Counselors at Narconon often see college binge drinking as an early issue with alcoholics.  Alcohol abuse, beginning in college, can be the start of alcoholism for many people. What begins as a seemingly social activity can spiral into an isolated pattern of drinking alone, in excess, over years and even decades.  Addicts often have to relearn how to socialize without alcohol after years of abuse.

Survey data show notable drops in student binge drinking at several colleges and universities, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Feb. 16. For example:

• Alcohol-related violations dropped 3.7 percent at North Dakota State University in Fargo, N.D. over two years.
• Between 2007 and 2009, “problem drinking” fell 12 percent at the University of Pittsburgh.
• The number of Purdue students who engaged in binge drinking sank from 48 percent in 2006 to 37.3 percent in 2009.
• Frostburg State University in Maryland saw binge drinking plummet 27% over the past decade.

Prevention advocates say the drop in risky drinking is no accident. Students and administrators are making concerted efforts to provide students with fun, late-night activities that are alcohol-free – and offered regularly.

What could possibly compete with a beer keg? The Wall Street Journal lists a dizzying array of activities, including alcohol-free tailgate parties, carnivals, movie showings, simulated sumo wrestling, bowling, arcade games, and contests.

http://www.jointogether.org/blog/posts/2011/activities-key-to-cutting.html

Narconon sees these significant drops in binge drinking as real progress in the effort to fight addiction.  Although these studies are fairly new, in time, other statistics will surely show increased GPAs and higher graduation rates for those schools offering more alcohol-free activities.

Narconon Drug Rehabilitation hopes to see less cases of alcoholism beginning with binge drinking as more schools adopt these practices.

Residents of treatment facilities will undoubtedly fall back into the correctional system and addiction related deaths will increase if the state reduces or eliminates residential treatment.  Although outpatient treatment helps some, many addicts require being removed from their environment and placed into a structured residential facility in order to initially get off drugs and alcohol. The state should redirect budget cuts or, at least, reduce the cuts to residential treatment. It costs taxpayers twice as much for an individual to be in the corrections system than in state funded treatment.

Even though the state of Maine has a rate of alcohol and drug addiction eight times higher than the rest of the nation, budget cuts there may soon force the closure of 10 out of 13 residential treatment centers, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network reported March 9.

Maine governor Paul Le Page is proposing to cut $5.6 million from the state’s substance abuse treatment programs. Most treatment providers say the cuts will be so deep that they will have to stop operating.

“It’s the classic pennywise-pound foolish, because we treat people at less than half the cost of the corrections community,” said Roger Prince of Serenity House, a substance abuse treatment program that is over 40 years old.

“So what do we want to do? Do we want to close this place down and send [our clients] back to jail or to the emergency room? It makes no sense to me,” he said.

According to a March 9 story in the Bangor Daily News, 40 percent of the Wellspring treatment program’s budget, or over $500,000, will vanish with the cuts. “There is no way I can make that up from other sources,” said Pat Kimball, the agency’s executive director.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2011/maine-eliminates-residential.html

Narconon hopes that Maine will reconsider their enormous cuts to residential treatment funding.

Narconon Drug Rehabilitation will continue to treat addicts residentially with high rates of success in Georgia, Michigan, California and Oklahoma.

It will take society as a whole because that’s how big the problem is.   Now days, almost everyone knows someone who is taking prescription drugs, even if they don’t pick up that there is an abuse problem.

This is an excellent article and well worth reading in its entirety:

“BECKLEY — Perhaps the trigger was an acrimonious divorce.

Possibly, the fuse was lit when a financial setback unleashed an avalanche of unpaid bills that made day-to-day living expenses too difficult to handle.

Maybe the proverbial straw on the camel’s back was a sudden illness that hurled the person into a deep fugue.

Whatever the underlying cause for depression, someone came along with some poor advice:

Sniff this. Swallow that. Inhale here.

What ensued was euphoria, with an unseen hook the friend never mentioned.

Once is not enough. So to maintain that good feeling, the hurting individual needs more of what took him into dreamland. Now, he’s hooked. From there, the path is treacherous, fraught with faking pain in “doctor shopping,” or buying from a back-alley supplier, and possibly ending with the slamming of a steel door.

And there’s a good reason for dependency, says Dr. Hassan Jafary, a practitioner of internal medicine at Stanaford Medical Clinic, outside Beckley.

Simply, the brain never forgets.
Jafary experimented on a reporter to illustrate. Eyes closed, the reporter opened his left hand and Jafary dropped in it an object.

“Now, as I start to count, tell me what it is,” he said.

“A dime,” the object of his experiment replied, correctly.

And that is why one shackled to drugs cannot readily overcome an addiction. The brain just won’t let go of him.

Jafary applauds West Virginia lawmakers for moving to set aside $60 million in a proposed cigarette tax increase to treat addicts.

But society as a whole needs to get involved, he says.”

http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x186202800/Doctor-believes-all-society-must-combat-drug-addiction

Narconon will work as long as necessary to get the word out – we are the middle of a bad situation with these drugs and unless we do something quickly, the ramifications may be severe for the world as we know it.

For those who are already addicted – Narconon drug rehab is here to help.

The facts are that marijuana gets people high and it is a gateway drug for more potent and dangerous drugs.  Though states are acting confused, down deep most people have a sense that spreading the use of marijuana is not going to help society.  Even the temporary revenues will be eaten up down the line by the additional future burden of more drug addicts.  Here is the article:

“A broad range of marijuana-related legislation is pending in at least 13 states. The flurry of new bills includes efforts to legalize, expand, or repeal medical marijuana; protect workers using prescription marijuana; restrict the sale of medical marijuana in food; make driving under the influence of marijuana a crime; decriminalize small amounts of marijuana; or legalize, tax, and regulate its sale.

Proposals to Legalize Medical Marijuana

Hawaii is considering legalizing medical marijuana distributed through “compassion centers” under a proposal that would create three classes of licenses and make the drug subject to income, sales, and excise taxes.

Similar proposals are also being considered in Delaware, Idaho,Kansas, and Maryland. The sponsor of the Kansas bill said it was not likely to pass; in Maryland, a state delegate proposed amending the medical marijuana bill to disallow smoking marijuana for medical purposes – all other methods of ingestion would be legal

Indiana took a step closer toward proposing to legalize medical marijuana when a state senate panel backed a bill that would assign a state commission the task of studying and making policy recommendations on the issue. The panel made its decision after hearing testimony from a state senator with multiple sclerosis who said he wished he could legally use the drug to alleviate his pain.”

Plans to Change or Repeal Medical Marijuana Laws

A number of states that had previously legalized medical marijuana are considering changes.”

Narconon maintains that medication is indeed necessary in many circumstances.  However, this does not mean that we need to be moving towards having an entire nation on drugs.

Narconon drug rehab is the best solution for those who started on the path of abuse through marijuana and got addicted to marijuana or harder stuff.

A new study led by a researcher at Indiana University suggests that drinking problems in teens is not “just a phase,” but strongly predicts they will be alcohol dependent in their twenties, CNN Health reported Feb. 15.

Researchers assessed the drinking problems of 597 Finnish twins at age 18 by giving them the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI), a self-administered questionnaire. They followed up with in-person interviews when the twins reached age 25.

They found that 52 percent of the study participants showed problem drinking at 18 based on their RAPI scores. Those scores held at age 25, when nearly half of the participants were assessed as dependent on alcohol (46.2 percent) or met criteria for alcohol abuse (1.5 percent).

“The key finding was that the more drinking-related problems experienced by an adolescent at age 18, the greater the likelihood that adolescent would be diagnosed with alcoholism seven years later, at age 25,” said Richard R. Rose of Indiana University, who led the study. “The analysis of co-twins ruled out factors such as parental drinking and household atmosphere as the source of the association, because twins jointly experience these.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2011/teen-problem-drinking-not.html

Narconon works with people to come off of alcohol, drugs and teaches life skills. There are many difficulties that people face when they have become dependent on drugs and alcohol. People that seek treatment are likely to be successful but a big factor is the environment they return to after treatment is completed.

Narconon drug rehab teaches a different approach to alcohol and drug treatment. When someone enters the doors at Narconon they are educated about the drugs and their lifestyles. Many people are blinded by their addiction until one sinks very low and eventually realizes they need help. Narconon sees the ongoing problems alcohol and drugs bring to peoples lives and sees there is hope for those in need of treatment. Alcohol is a very powerful drug for the simple fact it is virtually everywhere in society.

The caveat here is that long term the price of this decision could be much higher than the money saved now.  It’s unfortunate and unfair for those of us who keep our heads straight and go to work every day – unfortunate but true.

The only real solution is to face the fact that we have a mess on our hands and it is going to cost money to straighten it out.  If the money is spent wisely on effective treatment and prevention, then we will reap the benefits and eventually the costs will go down.

Funding for research as to effective rehab needs to be part of any budget. Otherwise money will be wasted – and there is not enough around now to waste.  Here is an interesting article on the topic:

Ill. Gov. Eliminates Funding for Treatment and Prevention

“The state of Illinois will cease to fund alcohol and drug treatment and prevention programs as of March 15, the News-Gazette reported Feb. 19. The cuts are part of Governor Pat Quinn’s proposed 2012 budget.

The cuts are scheduled to take effect March 15, not on July 1, when the 2012 fiscal year begins. If they are implemented, advocates say, many treatment providers will have to close their doors.

“It’s the most devastating picture possible,” said Sara Howe, CEO of the Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association. “There’s real concern about the entire system being shut down because providers will close.”

Howe said that about 55,000 people, or “80 percent of our clients on March 15 would be thrown out of care.” The remaining twenty percent qualify for Medicaid, a federally-funded program, and would still be eligible for treatment services.

Bruce Suardini, of Prairie Health Systems, said that Medicaid only covered women, not men, and that the state planned to cut the rate at which it would reimburse providers for Medicaid-covered services by six percent.

Stacey Solano of the state Department of Human Services said in an email that the department’s budget deficit was due to “increased demand for services during the economic recession.”

Solano went on to say, “The department is now faced with the difficult but necessary decision of reducing services in order to pay our bills for the remainder of the fiscal year while preserving core services.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2011/ill-eliminates-funding-for.html

Narconon understands that it’s a tough world right now economically.  We do our best to keep our costs down, while still providing an effective program.

Narconon drug rehab is still one of the best investments.  Long term money is saved and most importantly, a life.

The Narconon program helps address these issues and many more.  Here is a most recent success story from a student who just completed the sauna and exercise program:

“Before I began the sauna and exercise program, I felt miserable every day and I let everyone know it.   I was getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night. My eating habits where horrible – I would only eat one big meal a day.   My general attitude was that life was a big joke to me.

Within 5 days on the sauna program, I started sleeping like a bear in hibernation. I also started to awake hungry and I re-introduced my body to breakfast. I started to see the effects of the nutrients I was eating every day. Instead of dreading exercise, I was craving it. I started to notice my sense of smell wasn’t gone for good.

One big change I immediately noticed was how clear my skin looks. I used to have a dry face but I haven’t had a problem with dry skin since I’ve started sauna, which is amazing. My nails have been growing like crazy.

The best thing that I got out of sauna was the way my body feels overall. I used to never leave the couch because my legs were always aching with pain. Now I feel like a kid again.  I can skateboard; play football, soccer, etc. without any soreness or pain. I really couldn’t ask for anything more.

I assess situations and think about past situations much differently.  I even realize the emotional stress that I’ve caused my loved ones. I think much more rationally. I’m ready to repair the bridges I’ve burned. I feel fully aware and now exist in present time.

I didn’t think it was possible for me to change. I always thought most of the programs graduates were exaggerating about the way they felt. They would say at some point during the program something would just click. For me, something just clicked in sauna. I had a lot of time to think. It’s hard to think about the things I’ve done in the past and the darkness that lingers. Looking towards the future and the infinite possibilities I can’t help but to feel happy. I know that with the way I feel now in combination with the tools I will need to live a happy life, there’s no way I can fail.”

The Narconon program addresses biophysical, social and behavioral components of addiction.  We cover many areas of life.  With all these areas addressed, the graduate can create a new life.

Narconon drug rehab does much more than get people off drugs.  It gives hope for a better future.

The decision to go public and share his story not only gives other addicts hope as they follow his struggle, it also sheds light on the use of addictive drugs in the NFL. As football players often sustain injuries on the field they are then treated by the league medical staff to get them back in the game as quickly as possible.  Oftentimes the treatment methods are not the best choice for long term health but a quick fix to get them playing again.

Former Jets QB Ray Lucas, who has taken the extraordinary step of sharing his experiences in drug rehab on Facebook, provided another entry late Thursday night. For those who aren’t familiar with his situation, Lucas developed an addiction to pain killers during his career and checked into Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches in Palm Beach, Fla., last Friday.

“The last 2 days have been days of transition. I was moved from detox into the Seaside condos. They are beautiful. I am still going through detox, it’s not easy. My body hurts all over as they work to unwind the years of pain killer use dating back to my playing days & then medicating my significant injuries in my retirement. I am feeling lot’s of anxiety. It has been a few tough days but I will get myself back.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/jets/post?id=4595

Narconon has seen a huge increase in prescription drug abuse in the past decade.  The physical symptoms Mr. Lucas describes are very effectively handled with the Sauna and Exercise Program that clients participate in during the Narconon program. It is unfortunate that the NFL doesn’t seek healthier treatment methods for the pain their players endure.  Hopefully as more players share their stories the league will be forced to look at their policies and introduce alternative and holistic treatment plans for NFL players.

Narconon Drug Rehab has a 70% success rate treating prescription drug addiction and offers a drug-free alternative to assist with pain management.

According to this article in Join Together, Narconon has learned that ten states are considering requiring that some adults on public assistances submit to drug testing.  Sounds like a good idea, especially since it looks like most of them will be offered treatment before losing their benefits.   Those on drugs, once treated, could return to society and make something of their life.

It is hard to imagine why there would be any opponents, but there are.  Hopefully it is not because in some states, the bill also includes testing for the legislatures.   That’s a pretty good idea too – maybe we could get a clue as to why there is so much willingness to keep our population drugged up.  Here is the article:

“Legislators in at least ten states are considering bills that would require adults on various types of public assistance to submit to drug testing. Supporters have said that testing would save money and encourage treatment, while opponents have claimed it would cost more money in the long run and discourage people from seeking treatment.

In most of the proposed bills, people testing positive would risk losing their benefits, though they could mitigate or avoid the financial impact by entering treatment and/or not re-using illegal substances.

At least two bills would require legislators to be drug-tested as well.

Senators in Virginia passed a drug screening bill 32-7 that would require people applying for, or receiving, certain welfare benefits, to answer questions and then submit to drug testing – if the screeners believe the person is using.

Bills in Illinois and Missouri would require drug tests for recipients of Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), a federal program that provides short-term help with food, rent, and utility bills for pregnant women and for families with at least one child at home under age 19. If the Illinois bill passed, the state would institute a three-county pilot program before expanding statewide. South Dakota defeated a similar bill affecting TANF participants 32-36.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2011/lawmakers-mull-drug-tests.html

Narconon has seen many individuals return to the work force, once their drug issues were resolved.  Even in this economy, it is possible, with determination to find work.  This would be of benefit to the community – not an expense.

Narconon drug rehab is a good choice for anyone.  It works.

Narconon is concerned that a recent survey featured in Join Together, points out the alarming fact that there are barriers to patient access to drug treatment.  The immediate problem to receiving treatment is funding, and many drug rehabs are apparently looking for the government to help make their programs available.  Though temporarily it can appear to be a financial burden, long term, it is one of the best investments that society can make right now.

The burden of lost production and extra health costs is not fully realized, but it is great.  The increase in drug addiction, with its crippling effects on individuals is most definitely affecting the economy.  A drugged up population can’t push a nation forward.  The temporary financial gain made by “legal” pot or pharmaceutical companies is going to turn out to be very expensive indeed.  Here is the article:

“A 2010 survey of substance abuse treatment providers showed a field that expects continued barriers to patient access despite health care reform, especially as funding sources change, Addiction Professional magazine reported Nov. 1, 2010.

The 27-item online survey, which was conducted by the magazine in September and October 2010, received 363 respondents from treatment facilities. It covered types of treatment offered, patient characteristics, drugs of choice, and business trends. Respondents represented many levels of care and types of clients served; most (61 percent) served clients that were publicly-funded, primarily Medicaid, while about one third said they did not work with third-party payers.

Although the majority (55 percent) of respondents said they had seen an overall increase in their client censuses in the past year, fewer than half (47 percent) projected patient volume to continue to grow in the next three years, in spite of expected changes to health care because of a workforce shortage and fears that public dollars for treatment –  in particular the federal block grant for substance abuse – could disappear.

“There will be fewer sources to pay, and services will be reimbursed at lower rates,” said one survey participant, William LaBine, who directs the Jackie Nitschke Center in Green Bay. LaBine’s agency has had to diversify its client base and funders as public sources of funding have declined.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2011/addiction-professionals-say.html

Narconon stays busy educating legislatures and schools but we simply can’t get the message out fast enough.  More individuals need to join in on the major communication lines of the world and make the announcement that something has got to change quickly, or we are going to find ourselves in real trouble.

Narconon drug rehab is a good solution for those needing treatment.