Drug Rehabilitation Network Drug Rehabilitation Network

Someone with a dual diagnosis is afflicted with both a drug or alcohol problem and an emotional or psychiatric disorder. Gatehouse Academy understands the complex rehabilitation procedures that are associated with dual diagnosis center, and we have treated many of our residents for this problem. Unfortunately, many substance abusers who are treated at other facilities might be misdiagnosed as simply having a drug problem.

If the emotional aspect of recovery is not addressed, substance abuse has a much higher chance of reappearing after detoxification. Dual diagnosis is actually less rare than many people realize. In fact, 53 percent of drug abusers and 37 percent of alcoholics have emotional problems which intensify the abuse. On the other side of the coin, 29 percent of people who have diagnosed emotional problems also abuse drugs or alcohol. These conditions cross-reference each other, and it is easy to see why.

Emotional problems rarely have easy answers, yet substance abuse quickly takes away the pain. In many cases, drugs act as a quick solution to what is otherwise a complex psychological problem. Common mental conditions that are associated with dual diagnosis include depression, anxiety, and even schizophrenia. A dual diagnosis can manifest itself in the abuse of drugs and an eating disorder.

Drug abuse can’t simply be “lived with.” If you’re here, reading this, you know that addiction is a devastating disease, one that turns its victims into shells of the people they used to be. To suffer from drug abuse is to be stripped of your dignity, and your capacity for hope. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. The good news is that professional drug abuse treatment can make a world of difference. The only catch is that you have to seek it out. No drug and alcohol abuse treatment center can help a patient who refuses to walk through the front door. It’s up to you to make the right decision.

Whoever you are, however “in-control” you believe yourself to be…you can’t beat drug abuse on your own. If you’re going to get better, you’re going to need help. For your own sake, for the sake of the people who care about you…let today be the day you finally do what you must. The decision to enroll in a drug abuse treatment program will be the most important one you ever make. It’s well past time you learned that lesson on your own terms.

It is heartbreaking to hear from a teenager who wants to help their mom get treatment for alcohol and drug abuse and into a drug rehab center. But, at the same time, it is also enlightening to find that even young people can take proactive action to get help for his or her alcoholic or addict parent. You can also be proactive and take action now to help a friend or a loved one stop their alcohol and drug abuse, get them an intervention and into a drug rehab facility. If you are concerned that a friend or family member has a drinking or drug problem, pay attention to his or her behavior. Does it seem to occur on a regular basis? Are you often concerned about this person? The first step in getting help is to recognize the signs and symptoms of alcohol or drug abuse. Some of the early signs of alcohol abuse include noticing that the person is getting drunk on a regular basis, lying about how much alcohol he or she is using, having frequent hangovers, having black outs (forgetting what the person did while he or she was drinking). Signs of drug addiction may include the person’s inability to socialize and to perform routine activities, odd behaviors (altered speech, paranoia, lying) and very often, signs of depression (or “feeling down”). Depending on what drug they are using, you may also find drug paraphernalia in his or her surroundings.

Addicts who get sober in drug abuse treatment centers will tell you that the struggle is worth it, that all the pain and hardship of addiction treatment are more than justified by the promise of addiction recovery. That sounds about right to me. The time I spent in drug treatment is the reason I’m still here today, the reason I got back to living life as I used to know it. No addict beats addiction without a drug rehabilitation program. I learned that firsthand. And I’ve never, ever, been so grateful for a lesson in my entire life.

Remember, drug abuse treatment centers can only help those addicts who have the courage to enroll in them, and drug addiction treatment itself can’t start unless you have the guts to take the first step. It won’t be easy, because nothing that happens in drug abuse treatment centers is every easy. It will, however, be worth it. The right drug rehabilitation program will quite literally save your life. With so much to lose, and with so much more to win, it’s to hard to imagine how the right choice could ever be more obvious.

To be hooked on Percocet is to be lost in the Fog: in a Haze of Nowhere and Nothingness that both is and is not; in a Shroud of self-bound oblivion that isolates you from anything you’ve ever known, or anything you’ve ever believed. To be hooked on Percocet, in the end, is to be trapped in a world…and Existence…that bears very little semblance to any that could ever be worth living in.

And so to be hooked on Percocet, or have an drug abuse problem goes without saying, is a status quo that just can’t be tolerated.

The good news is that drug rehab works. You can beat Percocet addiction, if you want to; you can find your way out of the Fog, the Haze, the Shroud…provided you have the strength to check into a rehab center. Will it be easy? No, of course not. But at least it will be Real. If you or someone you care about has succumbed to Percocet abuse, you don’t need to be told how precious a thing reality can be.

This is what I remember, from my intervention: My Mom is crying and my sister is crying and my Dad is doing his damnedest and still pretty well failing to look like he’s not crying. And I am crying. I do not know why. Or, I do, but I don’t want to. Or I don’t, but I want to, and I am thinking that now maybe for the first time I know why I should be crying, about addiction and everything else.

Interventions work because they show you what you have to lose: what you have lost, what you are in danger of losing. I do not remember what my crying mother or my crying sister or my trying-not-to-but-yes-still crying father said during my intervention. It doesn’t matter. They didn’t have to say anything. It was communicated, all of it, by the plain fact of their presence, and the plain fact of the tears. I knew, as soon as I saw them. And I knew had to do something about it.

My intervention saved my life. That still gets me, even now, all these years later: My intervention saved my life. Saved it physically, yes, but saved it spiritually too; saved it from myself, and my drug abuse; saved it by showing me what I had to live for, so long after I’d forgotten everything but addiction itself.

Funny how remembering can sometimes be the greatest gift of all.