Sarah Cline*struggled with addiction all through her adolescent and teen years. At 13 she starting experimenting with marijuana and alcohol and by her 16th birthday she was using these drugs daily as well as drugs like LSD and cocaine.
Finally when Sarah entered college she decided that it was time to stop using drugs so she could focus on her education. “I wanted to have a career,” she said. “I thought that the drug using part of my life was over.” Sarah focused on school and graduated, achieving a 3.8 GPA (grade point average) but unfortunately her battle with addiction was not over despite her own desire to stay clean.
“During my last semester of college I was told I had to get a dental surgery,” she explains. “I scheduled it right after school let out and had the procedure done. Because of the pain, I was prescribed Vicoden. Within a week I was using every day. I couldn’t stop.”
At this point, Sarah’s life spiraled out of control. Within a few months she went from abusing Vicoden to becoming a full blown heroin addict. Because of the addiction she was broke; she had lost her job, her apartment and burned many bridges with her family. Sarah’s drug abuse finally ended for good when she entered the Narconon drug treatment program in 2001.
According to Nick Thiel, Director of Intake at Narconon Freedom Center stories like Sarah’s are not uncommon. “There are many times where we have clients that become addicted to prescriptions after being given them by a doctor for some type of illness or injury,” he says. “We have also had many clients who may have stopped using drugs with other treatments that relapse on prescriptions and end up coming to Narconon.”
Nick adds one of the reasons that Narconon Freedom Center is so successful at treating all types of addiction, including prescription drug abuse is because the Narconon program is completely drug free.
Narconon also has a unique method of handling substance abuse on two levels. First through a detoxification program that removes drug resides from the body and reduces physical drug cravings to tackle and physical aspect. Then, Narconon uses an approach that raises the ability of the individual by giving them life skills to help keep them off drugs permanently.
“When I started using drugs again I felt so defeated,” says Sarah. “But when I completed the Narconon program I knew that I had stopped using permanently. I finally felt like I was in control again.”
Drug addiction does not have to go unhandled. If you or someone you know is in need of a drug rehab program that gets results contact Narconon Freedom Center today at 888-218-9478.
*Name changed to protect confidentiality.
