addiction information & help
This page is dedicated to the eternal energy of Christian Freund.
If you or someone you know needs treatment for addiction, go to THIS LINK to find a BOARD-CERTIFIED addiction medicine specialist.
We can stop
thinking about addiction as a ghost in the closet: shrouded in mystery and fundamentally different from the "normal" spectrum of health issues. Instead, we can view addiction as a medical condition like type-2 diabetes or depression, and can be vigilant with our perspective to more effectively help the ones we love.
When it comes to something like depression, medicine is used to alleviate the negative consequences of that illness while keeping the patient alive. In the opinion of many professionals, an attainable goal for those with depression is complete abstinence from medicine. In this regard, a person would grow to become someone who no longer needs antidepressants to thrive. The person who has depression has no control over their conscious feelings, but they can still recover from the illness. This is possible for many people (if not all people) with depression, if they find a therapeutic practice that helps their body grow out of or sublimate chemical and/or epigenetic imbalances.
Once again, an individual cannot control their depression-- it is out of their control-- but with therapy and professional care, one can sublimate and de-escalate the authority that depression has over their minds and bodies. I think we need to look at drug addiction the same way. To me, heroin is like sertraline, except with one big difference: sertraline goes through massive legal and regulatory checks to minimize mortality, and people with depression don't need to buy unregulated, illegal sertraline on the street that can be tainted with deadly poison. Clearly, we don't extend the same care and understanding to heroin and addiction that we do to sertraline and depression. Instead, we have criminalized an illness, we have taken away control measures to minimize mortality, and we have pushed those in need to the fringes of society where they harm themselves and others.
The US system is broken in this regard because we have vilified the innocent, and we have followed our country's mantra of fierce independence and no community support. Now, the best we can do as individuals is to change our perspective on addiction, and educate ourselves on the healthiest and most successful way to overcome addiction in our lives. Below you will find some valuable educational resources to help those with addiction, but first I would like to share my story of addiction.
My own story
of addiction started early. As far back as I could remember, I had severe preoccupations with facial twitches and other tics that were being directed by a part of my brain that I could not control. Do you ever see a kid or adult who scrunches up their face a lot, or seemingly forces their eyes shut periodically? That person has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and you witnessed one of their tics. Throughout my youth I had a number of OCD tics, which were often associated with symmetry. If my right thumb grazed my right index fingernail, then I needed to have my left thumb grace my left index fingernail.... and then I needed to have my left and right thumbs graze all of the other fingernails on their respective hand... for symmetry sake. This obsessive routine would transfer to various parts of my body, from my tongue down to my toes. Eventually, the tick transferred to an audible "squeal" in the back of my throat caused by epiglottis manipulation. When a tic becomes vocal it's called Tourette's Syndrome. That lasted until my early adulthood, when my experiences with LSD, coupled with advances in my meditation practice (and working with a professional cognitive therapist) gave me the tools I did not have to transcend that part of my brain that I could not control. Unfortunately, LSD treatment is not well funded or understood, but I have included some resources about LSD and Psilocybin treatment below.
Additional Learning
informative and insightful presentations to better understand addiction and treatment
*I recommend experimental treatments like those listed above for adults who have not been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder and who are actively engaged in professional cognitive or behavioral therapy
