Thursday, February 25, 2010

Listen....hear what our clients say


"I just want to say thank you. You found me a rehab center where for the first time I was able to get the healing I needed in a quiet, private space without constant attention. All I could hear when I woke up in the morning was the sound of the ocean and the birds. It was exactly the kind of space I needed to heal." Name Withheld for Confidentiality

"Thank you for helping me find a great rehab. I am really glad I called. Privacy was a big concern for me. Alan was very knowledgeable about all the top-tier rehabs and helped me narrow it down to the ones where I could be sure my privacy would be respected. " Name Withheld for Confidentiality

"No two people are alike; neither are their substance abuse situations. Far too many residential treatment facilities tend to lump people with similar problems into one “canned” treatment program. This is not responsible treatment and it’s rarely successful." ~Luxury Drug Rehab

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Words to inspire...

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." - Confucius

"If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down." -Mary Pickford

"The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want." -Ben Stein

"'Normal' is just a setting on the dryer." - Barbara Johnson, author and speaker.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do." - Confucius

The Art of Success - By Wilfred Peterson

Success is ninety-nine percent mental attitude.
It calls for love, joy, optimism, confidence, serenity, poise, faith, courage, cheerfulness, imagination, initiative, tolerance, honesty, humility, patience, and enthusiasm.

Success is having the courage to meet failure without being defeated.
It is refusing to let present loss interfere with your long-range goal.

Success is relative and individual and personal.
It is your answer to the problem of making your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years add up to a great life

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

My warning...


Usually druggies and the rehabilitation of them is not associated with upper class or nice things. I was raised in an upper class neighborhood, I went to private boarding schools, was top of my class, had my choice of any college I ever wanted and any career my heart desired....I also could get my hands on any and every drug my friends and I could ever want. Money is a universal language.
Ar first it was just at the parties, and then a few of us took it farther to our weekly trips to the mall or the pool house. We didn't think of it as a problem, it was fun and it kept us skinny and beautiful. Isn't that what it's all about? Everywhere you look if money isn't talking the body is.
You never see the drug addiction coming, at first the need is like an itch you can't scratch just annoying. It doesn't take it long for it to become an angry swarm of bees in you head making you want to rip out your hair to get at them. The gnawing need stabbing the back of your eyes and making you shake and quiver knowing the only way to make it all go away is another hit.
You are no longer skinny and beautiful, you are anorexic and sickly. You look nasty and fragile, like the next breath will snap you in half. That beautiful world I lived in disappeared, and so was I.
An addiction to drugs is no slight issue, the after effects will last the rest of your life, and in lots of way shorten your life because of it.
I thought my life would be absolutely amazing, I would marry an amazing man, have my 2.5 kids and live in an upper class neighborhood and my kids would reap the benefits that I was able too. I got drug addiction treatment, but not soon enough. Now because of my choices, I am in a wheelchair and I may not be able to have kids at all.
And as for the benefits of my life, if I do have any kids, I wont let them think that anything I did or got was a benefit...it was a curse.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Luxury the Right Way


As a former user and abuser of drugs, specifically opiates, I saw life through a very special pair of glasses. In short the only people in my life that mattered at all to me were the ones supplying me with what ever I needed at the moment, or help the ticket to get to it. For example, it wouldn’t be uncommon for you to find me wandering around the subways offering a quickie to the next guy who stepped of the train for a few bucks.
I could also be found digging in dumpsters for thrown out treasures that I could pawn for money. It wasn’t rare to find me swiping a few candy bars off the shelves at the grocery store to sell to the kids in the park.
When it came to making a few bucks to get a fix, I was a pro. I may not have been legal but I always got my ultimate goal.
I was sort of staying a shelter and one day found a bulletin hanging up about drug treatment services. I grabbed it but I don’t think I ever read it.
I was found 2 days later with it in my pocket when the cops picked me up for loitering and prostitution. The arresting officer looked at and laughed at me. He said that if I had any sense I would look into it but judging by the state I was in I was too far gone.
My parents were notified about my arrest, I was barely 18, a runaway. I hadn’t spoken to them since I left 3 years ago. It was my mother who posted my bail and took me back to California.
The trip was awkward, she talked to me as if I had never left. She told me about all my friends and how the dog had died last fall. She told me about the new shopping center that was finished just in time for Christmas this last year. Half way home I broke into tears, none stop wailing- I think I had embarrassed her at that point. She wrapped a blanket around me and gave me her shoulder to cry on.
I told her about what I had been doing, how I had been living. She didn’t cry, or yell, or anything she just kept nodding her head. I then told her what the cop had said to me. She looked at me and asked how I felt about that and if I was ready to do something about it.
I told her that I was and she handed me several pamphlets about drug rehab programs, and about several different drug treatment centers.
We read through them for the rest of the flight of some gingerale and pretzels. I was amazed about how many different treatments were available and the different programs.
I was checked into one about a week after coming home, my father didn’t talk to me much, I knew I had hurt him. I was daddy’s one and only little girl out of 3 kids.
I am home again, and we are building our relationship again, we don’t talk about before. We aren’t ready, but it feels good to have my Daddy back.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Addiction to Opiates


When a co-worker started to show weird signs of possible drug addiction to specifically opiates; which is any drug derived from the opium poppy plant. The common ones are morphine, heroin, and codeine. As well as oxycodone (OxyContin, Percodan)and hydrocodone (Vicodin)to name a few more. She claimed to have really bad head aches and that tylenol alone would relieve her pain. She confided in me that she took a tylenol with codeine in 800mg tablets and she would use 4-6 every time. Well every time I turned around she was popping more in her mouth. So I decided to look into these 'magic pills' as she called them.

I quickly discovered that "in sufficiently high doses, they can produce a euphoric state. For this reason, they are often used as recreational drugs. Psychological and physical dependence leading to addiction is common in frequent opiate users. The body quickly adjusts to the use of opiates such that increasingly larger doses are needed to produce the same euphoric effect. Overdosing, sometimes resulting in fatal respiratory failure, occurs when addicts take more than their body can handle.' (quote from Health Tips: Opiate Addiction Syndrome)

I was watching my friend numb herself to death. I also learned that addicts become less able to function the longer they're on them and the way of ingesting them goes from simple pill popping to snorting or injecting to get the fix faster.

One day I went into the lounge and found her asleep, or so I thought. I had to slap her hard to wake her up she was disoriented and dizzy. Other side effects of opiate addiction include: dry mouth, slow, shallow or labored breathing, pupil dilation, and drowsiness. When I realized what path she was rapidly heading I decided to look further into how to help rid herself of this dependency.

I knew detox would be required first and foremost. I also learned that she could get counseling to help her identify why she had the headaches or what might be triggering her discomfort. I also learned that a lot of opiate users start because of stress.

I talked to her about my concern, she seemed half-way convinced she might have an issue. So I suggested that we look together for a place to get some questions answered. It took some time to convince her but after showing her some of the information I had found and several pictures of herself before her addiction. She began to completely agree with me.

We search for a place she could get the help she needed. There are several places that specialize in opiate detox programs.

Monday, February 1, 2010

The Only Way To Fix The Mess You're In...

Is To Fix The Mess You Are..."

Other Words To Help...

"Don't quit five minutes before the miracle"

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us:
"Happiness is available; please help yourself."

Just one drink


For some people 'just one drink' is all that's needed, required or wanted. For others that's only the beginning. For others it becomes an escape, a retreat and safe place where the hurt is gone.
That is what it was for me. I was married to the man who raped me to escape my overbearing, old-fashioned mother who thought that the youngest daughter should grow old taking care of her parents instead of living my life. I wasn't allowed to be with the father of my child for he was Protestant and my family and my new husband were devout Catholics.
So my new Husband and I left our home in Germany and traveled to America to follow his job. I was to be the model wife and entertain his friends and pretend to be the happiest person in the world.
I am sure you can see that soon my friends became like bottled genies just waiting to answer my deepest wishes. I eventually managed to escape my marriage with my daughter, but the damage had already been done. My daughter would come home from school and find me passed out on the floor of the bathroom where I had barely managed to make it.
It was her that made me realize I needed help, 5 years after the divorce she was 13 years old. I had missed it all, I couldn't even remember years at a time they all seemed to blend together. I sat one night with my daughter on my bed and she told me that she was afraid I wouldn't be around to see her graduate. I knew then things needed to change.
Together we took the bus that weekend, I had lost my car and license already to a DUI, to the library to find a place or anything that could help. We looked up Drug and Alcohol Treatment which gave us a lot to look into. It was almost too much for me, I really needed a drink reading all these drug and alcohol facts. But all I had to do was look into my daughter's eyes and think 'I have to do it for her, if nothing else'
Finally after 3 weekends at the library and what seemed like thousands of facts and pages and places and articles on Drug and Alcohol Addictions. It seemed like we finally had enough information to tackle this together. I think that's what made it the easiest for me, knowing that my 13 year old daughter was there with me cheering me on like a mom at a sports rally.
And now 2 years later I am the mom cheering her on.