Rising Above Drug Addiction

A big part of the game in drug rehab is preventing relapse. Very often drug addicts are able to make it through withdrawal and get the idea of living free of drugs as long as they’ve got the support of the rehab center. But out on their own, they soon fall back to old habits and go back to drugs.

One trouble with many rehabs is they focus entirely on the addiction. Addicts leave these programs still having the viewpoint of being drug addicts. Their attention is focused on drugs and their efforts are devoted to fighting the habit and staying clean. They’re still looking at drug addiction from the inside, and so not able to see it clearly and not able to focus on a life without drugs.

At Narconon, we take a different approach. Though we acknowledge that drug addicts are addicted when they arrive, once they’re off the drugs, we turn the focus of attention to what they’re going to do in the future.

Before he or she became an addict, the drug addict had abilities and interests. They probably had goals and dreams that may have been lost and forgotten in the passage into drug addiction.

At Narconon, when we rehab a drug addict, we’re not just rehabbing a drug addict, we’re rehabbing a whole person. We help the person rehabilitate those lost goals and dreams that have been eroded away by drugs. We focus on his strengths, and help him see how he can apply his own native abilities to the creation of a new life.

So when a person leaves the Narconon program, it’s not with the idea of making it through the next day or the next week without going back to drugs. He or she leaves with the idea of creating a new life.

In this way, graduates of the program rise above the pull of the drugs. They’ve got better things to think about and better things to do. They’ve got new games to play, and this puts them above the drugs and above the reach of their former addiction.