Look at the news on any given day and I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that 100 people die every day from a drug overdose. This rate has tripled over the last 20 years and does not look to be going into decline anytime soon. The only hope that almost every drug addict has is to somehow find their way into a treatment program.
While a treatment program is often very successful, it is very difficult for addicts to fend off the availability of drugs in our modern world. Recently, addicts who were interviewed confirmed the extremely sad fact that drug availability and affordability has never been more prevalent. Illegal drugs are now as readily available as beer and even less expensive. There have even been confirmed reports of single doses of cocaine that sell for only three dollars. For somebody with a cocaine addiction, three dollars is an easy impulse buy.
Right now, over 20 million Americans over the age of 12 have an addiction, and those addictions exclude tobacco. The battles in the war on drugs are starting earlier and earlier with every generation. The rates of illicit drug use are highest among people between the ages of 18 to 25. This makes sense because most young people who move away from home for the first time tend to experiment with drugs more than any other demographic.
But experimentation is not always a good thing. Addiction is nothing to experiment with and many of these young people leave college with full-blown alcohol addiction, methamphetamine addiction, opiate addiction, or even prescription drug addiction. They leave themselves with no other option than to put their lives on hold for a treatment program that will hopefully counteract the damage they have already done to their young lives.
When you become an addict, you lose the very essence of yourself. You become someone that neither you nor anyone else who knows you can recognize. Your habits change. Your looks change. The things that were once so very important to you lose all of their luster. The shine that was once a part of what made you so unique has faded into blackness. You are a fraction of who you once were and only a piece of what you hoped you’d become.
But as long as you are alive, you have hope. Hope is a dangerous thing, but it is a very powerful thing as well. Hope can set you up for failure, but it can also propel you onward to success. You can still become all that you dreamed you could be. Alcohol and drugs do not have to be the end of you. A treatment program that allows you to reset your life could also save it.
Take the time to seek out the treatment program that is a good fit for you. Find someone who cares to help you. It’s worth it. It’s worth it because you are worth it.
