit the website for 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