Have You Ever Been in Drug Rehab?
Question by Anne Grande: Have you ever been in drug rehab?
Did you not want to go at first? Did you see the value of it once there for a while? Did it work for you?
A family member of mine just entered rehab, though he did not want to go, he went because he’s a teen and knew we could force him to. Has a problem, though he thinks he can control it. Looking for any insight about this.
Thanks for the answers. Especially Ray-those are good insights and I will be aware, and discuss those things with him. I appreciate your taking the time to help.
Ray-
This is interesting stuff. But I am talking about inhalants, (aerosols, etc). I wonder if that is different.
Concerned he wont make it to adulthood with out brain damage or death.
Best answer:
Answer by Faithful
There are many counselors that could help. There are those that came from the same problems and those that are ANOINTED to help! Many times both occurred! I once was the best alcoholic in existence that I ever heard of. I drank 24 beers a day and at lunch near work, would go to a bar and have 3 double shots and 5 beers in 20 minutes! I was loosing my family.. my marriage and was verbally abusive. My sons saw what happened when an assistant Pastor from a church lead my wife and I to know Christ. In 2 weeks I had no desire for alcohol! AA suggests use what works.. one of the steps, in fact, 2 say.. look the spiritual help in who you may believe! I found the only real help that stays with you is accepting the Creator of the Universe.. Jesus.. Gospel of John tells of who He is!
If you read the Scriptures it can be like Sci-Fi! One place Jesus enters a boat.. it says.. suddenly they were at the other shore.. He can control time! One witness was asked to witness to this traveler. He was many miles away.. suddenly the witness was sent instantly on the trail where the this person was traveling. The witness saw the traveler reading and asked.. what are you reading? He was reading in the Old Testament about the Christ. Do you believe, the witness asked. Yes I do, he said. Then, the witness asked, why not be baptized? They saw water and he was baptized. Thus we see the first evidence of the “Transporter” and it is not an actor.. Earl
Answer by raysny
I went to rehab the first time because the people at the detox convinced my lady friend and me that I’d never stay clean and sober without following up detox with rehab. I spent every last cent I had to pay for it only to find out that it was based on faith healing.
I didn’t know anything about AA at the time (1982). I thought I was going to get some tips on how not to drink, some coping skills, all I got was half-baked religion. The entire idea of this rehab was to indoctrinate a person into the program of AA, where you pray to a “Higher Power” (which by definition is a god) and if you work the program properly, God will remove your desire to drink on a daily basis. Attendance is supposed to be for the rest of your life.
Here are the 12 Steps of AA, the core of the program:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I dropped out, no refund.
But while I was there, some of it seeped in. I was taught and began to believe that people cannot stay clean & sober without AA and/or NA. People told me that I misinterpreted it, AA is “spiritual not religious” and I just needed to find a good AA group.
For almost twenty years I attended meetings on and off and went to 3 more rehabs voluntarily. No help, the same quasi-religious nonsense. (The program has roots in a Christian sect, the Oxford Group, and is designed for lapsed Christians although it is not mainstream Christian because you reject Free Will.) I never stayed sober for more than a few months. Part of it was because I was taught that I had a disease that can never be cured, only arrested, that I was powerless over my addiction, that addictions are too powerful for anyone to quit, and that you need a micro-managing, favor-dispensing deity to remove your desire to use on a daily basis. Being taught that you can’t do something almost guarantees that you’ll never be able to muster up the determination to even try, let alone do it.
In the past 20 years or so, rehabs have started giving lip service to science, but the core of it is still the 12 Steps.
It wasn’t until 2001 that I got help for the depression that fueled my drinking and was able to stay stopped. Since then, I went back to school and now work in mental health, primarily with those who have coexisting substance abuse issues. We use evidence-based practices, that is methods that have been shown to have positive results; AA and 12step facilitation don’t measure up.
For the past eight years I’ve studied AA and the recovery industry.
Over 90% of all rehabs in the US are 12step based, the majority of the rest are Narconon (Scientology based) or heavily religious. Rehabs have a slightly higher success rate than AA meetings alone. AA does not improve upon the rate of natural remission, quitting on your own.
(BTW: A standard joke in AA meetings is that people spend thousands of dollars for rehab only to discovery they could have gotten the same thing in “free” AA meetings.)
People CAN control what they use, that happens whether someone is attending meetings or not. Between 75 – 80% of people who meet the criteria for dependence in the DSM-IV quit without treatment or programs, the key is motivation and determination. You said your family member is a teen, most people who experiment with drugs and alcohol do so in their teens and early twenties, and the vast majority of the “mature out”, quit on their own once faced with adult responsibilities.
In rehab, your teen will meet people with much more experience with drugs and alcohol. He could become enamored with the tales told by the clients there and learn strategies on how not to get caught the next time. You know how they call prisons “schools for crime”? Consider rehabs schools for using.
The 12step rehab industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that is more interested in regenerating itself than the people it supposedly serves.
(edit) In typical rehabs, treatment is one-size-fits-all, alcohol, drugs, or inhalants. Another reason against rehab. Try to find a program specifically for inhalants or somewhere that he will receive more one-on-one treatment.
Check out:
http://www.inhalants.org/guidelines.htm