How To Rid Yourself Of Drug Addiction: Part ONE:

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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It Really Makes One Want To Laugh or More Appropriately . . . . Cry:

THE GOVERNMENT SAYS IT WANTS

TO REDUCE DRUG ADDICTION OF

ALL TYPES, YET GOES ON BUYING

7.38 MILLION DOSES OF EXPENSIVE

ADDICTIVE DRUGS EVERY DAY !

Methadone by prescription

To give away “FREE” to nearly 2.6 million mainly involuntary drug addicts who have been prescribed into addiction by psychiatric pushers of pharmaceutical drugs – all paid for by British taxpayers !

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it ?

But that's only because it IS ridiculous and, even though many politicians today know this, it is because, over the last half century, MPs of every colour from across the House do not want to admit that, when they were in power, they also allowed themselves to be conned into believing that this ridiculous prescribing policy could perhaps somehow and at some time deliver an addiction free United Kingdom !

As a result, whilst the present government runs the same ridiculous policy, the present loyal opposition are reluctant to criticise or attempt to have it thrown out, because the Government will tar them with their own brush, as a means of escaping that same criticism of themselves.

So before we get into the pros and cons of this ridiculous and appalling situation, let us be clear that we are not here considering the many none addictive drugs and medicines which can do so much good for our ageing and longer-living population.  Medications produced by ethical members of the pharmaceutical industry to make life easier, healthier and happier for a majority of our people.

We are here concerned only about those drugs such as the benzodiazepines, the opioid pain killers, the “Z” drugs, the anti-psychotics, methadone, Subutex and Suboxone, etc., etc., all of which impose lifelong addiction and / or hypnotic commands on patients' lives for the sole purpose of helping them overcome the often appalling “cold-turkey” effects of withdrawing from the involuntary drug addictions into which they have been iatrogenically precipitated by psychiatric, N.H.S. and G.P. reckless prescribing.

What makes one want to cry rather than laugh, is the fact that whilst Parliament is worried about the loss over two years of £2 BILLION by the Royal Bank of Scotland, or the cost of £2+ BILLION a year for 10 years for the building of a new nuclear power station, or the cost of renewing Trident, etc., Members of Parliament go on hiding the culpability into which they were so naively conned, by going on tacitly approving totally wasteful spending of £11.088 BILLION EVERY SINGLE YEAR on maintaining 2.6 MILLION legal drug addicts instead of curing them.

AND THAT £11+ BILLION A YEAR IS FOR THE LIFETIMES OF THOSE 2.6 MILLION. - PLUS – a similar amount for the lifetimes of those just NOW being prescribed into the same addictive lifestyles, instead of being cured.

This is because MPs are RIGHT NOW STILL BEING CONNED into believing the profit hungry psycho-pharm fraternity who pretend that drug addiction cannot be cured, and who thus ruthlessly condemn any procedure or organisation that CAN cure addiction - because a cured addict is a lost profitable psycho-pharmaceutical client !

Which is not only ridiculous – IT IS CRIMINAL !

Bringing addicts to lasting recovery of the relaxed non-criminal state of abstinence into which they were born, costs an average of £29,000 to £39,000 depending on local property and wages costs – ON A PAYMENT BY RESULTS BASIS.

i.e. on a basis where the fee for their stay is only £9,000 for their bed, board and toiletries if they fail to remain abstinent for a six to 12 month medically validated period of continuous, lasting and proven recovery.

This means that, if the cost of curing each addict averaged £34,000, the £11+ BILLION each year the Exchequer currently pays out to maintain the current number of U.K. prescribed addicts (IF THE NECESSARY PREMISES AND TRAINED STAFF WERE IMMEDIATELY TOMORROW AVAILABLE) would in fact pay for the curing of 326,118 addicts each year, so that all the present 2.6 million addicts could in theory be cured in the next 8 years, with the current addict maintenance cost also falling every year, as the number of such addicts reduces each year.

However, in practice because it would take some two to three years to convert and retrain existing rehab executives and staffs and fully set up the required network of some 300 x 40 bed residential recovery centres, it would take closer to 40 years to clear the present 2.6 Million prescription addicts, when allowing for the fact that up to half of the 2 million older patients would likely die during that timespan.

Fortunately, There Is A Quicker Route To Massive N.H.S Savings.

Of the £11,088,000,000 being annually spent to maintain prescription addicts, the government's National Audit Office reports that £8.46 billion is spent just on the 180,000 of former illegal recreational addicts now on methadone, buprenorphine or other Opioid Substitution Therapy, and that, unlike most of the involuntarily addicted elderly, most of these OST addicts are not in care or nursing facilities.

By initially limiting the curing of addiction to this smaller and more costly group, and assuming it will take three years to fully establish the 300 x 40 bed recovery centres and the trained executives and staff they will need to tackle the 2.4 million of involuntarily addicted mainly older people, it would take less than 8 years to take the current 180,000 out of the OST treatment system and return them to a more normal and productive life.

This would save over £30 BILLION over that 8 year period.  Then, as those OST addict numbers reduced, the residential recovery centres could start turning their attention to the bigger and longer job of recovering the 2.4 million of involuntarily addicted people in nursing or care homes.

In fact it is more than likely, after addiction recovery centres start proving themselves, that some nursing homes would wish to send their executives and staff for the training required to let them start delivering relaxed withdrawal on their already established premises.

In addition, with the size and seriousness of the involuntary addiction problem and its massive costs being increasingly recognised, in that same period it is not optimistic to assume that the Government will move to ensure that the number of patients being prescribed into that condition are drastically curtailed.

IT IS IN FACT THE SHEER SIZE OF THE PRESCRIBED ADDICTION PROBLEM, THE MASSIVE COSTS OF ITS ERADICATION AND THE TIME IT WILL TAKE TO BRING IT TO A HALT, WHICH DOES MOST TO EXPOSE THE MASSIVE PROBLEM IT ACTUALY IS, AND THE NEED FOR URGENT, POSITIVE AND COUNTRYWIDE IMMEDIATE ACTION.

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Founded in 1975.

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Self-Help Addiction Recovery Training

 

LEARNING TO CURE

 

YOURSELF OF

 

DRINK & DRUG

 

ADDICTION.

BASED ON 50 YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS.

As you may well have noticed, you can't live somebody else's life for them, and equally, nobody else can live your life for you.

So that, whether we like it or not, life is a do-it-for-yourself activity.

This means that becoming addicted to drink or drugs is also mainly a do-it-for-yourself activity AND ALSO that escaping from addiction is something you must do-for-yourself, provided you know how to go about it.

A self-help residential programme of addiction recovery training for lasting relaxed abstinence is vastly different from other addiction rehab systems because, instead of offering “treatment”, it “TRAINS” addicts in HOW TO CURE THEMSELVES.

And it is the many differences in a self-help training programme which make all the difference to the results which such programmes obtain first time through in from 55 to 69+% of cases.

The FIRST Difference: between a self-help training programme and other forms of rehabilitation is found in such programme's view of the individual addict who is regarded as an “addiction victim” and designated as a “STUDENT” rather than as a “patient”, a “client”, a “bum”, a “criminal”, a misuser, an abuser or a “service user”.

An “addicted patient” for psychiatrists and pharmaceutical producers is a client with an addictive demand who should be “treated” by doing something “TO” him or her in order to have that addict as a consumer of substitute addictive medication for as long as U.K., taxpayers via the NHS, will go on paying for prescribed supplies of drugs such as methadone and Subutex, etc.

The definition of a “criminal drug user” varies from country to country and from time to time, but the intention and effect of the “criminal” label is to punish what any particular jurisdiction currently regards as a crime – which in practice across the world can mean anything from being given a caution or being sentenced to a fine, imprisonment, a whip lashing or even execution !

And interestingly, the above “criminal” view of addiction is usually concerned only with smuggled, stolen, illegal and designer drugs, and so does not include the vast majority of addictive substances such as licensed ALCOHOL and prescribed MEDICAL drugs – each of which are vastly bigger problems than smuggled, stolen, illegal and designer drugs.

The defining of an addict as a “student” recognises four things:

a) That 70 to 75% of all drink and drug addicts who have been using for more than 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years or 30 years desperately want to quit, and although they have thus tried and failed on numerous occasions (often daily) to do so, they nevertheless have no lack of willingness to stop. Their problem is simply and actually “finding out HOW to stop”.

b) That – (because life is obviously and inescapably a “do-it-for-yourself” activity) – addiction is NOT just about a chemical substance but is a condition permitted by the individual's lack of a real understanding of life, mainly brought about by misinformation & lies from vested commercial interests in the massive alcohol and medical supply businesses, as well as from criminal sources.

 

c) That an addict is no longer in total charge of his or her life and so wishes to again take control, and,

d) That, to again take control of his or her life, an addict needs training in self-help addiction recovery techniques, with which they can concurrently procure lasting relaxed abstinence for themselves, and thus thereafter be able to easily apply what they have learned - for life.

 

So the first vital difference is that a self-help programme does not “treat” drug addicts, nor does it transfer addicts from one addictive substance to another as in so called Opioid Substitution Therapy where addicts are moved from illegal heroin to legally prescribed but more addictive methadone or Subutex, thus basically ensuring they remain as prescription drug addicts for life.

Self-help instead TRAINS THEM to cure themselves !

GIVE A MAN A FISH, AND YOU FEED HIM FOR A DAY.

BUT, TEACH HIM HOW TO FISH, AND YOU FEED HIM FOR LIFE.

This is the difference between treatment in most rehabs and training in self-help addiction recovery.

Give a heroin addict methadone and you satisfy his habit for that one day. But teach him HOW to take control of and get rid of his habit, and you give him the gift of recovery of the natural state of relaxed abstinence into which he was born, and which he can then maintain.

Which brings us to self-help's very different recognition of “WHY” addiction occurs.

SECOND Difference: Psychiatrists, psychologists, politicians, social workers and police, etc., assign a large variety of reasons as to why an individual becomes an addict. They ignore completely the fact that the UK's largest group of addicts (over 2 million) are NHS patients prescribed into involuntary addiction by the medical profession, and instead blame “peer pressure”, wanting a “thrill” or a “high”, irresponsibility, lawlessness, recklessness, criminal inclination, misuse and numerous other “possible” causes.

But for centuries medicine, alcohol and drugs have been used to solve problems, and that is still the reason for their usage today. For certain heart problems we take aspirin, for a headache or toothache we take paracetamol or some other pain killer, for the problem of travel sickness we take another tablet, for the problem of shock or family loss we are prescribed Valium or another “benzo” drug, and to solve shyness or anxiety many take spirit alcohol or another chemical stimulant, etc.

And it is the misinformation and even downright lies which are used to make the guy (who has what he “considers” a problem) use an addictive drug in order to solve it.

In fact, Mary Wakefield the deputy editor of the “Spectator” once commented that the pharmaceutical industry has grown into possibly the largest industry in the world by manufacturing “A Pill for Every Ill”.

“Drugs solve problems” - or so we are told from an early age, not only by psycho-pharms, but also by Grandma, Dad & Mum, our local doctor and even the local pub barman.

It is therefore not at all surprising to find self-help students finding and recognising for themselves that they decided or agreed to take an addictive substance IN ORDER TO SOLVE WHAT THEY THEMSELVES (and usually them alone) CONSIDERED A PROBLEM OF SURVIVAL IN THEIR DAILY LIFE OR ENVIRONMENT.

In other words: DRUGS ARE A SOLUTION – NOT A PROBLEM.

But strangely enough, most “treatment” forms of addiction rehabilitation, EXCEPT self-help, basically consider drugs as “a problem” which doctors believe can only be solved with some form of medication.

A solution is simply an action adopted by individuals to handle some problematic situation in their life.

Those readers with the benefit of self-help training will know that a solution comes under the heading of “a self-determined change”. i.e. It is not something forced on the individual.

So the second difference is that self-help training recognises that the initial cause of addiction is not a search for thrills, or highs, or misuse, or abuse, but that the cause is the desire of an individual to solve what he or she considers a worrying personal problem by employing a solution which he or she is wrongly advised or led to believe involves using an addictive substance.

So they are a VICTIM of both the addictive drug and the misleading information given them in order to persuade them to try a few doses.

In other words, they make a disastrous decision to use an addictive substance based on a lie or on some misunderstanding, and become addicted because it is addictive drugs themselves which are what impose and enforce addiction on the user.

This is obvious, because NO-ONE CAN EVER BECOME ADDICTED TO A DRUG WHICH ONE NEVER EVER USES !

THIRD Difference: From the above we see that the goals of self-help training are:

1) knowledge of recovery techniques,

2) resurrection of personal responsibility, and

3) the regaining of relaxed control of one's life - leading to self-determination

    of one's life.

But for other addiction rehabilitation systems the goal is often to be able to struggle through each difficult day - one day at a time - without taking the drug to which they are addicted, just by courageously fighting their craving.

Whilst this can eventually bravely lead some to increasingly relaxed abstinence, because other rehab systems make no attempt to remove the individual's store of drug toxins and metabolites lodged in the fatty tissues of the body, there is always the possibility of re-stimulation from the breakdown of such deposits, their release into the blood stream, a consequent re-triggering of desire for the drug, and a return to addiction. Release of such addictive deposits is triggered by increases in body temperature usually caused by physical work, exercise and / or weather hot enough to lead to sweating.

Which brings us to an examination of the technicalities and nomenclature involved in recovery from addiction.

FOURTH Difference: When self-help training says: “detoxification”, we mean flushing from the addict's body ALL drug residues, metabolites, hormones and other toxic deposits built up by addiction and life in general.

When a psychiatrist, doctor or pharmacists says: “detoxification”, they misleadingly mean the stopping of the regular taking of any further doses of a particular addictive substance. (What self-help regards as: “withdrawal”.)

 

So, when an addict is given medication to stop him taking heroin, that is the psycho-pharm idea of a “heroin detox”. The addict is no longer adding to the store of toxic heroin metabolites in his body, but nevertheless he still retains whatever damagingly poisonous store of them he has already built-up.

However, IF in order to stop the heroin intake he is prescribed methadone or Subutex, etc., (which is normally the case), IN ADDITION TO his existing store of heroin metabolites, he then starts to build up a further store of methadone metabolites or Subutex metabolites, etc., any or all of which (including the original heroin) – by engaging in hard physical work, energetic sport or just warmer than normal summer weather conditions – can by sweating be released from the body's fatty tissues, re-enter the bloodstream and lead to a return to a former state of addictive desire.

“Recovered” and “rehabilitated” are other words which for self-help trainees have different meanings from those which other addiction rehabilitation systems assign them.

For us: “recovered” means returning to the natural state of lasting relaxed abstinence into which 99% of the population is born. To fully understand why this is different – try ringing a local rehab and asking what THEY mean by “recovered” ! Or ring your local MP and ask what he or she (mis)understands by “recovered”.

Self-help training goals (and achievements) are seen by many as sky-high when compared to the goals of most other rehabs.

FURTHER Differences:

Because of the fundamentally basic differences between the self-help “TRAINING” approach and psycho-pharm “TREATMENT” approaches the reasons why self-help is totally different becomes apparent in every aspect of an addict's journey through his or her programme.

Self-help training “withdrawal” procedures are DRUG-FREE. Many other withdrawals are not. In LASTING RELAXED ABSTINENCE terms self-help programme results run at a 55 to 69+% success rate, normally reached in 11 to 13 weeks.

 

Methadone achieves only 3% abstinence after decades of prescribed usage. Twelve Steps does better at 20 to 30% achieved in 9 to 36 months or longer.

And even the cost of delivering self-help training residential recovery is different from other residential rehabilitation operations, because of our willingness and ability to offer the choice of “Payment by Results” as an alternative to the usual full up-front fee for attendance on course rather than for an agreed result.

Depending on local property and wages costs, which can vary from one part of the UK to another, the current self-help programme fee for the newest Centre in the expensive south of London counties is £29,000 on a Payment by Results basis. But other residential rehabs cost from £12,000 to £39,000 or more, for treatment periods far shorter than self-helps 12 weeks and with full payment due irrespective of the result.

And of course results of 20 to 30% abstinence are nowhere near as valuable as the self-help training results of 55 to 69+% of lasting relaxed abstinence and recovery – first time through the programme.

There is also another important difference.

Psycho-pharm treatment prescribing considers ALL addicts as nearly impossible to cure, as a result of which they say they should ALL be put on Subutex or methadone Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST).

On the other hand, self-help training centres know from 50 years experience of training addicts to cure themselves, that 70 to 75% of addicts who have been using for months or years WANT TO QUIT, have tried at numerous times (often daily) to do so and yet, having again failed, STILL WANT TO STOP.

THEIR PROBLEM IS THEREFORE NOT WILLINGNESS,

IT IS LACK OF RECOVERY KNOW-HOW.

The other 25 to 30% are resistive cases who for the three well known main reasons have no desire or intention whatsoever to quit. These are the horses you can lead to water, but who will not drink. So, with no willingness, how can they ever be trained ?

The other 70 to 75% of addicts need, want AND DESERVE Self-Help Training Technology. And the rest of the society also needs them to have it, because addicts are the 5% of the UK population which impinge most heavily on the lives of the other 95%.

It is therefore encouraging to observe that internationally more citizens and a majority of policy-makers are now recognising the direction in which addiction inevitably takes our families and society, and have seen that the most important first step is to REDUCE THE DEMAND which can arise from within a family from vested interest and criminal advice leading to poor parenting.

Westminster, Brussels, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Cardiff and other parliaments are now increasingly aware that amongst the problems which drug and alcohol addicts cause are the following:

* Addicts and drunks cause most accidents at work.

* Addicts mug and rob old people.

* Addicts and drunks cause most road accidents.

* Addicts sell drugs to children (and others).

* Addict increase the numbers of prostitutes and toy boys

    in our towns and cities.

* Addicts disrupt our schools, the education of our children

    and the life of our communities.

* Addicts bankrupt businesses and destroy jobs.

* Addicts break into and burgle people's homes.

* Addicts spread HIV, AIDS and hepatitis.

* Addicts and drunks commit the most crimes,

and,

ADDICTS ARE UNDOUBTEDLY THE REAL CURRENT THREAT TO

OUR LIVES AND TO EVERYBODY'S FUTURE.

AND THIS INCLUDES ADDICTS ON ILLEGAL, LICENSED

AND PRESCRIBED DRUGS.

This is because their addiction controls them, and

THIS AFFECTS EVERYBODY – EVERYONE'S FAMILY, EVERYONE'S

INCOME, EVERY JOB, EVERYONE'S HEALTH AND EVERY ONE'S

HOME – INCLUDING YOURS.

The above is about addicts in general and the increasing damage which they do to all walks of society and to our whole economy.

They are also the reasons why (although we might believe it is not our fault or our problem) WE MUST ALL DO OUR UTMOST TO POSITIVELY HELP ADDICTS reduce their numbers and their dependency on those of us who do not use drugs.

Because we have the truth staring us in the face, we can be sure it is no use relying on government alone to solve the substance addiction problems which are daily causing anxiety, crime, violence, terrorism, damage, accidents, injuries, disease and even death.

Every one of us is needed to solve this problem because, in the final analysis, it is OUR problem, even if our family and children have so far managed to avoid actual drug usage and the direct results of addictive behaviour.

SO, IT IS SINCERELY HOPED YOU AND YOURS WILL NEVER HAVE

TO DIRECTLY FACE ADDICTION, AND HOPED ALSO THAT YOU WILL RECOGNISE THAT SUCH AN ESCAPE WILL MAINLY COME ABOUT BECAUSE YOU HELPED STAMP OUT ADDICTIVE DRUGS

BY HELPING VICTIMS OF ADDICTION TO RECOVER !

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For further information, you may wish to contact:

Elisabeth M. Reichert, Field Staff Member

for Narconon United Kingdom,

e-mail elisabeth.3@btinternet.com, or phone 0775 263 0319.

who can arrange for you to inspect (without obligation),

and talk to the staff and students at,

the NARCONON UNITED KINGDOM Training Centre,

at HEATHFIELD, East Sussex, TN21 0DJ.