The Pervasive Addiction
And I just can't keep living this way
So starting today
I'm breaking out of this cage
I'm standing up, I'ma face my demons I'm manning up, I'ma hold my ground
I've had enough, now I'm so fed up time to put my life back together right now (now)
It was my decision to get clean, I did it for me
Admittedly, I probably did it subliminally
For you, so I could come back a brand new me...
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The moment of truth and reckoning about an individual’s addiction to alcohol or substances can take many months or years after the person’s first encounter with their drug of choice. The moment is writ large with clarity, shock, and new awareness, most typically after an epic event. Users and their loved ones report their moment of awakening, their epiphany, after incidents such as major health scares, near-fatal overdoses, blackouts, and memory loss, auto incidents harming self or others, despicable behavior that hurts or harms others, departure of loved ones unwilling to embroil themselves in the nightmare of addiction, getting expelled at school or fired at work, and getting arrested for criminal activities including drug dealing.
The cycle of addiction precipitated by initial use predictably leads the user to incremental increases in the consumption of substances. The gradual increase in substance ingestion cultivates tolerance, create dependence, and ultimately explodes into a full-blown addiction. It happens slowly and then suddenly. Eventually, the cumulative toll on every aspect of the user’s life, on everything he or she touches, and on everyone in his sphere including loved ones, assumes a quality of normalcy over time.
But after an epic event, the severity of the addiction and the gravity of the situation finally comes into sharp relief and focus. Hitting rock bottom shatters the normalcy of addiction for users and their loved ones. The saving grace is that hitting rock bottom is usually the first step to recovering from addiction. New Leaf Detox and Treatment is an alcohol and drug rehab and addiction treatment center in Laguna Niguel that can help you beat substance abuse and addiction
Addiction affects every aspect and area of a person’s life. It devours everything that stands in its way and takes no prisoners. Physical and mental health is inevitably endangered by continual and extended substance abuse. Self-harm while intoxicated, and overdoses endanger physical and mental equilibrium. Addiction often damages or and overdoses endanger physical and mental equilibrium. Addiction often damages or destroys people’s relationships with their loved ones, extended family, and friends; their performance at school or work; and impairs their ability to thrive and flourish as spouses, partners, parents, and as children with familial rights and responsibilities.
In addition, risky behavior and interactions with criminals and engagement in criminal behavior such as drug dealing, theft, reckless endangerment of others while under the influence, and other illegal activities can create legal problems for the substance abuser. Infractions, felony misdemeanors, misdemeanors, and felonies are predictable highlights in the substance abuser’s case profile. Most poignantly, addiction has a human cost that wrecks users and their families emotionally, physically, and financially. Addiction truly is a family, communal, and societal disease.
1. Initial Use
The first ingestion of a substance as a result of succumbing to peer pressure, to relax in a social setting, or to relieve pain.
2. Abuse
Gradual, incremental, increased use of substance to relieve anxiety, pain, or stress, or to elicit feelings of well-being or euphoria, absent of social benefits.
3. Tolerance
User’s increased dosages over time create chemical changes in the brain. More and more of the substance taken more frequently is required to recapture the bliss of the first high. But over time, recapturing the initial euphoria proves elusive even with mega doses.
4. Dependence
The user reaches a stage where the substance is essential to his or her ability to feel baseline normal and to function. The thought of withdrawal’s effects keeps them chained to their addiction.
5. Addiction
Long term results in addiction which takes over a person’s life. The user is now suffering from a psychiatric emergency – a critical, complex mental health and substance use disorder that can wreak havoc on all aspects of a person’s life. Besides damage to the mind and body, and overcoming dangerous overdoses, the user’s relationship, job, and school all suffer.
6. Relapse
Suffering the consequences of addiction – loss of relationship or job, failure at work or school, trouble with the law – the user may attempt to overcome or reduce their addiction alone or with some outside support. Often, the pain of withdrawal, triggers, or other factors may make them relapse.
7. Recovery
Eventually, the user recognize the devastation of addiction to his or her life. Either because of their own will to live or because they were compelled to do by family, or for work or legal obligations, the user commits to recovery. By submitting to a long and arduous process of addiction treatment and an array of evidence-based healing modalities and wraparound services, the patient finally recovers from addiction.
Alcohol and substance abuse are powerful chronic disorders that can accelerate in severity and make it difficult for the user to control, manage, cut down, or stop their addiction through mere self-will, discipline, and non-residential treatment modalities. Some signs to look for to gauge if you or a loved one is ready for rehab. If your loved one is in the grip of addiction, educate yourself on addiction – that it is a disease and not a problem of discipline, delinquency, or moral deficiency.
When making a decision on residential drug addiction treatment or rehab, it is useful to gauge the severity of you or your loved one’s addiction, if a medical provider hasn’t already made an evaluation and recommended treatment.
See if any of the following applies to you or your loved one. One check should serve as a caution. More than one confirms addiction that requires evaluation by a medical professional and treatment options.
One
You may find yourself longing to retrieve the life you had before addiction.
Two
You find yourself less opinionated, more humble, and more open to listening to those who are still rooting for you to overcome your addiction.
Three
You regret the relationships your addiction has cost you, and the ones you’ve damaged, and have a strong desire to make things right.
Four
Your addiction has wrecked your physical and mental health and you wish to return to full health.
Five
You’ve sabotaged your livelihood, career, or education and would like to reclaim them.
Six
Your addiction has led you to dangerous or criminal behavior.
Seven
You’ve seen your own future written in the faces of others in the throes of addiction and it has frightened you.
Eight
You recognize that one of the reasons you’ve remained in your addiction is because you’re afraid of the effects of withdrawal.
Nine
You realize you cannot do this alone and need professional help.
Ten
You desperately want to save your own life because the alternative is eventual death.
Primary Care in Residential Rehab lasts from 28 to 30 days. Deemed as standard care and highly beneficial to those who suffer from addiction, most health insurance covers the cost of 28 to 30-day primary care addiction treatment programs as part of behavioral and mental health plans coverage.
The best residential treatment facilities offer seamless, integrated, wraparound, evidence-based addiction treatment. They offer a combination of medical and psychological services, removed from a client’s regular environment, coupled with skills-building, education, individual and group therapy, peer support, and networks of support to sustain sobriety and relapse prevention. In addition to the latest advances in addiction treatment and a literal cornucopia of treatment and healing modalities, the most important aspect of residential treatment is the community of others on the same journey to recovery. In rehab, one will find one’s tribe, people in every stage of addiction, looking to reclaim their lives.
No one’s story is ever original, or terrible, or shocking in rehab. Every story is the same—I used, I kept using, I lost myself, I want to reclaim myself. The stories are not just those of clients, but of many in the rehab community. It is a tribe with a single, binding narrative—addiction and recovery.
I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was.
New Leaf Detox & Treatment offers the gold standard of care in rehab—residential detox and treatment. As a best practice, it views the journey of addiction recovery and sobriety through a trauma-informed lens. New Leaf maintains that a holistic approach to recovery and sobriety can only be addressed through trauma-informed care. It’s entire clinical and support staff are trained in trauma-informed care.
Once an individual commits to, and invests, in his or her recovery, the team at New Leaf embraces the patient’s efforts and activates the goal of recovery and sobriety with trauma-informed sensitivity and care. A primary clinician at New Leaf engages with the patient and does a number of evaluations and screenings, trauma included. Directed by the primary clinician, the patient begins detox with or without medication-assisted treatment. The levels of care offered at this industry-leading rehab are found here.
In many cases, Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) is the first element of the treatment plan offered by New Leaf Detox & Treatment. It is a form of pharmacotherapy that serves as a harm reduction tool when used in conjunction with counseling and behavioral therapies. MAT is effective at diminishing cravings, reducing high-risk behaviors associated with substance abuse, and creating stability for clients during transitional periods.
The first step of Alcoholics Anonymous declares: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” Residential addiction treatment is a solid decision when you or your loved one is powerless over their addiction and that life has become unmanageable.
The philosophy of New Leaf Detox & Treatment is to equip clients with the knowledge, life skills, spiritual tool kit, and emotional support they need to produce a meaningful character transformation necessary for sustained long-term recovery. New Leaf’s team of professionals works diligently with clients to uncover, discover, and discard; to unearth the authentic self in each client, healing the underlying causes of addiction.
With a client-focused philosophy that acknowledges and embraces the unique strengths, experiences, and needs that each person brings to the treatment process, New Leaf Detox and Treatment is uniquely prepared to provide the life-changing care that will empower men and women to overcome their chemical dependence and mental health issues and make the other changes that will support their successful pursuit of happier and healthier futures, free from the constraints of addiction.
The NLDT team is dedicated to clients’ full recovery view sobriety and recovery as a process of change and transformation. The name, New Leaf, is a metaphor for the change and transformation that begins for clients when they commit to walking through the center’s doors, and for the treatment staff’s commitment to helping clients turn over a new leaf.
Change is hard, that’s why we can’t do it alone and why it is vital that we have a foundation of hope.
Remaining drug-free during recovery is a daily proposition. It requires the individual to subscribe to, and harness, all the available tools, and resources to maintain sobriety. It is an exhausting period that requires daily mindfulness and vigilance. Every person in recovery is vulnerable to relapse which may elicit feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing, and sometimes, a deeper descent into using again. Depression, anxiety, mood swings, destructive thoughts, compulsion, obsession, isolation, loneliness, and the temptation to return to their addiction threaten sobriety at this time. To maintain sobriety, the person in recovery must continue to lean on the arsenal of tools he or she acquired during treatment, and the supportive sober living community.
If I can be an example of getting sober Then I can be an example of starting over We fell so hard Now we gotta get back what we lost lost I felt you'd go But you were with me all along
