Getting Help for Substance Abuse

There are all kinds of avenues available today in society where someone addicted to any sort of substance can receive help.  Support for substance abuse includes groups, individual counseling or therapy sessions, and meetings of addicts where you can slip in the back door, sit in the back row and pretend you really shouldn’t be there. Drug hot lines, Suicide Prevention telephone centers, forums online run by reputable therapists trying to help as many people as possible.

Substance abuse treatment

Many insurance companies will gladly cover time spent in a rehabilitation center or recovery house. They would rather their policyholder be substance-free and healthy versus drugged out and sickly.

Schools attempt to “scare teens straight” by employing tough love tactics and showing videos of men and women who have been in prison for life due to their substance abuse.

Literature is sent home in kids’ notebooks, the airwaves are flooded with public service announcements of the dangers of smoking, drinking and using drugs.

It is a time to make the right choices for your life. A time to understand the heavy risks involved in following substance abuse down a path of destruction. The risks not only involve you or your life, but that of your loved ones, your family, your children, and your spouse.

After you get help and have checked out and are back in your life, you will be tested time and again.  I have a dear friend who is fighting her demons. She is an alcoholic and her demons are strong. She only stops drinking for short periods of time and then finds herself back among the old crowd, the parties, the stress of her life and she gives in and takes a drink, and then another, and another. She has lost her job, her family, her dignity, her pride.

Make the right choices even if the choices are difficult. Find someone that will mentor you and stay strong in your resolve to get straight, to stay clean. It isn’t easy, but no one ever said that life is.