An Inspiring Story for the Drug Addict's Family

Drugs exact a terrible toll on countless lives—most poignantly those near the addict—and need not occur at all. Nonetheless, for those family members and close friends who know a drug addict, here are a few words from an addict who managed, with the right help, to break free. Yes, it can be done. Even with the most seemingly unsolvable situation...

Ever since he was 11, Kevin had been drinking and using drugs. At 12, he snorted his first line of cocaine; a year later he snorted Heroin. By his 15th birthday, he was sticking needles in his arm. Within two years, he'd been through six rehab and treatment

centers. "After all that time, money and effort trying to get clean and sober, I couldn't," he says. "I always wound up where I was before, or even worse off."

Like many drug addicts will tell you, all Kevin ever wanted was to get clean and lead a normal, productive life. In one of those earlier rehab centers, due to insurance complications, he was forced to leave. By the evening of his release he was high again

"I gave up hope," he recalls. "I lost all control, did things I won't mention, segregated myself from the world, and wanted nothing more for myself than death." Not thinking he could go any lower, he did. Kevin was arrested three times in one week, the last

arrest for Grand Theft Auto. "I'll never forget the pain that followed," he says. In spite of it all, Kevin's parents came to see him in the county jail as he once again began to detox. "They told me they had found a different type of rehab program," he

recalls. That's when he started at Narconon of Northern California. "My parents were right," says Kevin, describing it not as a 12-step that had failed him in the past. Instead, in the first phase of the program, he learned how to truly confront, control and

communicate—"things I never knew how to do until then," he says. Next, he began a closely supervised process (the "New Life Detoxification Program") in which he sweat out drug residuals while following a specific vitamin regimen. "It was an amazing

process filled with ups and downs," he recalls. But when he finished? Says Kevin: "I felt like a new person."

For the first time in eight years, Kevin's body truly was "drug-free"—something, as he says, he never thought would be a reality. The latter part of the program was a bit of a mental clean-up: Kevin says that it "allowed me to write up things I was afraid to tell

people—all the bad and deceitful things I'd ever done, and to show them to another person. I have no skeletons in the closet anymore, nothing to hide!" From there, he was given tools to help him spot harmful people that he would choose not to be around, and to handle them "so they can't bring me down," as Kevin puts it.

"I never thought that I would be able to repair the things that I have done," he says, but with help from the staff, Kevin was able to start fixing his past and look to the future. Kevin spent three months in the program. What was it all worth to him? "More

than I could ever put into words. The Narconon Program isn't easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Without having gone through this program, I probably wouldn't be alive today."

Call to help a loved one achieve drug independence.