Narconon Graduate Success – V’s Story
Successful Treatment
“V” went to Narconon because she had an addiction to opiates. After finishing the program she has gone on to be a good mother and has a good job.
When Parents Do Drugs
V was born to an educated but low income family in California. Her parents had a happy marriage for a while, but when she was five they divorced. Both parents had addictions themselves and when V was born they were able to keep their addictions at bay for a while but eventually they got the better of them. Because both of her parents were caught up with their own struggles V went to live with her grandparents for a few years after this. She knew about drugs from her parents. Though she vowed she would never did them, they were somehow in her mind and remained there.
She did well in school and had many friends. She went to private school from kindergarten until sixth grade at which point she went to live with her mother. Her mother had been clean for two years and finally felt she was stable enough to care for her daughter. V finished out her sixth grade year at the private school she had been attending. In seventh grade she started going to public school.
Public school was a big change for her. She was accustomed to very strict rules at the private school she had been attending. Also her grandparents had been very strict with her as well. Her mother was more of a free spirit flower child type of person. She spoiled V with whatever she desired. She let her do whatever she wanted. V does not blame her mother, she feels she was trying to make up for lost time and love by giving the child whatever she desired. However the transition from having a very regimented schedule and strict discipline at all times to hardly any discipline at all was very detrimental to V.
Drugs In School
When V started public school it was hard for her to make friends right away. She was a very shy girl and getting acquainted with all new classmates was daunting. On one of her first days at school a small group of girls was pointed out by one of her classmates. She warned V that the small group of girls was bad news. She whispered “Don’t hang out with those girls, they do drugs.” V remembers that this was exciting to her and she had heard that her parents used to do drugs. She said she immediately went and introduced herself to the very girls that she had been warned about.
V found out that making friends with people who did drugs was very easy. The girls did not do hard drugs, they mostly just smoked marijuana. V was twelve when she first smoked marijuana. She said sometimes her and her new friends would also get drunk if they could get someone to buy the alcohol for them. A boy in the school would also provide them with Ritalin when he could. They would snort it. It was the first taste of another drug besides marijuana. V enjoyed drinking too much for someone her age. She said she remembers thinking she knew why people became alcoholics. She said that alcohol gave her a feeling of power and made her laugh a lot. She said it was easier to get pot however and that was the girls usual drug of choice more from availability as opposed to preference.
Drug Rehab for Adolescents
This lifestyle was not to last however. One weekend V went to visit her grandparents. They noticed immediately the change in her attitude. Because they had dealt with Vs mother drug addiction they knew what was up. They told Vs mom what their suspicions where. She immediately realized that they were correct. She arranged for V to go to a juvenile rehabilitation center because she was too young for Narconon, which was the program of choice.
V went there for four months. When she came out her mother had arranged for her to change schools. Her intention was to keep V away from the influence of her old friends. But V says that she already had a taste of the drugs and she wanted more. V said once she started using marijuana it got to the point where all she desired was to be high at all times. As soon as she got out of the rehab and started her new school she sought after the first stoners she could come across.
Relapse After Drug Rehab
Again making friends with druggies was quite easy for her. She made a similar group of friends that she had left at her prior school. They all smoked marijuana and would drink occasionally. They would also use cocaine sometimes as well. V said she loved cocaine. She said she was not able to get it often, being only thirteen and of no employment but she would whenever possible. This went on for another year, and this time V got a little better at hiding her drug use. She said she made sure that she never went home high, and would keep her drugs at her friend’s house. Her mother was also in denial about the whole situation and felt since rehab had worked so well for her that it was probable that it worked for her daughter as well. Besides that was the image V stove to keep up for her mom as well as possible.
The next year V and her mother moved to another town some fifty miles away because V’s mom got a promotion from her job. The new school V attended was better and it was harder for V to make friends with drug users. She eventually found a few in her new neighborhood and some of them where older, in their twenties. Some of them did cocaine as well. V started doing cocaine a few times a week as well as drinking and getting stoned. She eventually tried crack. This was is 1996 and crack was very easy to find once she knew who to look for.
Drug Treatment Again
V still wasn’t old enough to attend Narconon, though this was the program of choice so her mother sent her to a another treatment center. The treatment was a non-12 step program and lasted for six months. It was a wilderness type of school and was much more effective for V than the first rehab. When she came out she no longer wanted to do drugs and wished to improve her grades in school. She went to an alternative high school that focused on art. Art had always been a major passion for V, and she did very well there for a while.
When V was eighteen however she started smoking pot again. She said she did not do it all the time life she had when she was younger but occasionally she and her artsy friends would get stoned before creating some art. She dated occasionally, but not any druggies. She started dating someone at an art class she was taking. He lied to her about his age and they started dating. After a few months he became very controlling and mentally abusive. He took control over her entire life. She says she remembers that as a “complete nightmare” period of her life. She felt so afraid and controlled by him she did not know how to get out of the relationship.
When she found out she was pregnant ” it was over”. He would leave her in the house and take her car and take the keys to his car so she was unable to leave. He would go through her phone and question her obsessively as to who she had called. Sometimes he would even call the numbers back and tell the person not to call anymore. V was afraid to tell anyone about it. After a few months after she had given birth she found out that the father of her child was also a heroin addict. .
Narconon Success: Continued in part Two:
