Facts About Drug Addiction That You Need to Know

Drug Addiction

Drug addiction: It's a scary concept. Every year, drug use and abuse impact millions of American families; every year, drug dependency keeps drug addicts from living the lives they want to live. But that's not the end of the story: Drug treatment works, and the right drug rehab center can make long-term sobriety a real and meaningful thing.

The first key to beating drug addiction lies in understanding it: In identifying the causes of drug dependency, and in admitting that drug abuse is beyond the scope of an addict's control. Only those drug addicts who recognize their addictions for what they actually are ever stand a chance of achieving substantive addiction recovery.

But you need help to beat drug addiction, and so it is that many drug rehab programs often begin with a successful drug addiction intervention. By confronting an addict with the truth about his drug use and abuse, friends and family members can help spur the healing process. Ultimately, there's no more powerful motivator than love and concern, and an addict who sees the impact of his behavior on the people he cares about is an addict who's very likely to seek out professional substance abuse treatment.

In the end, of course, it's the quality of that substance abuse treatment which will ultimately shape the course of an addict's recovery. Drug addiction never dies easy, and only those drug rehab programs which serve the unique needs of their individual patients can hope to meet long-term success. Drug addiction is a personal thing, after all, and addiction recovery must be a personal undertaking.

Addiction recovery is also, we should note, an ongoing undertaking, one that doesn't have any readily discernible endpoint. Sobriety, like drug addiction, is a lifestyle as much as a life goal, and staying clean over the long haul means actively choosing not to use. With that in mind, the most effective drug addiction center and drug treatment programs provide for the long-term care of their residents, with the ultimate goal of helping patients beat drug dependency forever. If you or someone you love has succumbed to drug abuse, that's the only outcome that could ever be good enough.

Drug Abuse and Drug Dependency

There are, to say the least, a litany of popular misconceptions about drug use and abuse. It's important to understand that drug abuse grows out of drug dependency: That addicts use drugs because they have to, and that addicts can't get sober simply by virtue of their wanting to. Drug addiction recovery, in other words, isn't a question of conventional will.

Many people mistakenly assume that drug addiction is a choice, and that drug addicts use drugs because they want to. But that's wrong: It's not, and they don't. On the contrary, drug addiction is a disease, a clinical disorder with clinical roots that requires, in the end, a clinical treatment plan. The simple truth is that anything less just won't get the job done.

Again, drug addiction is a disease: a disease like cancer, a disease like Alzheimer's. It would be absurd to expect a cancer patient to will his tumor away; it would be insane to expect an Alzheimer's victim to wish his way to health. The same holds true for drug addiction: It can't be eradicated without expert drug treatment from a professional drug addiction treatment facility.

Remember, you aren't alone in your fight against drug addiction, not in a country where upwards of twelve million people show demonstrable signs of drug addiction. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services found that almost five percent of the American population was engaged in habitual drug use and abuse, a startling figure by any standard. The good news, though, is that many of those drug addicts ultimately got help for their addictions…and that you can too, provided you see your drug addiction as it really is and seek out the treatment you'll need to finally beat it.

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