CHOOSING
THE RIGHT WAY
TO HANDLE YOUR HABIT AND
TO SUIT YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES.
Although, in order to maximise
sales of their own addictive products, psychiatrists and
pharmaceutical companies have been telling government, for over 80
years, that substance addiction is basically incurable, the fact
remains that since the 1930s, around the world, millions of drink and
drug addicts are known to have successfully escaped from the
addiction trap by one of three main ways.
To
fully appreciate the above statement, it is necessary to recognise
that psycho-pharmaceutical so-called “treatment” in the form of
OST (Opioid Substitution Therapy) is NOT a cure for addiction ! It
is merely a system of moving a drug addict from an illegal supply of
drugs to a legal supply, in the vain hope of taking the addict out of
a life of crime by giving him free supplies, paid for by the U.K.
taxpayer, and costing the N.H.S. £8.46 BILLION EVERY YEAR !
However the famous and
authoritative “BIG ISSUE in the North” August 1999 report titled:
“Drugs at the Sharp End” provided adequate proof that OST
methadone and buprenorphine “treatments” seldom if ever work
to procure crime reduction or lasting relaxed abstinence, and some
time later the National Treatment Agency (now Public Health England)
admitted that OST worked long-term in only 3% of cases –
interestingly the same success rate as natural withdrawal with
advancing age.
THE
THREE MAIN WAYS TO WITHDRAW AND THUS START CURING ONESELF OF
SUBSTANCE ADDICTION ARE:
12 STEPS:
The system of mutual support
established in 1935 by a group of alcoholic American business men and
professionals, plagued with drinking problems sufficiently serious to
be ruining their businesses and their family life.
Known originally as “A.A.”
(Alcoholics Anonymous) 12 Steps has since expanded to successfully
encompass those suffering from Heroin and Cocaine addictions, and all
these forms of “anonymous” groups can now be found in most towns
and cities around the western world and, in addition, many
residential rehabilitation centres deliver 12 Steps on a professional
basis over a period of weeks or months before sending a “cleaner”
but usually not yet fully cured addict out to continue at his or her local 12 Steps group.
It is reported that some 20 to
30% of 12 Steps practitioners succeed, usually in a period of nine to
36 months or longer, during which time they will successfully and
with guts and mutually supported determination, stop using and “one
day at a time” fight the effects of “cold-turkey”, or
gradually reduce their addictive consumption.
Although 12 Step Groups
are basically free of cost, 12 Step Residential Rehabs charge
fees dependent mainly upon the quality of the accommodation, service
and meals, etc. As a consequence, professionals and business men
tend initially to go to a rehab, whilst those of lesser financial
means tend to rely solely upon their local group activities.
Whilst reliance on a “higher
power” is included in most 12 Steps programmes, no further
technical physical or mental steps are indicated, so that the high possibility of reverting to drug usage caused by the presence of metabolites and toxic drug residues in the body, along also with irrational drug influenced decisions in the mind, are in no way dealt with.
SMALL
DOSE STEP DOWN WITHDRAWAL:
This is the system of very
gradual dose size reduction recommended by the authors of the
“British National Formulary”, published jointly by the “British
Medical Association” and the “Royal Pharmaceutical Society of
Great Britain”.
A system which unquestionably
works – particularly for involuntarily addicted patients on
prescription drugs whose dosing can be professionally controlled over
the often long period of time required to ensure the patient's
comfort during the whole withdrawal process, which can be from three
to nine months or even longer.
Unfortunately, the different
additive and / or hypnotic drugs necessitating this type of
withdrawal come in a variety of dosage formats – tablets, pills,
capsules and liquids – and all in different manufacturer
recommended dose sizes.
In the early stages of small
step down withdrawal, the necessary size of the smaller doses can be
achieved by cutting large tablets or pills into halves, quarters or
even eighths of their original size, but for elderly patients this can be totally impractical
beyond quarters and, of course, is not possible at all with most
forms of capsule, especially when liquid filled.
Because for patient comfort,
the optimum amount of step-down should not exceed 2.5 to 5% of the
current dosage, the range of small doses which need to be available
can go all the way down to 1% 2.5%, 5%, and 10% of the producer's
normally manufactured and recommended dose sizes and, because in many
instances, they claim that smaller sizes are more difficult or costly
to manufacture, producers endeavour as far as possible to avoid
providing and stocking them on a regular basis.
However, in addition,
producers are well aware that a patient using 1,095 doses a year of
their benzodiazepine or other 3 times a day drug medication will be a
lost profitable consumer if they are encouraged to successfully
withdraw. One can therefore from a commercial viewpoint understand a
lack of enthusiasm or degree of reluctance on the part of their
marketing people to even contemplate offering the above indicated
smaller doses.
And, again in addition, regular
and easy availability of such small doses would allow General
Practitioners to initially prescribe smaller doses, and thus avoid
more of the involuntary addiction they know larger doses can so
easily create.
Here again, those pharmacists
who describe and offer small dose step down withdrawal principles
make no comment on the eradication of metabolites and toxic drug
residues from the withdrawn addict's body. Nor do their psychiatric
colleagues offer any way of correcting irrational computations and
weird decisions made during drug overwhelmed events or drug deprived
and desperate cold turkey periods.
Thus leaving the withdrawn
addict wide open to a resumption of his or her former addiction.
SUPPORTED
IMMEDIATE DRUG-FREE WITHDRAWAL:
In some eastern countries, a
drug addict (but not a severe alcoholic) is withdrawn simply
by locking him or her in a room long enough to suffer through all the
grossly uncomfortable “cold turkey” effects of unsupported
withdrawal.
Those eastern “service
providers” know that whilst deprived drug addicts may well FEEL
they are dying, this is never actually the case, and that confronting
“cold turkey withdrawal” head-on is considered to be the
best way to ensure they will never again choose to use such drugs.
On the other hand, "sympathetic"
pharmaceutical drugs marketing departments say they hate to see
addicts suffering, when they have available another “helpful” drug
which can see the addict through all those nasty “cold turkey”
miseries, which, if the addict accepts that, will most likely leave
him or her with a new addiction to the pharmaceutical drug prescribed
to “help” them through their withdrawal.
So a totally “drug-free”,
but nevertheless “supported” withdrawal has since 1966 been used
to help the addict to far more comfortably confront the rigours of
so-called “cold turkey”, without the possibility of generating a
new addiction.
A system of simple locational
and body “assists” or exercises applied by a trained staff member
at any and all times of the day and night as required, coupled with
sufficient water based supplement drinking and minimum eating of
mainly green salad vegetables, will in 3 days to 3 weeks see the
individual through a withdrawal struggle no more severe than the
feelings associated with a dose of influenza. But whilst 'flu can kill, drug-free withdrawal doesn't.
The period of withdrawal
varies according to how long the addict has been using drugs,
according to which drugs and which dose sizes have been used, and how
often they have been used, and a majority don't take longer than 3 to 10 days.
The product of supported
immediate drug-free withdrawal is an individual who is no longer
using drugs, but who may still need to be stabilised in the here and
now, which can be achieved with further “Assists”, a form of
mental and emotional “First-Aid”.
On the physical level, he or
she will also need to get rid of the metabolites, hormones and toxic
drug residues, etc., stored or lodged in the fatty tissues of the
body which, can under hot weather conditions, hard physical work,
prolonged exercise or other sweating, be broken down and be released
back into the blood-stream thus restimulating an addictive demand for
the drug(s).
On the emotional level, the
withdrawn addict's mind also needs to have “flushed out” the
irrational decisions and weird concepts picked up during drug
controlled events and / or during desperate drug deprived cold-turkey
periods.
This however starts us into
Part Two of “How To Rid Yourself Of Drug Addiction”, which is
better dealt with in a separate post.
S.A.F.E. Is A
Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Founded in 1975.
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