Amanda Clements of Los Lunas spent much of her life with horses, the animals she loved and trained. But in an odd way, that love led her indirectly into her long fight with addictive painkillers.
“I injured my neck in a riding accident when I was sixteen years old,” she said. “I was okay for a while but then something triggered it twelve years ago when I was 28. I began to suffer pain all the time. My doctor prescribed Percocet and Vicodin for the pain but never explained the potential for addiction.”
Years went by as Amanda took the pills just as prescribed. “I didn’t like taking them but when I tried to get off them on my own, pains showed up all over my body. When I told my doctor about it, he bumped up my prescription to a higher dosage.”
As the dosages increased, Amanda was becoming addicted to the painkillers without ever realizing it. When her tolerance for the drug increased more, she began to go from doctor to doctor to get enough of the pills to enable her to feel normal and function in her daily life. “I even forged prescriptions to get enough of the drugs,” she explained. “No one knew I was taking so much and no one around me realized I had an addiction. And I had no concept myself of how bad it had gotten, even when I was taking more than 40 Percocets throughout the day.”
Finally, Amanda was arrested for the prescription fraud. “What was awful was the prosecutors counted up all the times I had forged prescriptions. It turned out to be more than 600 times. I had so lost sight of my life and the problems the painkillers were causing that I never knew it was that out of control.” She went through drug court but then later landed in jail. “That was the worst thing for me. In jail I met contacts who could get me illicit drugs to replace the prescription drugs I’d gotten used to. Things just got worse and worse then and I withdrew from my family and help completely. Still, I was more or less functional.”
Finally, the drugs took their toll and Amanda began to become unable to work or get her children to their school functions. “Even though I’d been out of touch with my family for five years, they were still willing to help me,” she said. “My mother looked for a drug rehab that was completely free of substitute drugs, that would help me restore my health, and she found Narconon Arrowhead in
“I’d already been through other treatment programs and I felt that it was not going to be any different at Narconon. I told my mother that it wasn’t going to work and that I’d just let the drugs kill me. There wasn’t one shred of the real me left at that point,” Amanda added tearfully. Amanda soon found that this program was different from the ones she had done before.
“It didn’t take long to see the difference,” she said. “I’ve never withdrawn from drugs so quickly. It was more tolerable than other withdrawals too. After just a few days, I caught myself laughing when I hadn’t laughed in a long time.
Amanda noticed a big difference when she went through the thorough detoxification step known as the Narconon New Life Detoxification Program. This program uses dry-heat saunas and nutritional supplements to flush drug residues from the body to help reduce cravings. “I was more clear-headed after this part of the program. It was easier to think about things, to talk to people. I felt more connected with things around me. Then as I went through the rest of the program, I learned how to control life situations constructively and not let things get out of my control.
“So many changes took place in the remainder of the Narconon program. Now I’m the old me I used to be,” Amanda stated proudly. “I have my self-motivation back. I lost it for a long time. Now I know how to accomplish my goals again.”
Amanda is looking forward to returning to her love: training horses. “I’ve been through such huge changes here at Narconon. I’m looking forward to being back with my two daughters and doing what I love once again. I couldn’t have done it without the help I found here.”
To find out how you can help someone with Narconon’s successful drug and alcohol rehab program, contact Narconon Arrowhead at 1-800-468-6933 or visit their website at http://www.stopaddiction.com/. The Narconon program was founded in 1966 by William Benitez in
