Mick’s Recovery from Drug Addiction
A few beers stolen out of the fridge at home when he was a kid didn’t create any particular attraction for Mick. He avoided any drug or alcohol use during high school – he didn’t even smoke cigarettes.
In the end, he and a friend decided that should try out these substances that everyone else was using, so they used some LSD as their first drug experience. He enjoyed the experience so much that he thought he should try some of the other drugs he had been missing. That was a fateful decision.
In his second year of college in West Virginia, he began to really make up for lost time. He started drinking at parties and smoking marijuana pretty consistently. To make money and keep his drug supply adequate, be began to sell marijuana. A couple of years later, he discovered cocaine and heroin. It was heroin that created the most destructive effect on his life.
Heroin Begins the Downward Slide
One day, he started snorting heroin and didn’t stop for a week. When he tried to stop at the end of the week, it didn’t quite go like he expected. Heroin had him addicted.
He had been trading his marijuana for heroin and now, to keep the heroin supply adequate, he and a friend were driving into New York to get supplies of marijuana and heroin and then heading home to West Virginia.
Mick found that his whole life began to gradually enter a dwindling spiral, as his heroin addiction created more and more damage. For a while, he could sell drugs and have enough money for his own habit and his living expenses. Later on, however, he was scrounging just to maintain his habit. He had to start living with friends because he had no place to live and no money for one.
His brother let Mick stay with him as long as he entered a methadone program. That worked okay until Mick’s drug tests at the clinic showed that he was still using heroin. And then his drug dealing caught the attention of his brother’s roommates. Mick was out on his own again, looking for places to stay with people who might owe him favors from his drug-dealing activities.
Eventually, he got back on methadone even though he really wasn’t that interested in being drug-free. He’d drink or use cocaine while he was using methadone.
To get a job in California, he transferred his methadone treatment out west. He thought this might be an opportunity to get things together but after a year, his drug use was just the same as it had been when he arrived.
A Friend’s Overdose Death Starts to Change His Perspective
Back home, his former girlfriend overdosed on drugs and died. Her death put things in a new perspective. Mick was starting to see that drugs were ruining the lives of people he knew as well as his own. He got himself through withdrawal and a drug rehab program and got stopped using for the first time in a long time.
After the program was over, he continued going to meetings but he felt like something was missing from his life. He managed to stay clean for a couple of years and began building a career based on the artistic activities he had left behind years before. But the fact that his life felt flat and boring still bothered him.
The Same Trap Awaits Followed by More Alcohol and Another Rehab
A little marijuana use led to some drinking that eased his way into social situations. Life was a little more fun and interesting again. Not surprisingly, his reliance on marijuana and alcohol led into a similar trap as the one heroin had created before. He began to behave in ways that bothered him, that he regretted. He felt empty inside, despite some fair success in his artwork and setting up art shows. “I thought I should feel good, but I didn’t,” he said.
He tried to quit drinking after that but just managed to go from constant drinking to binge drinking when he had the money. He began consuming more at one time now, drinking vodka straight until he could not drink anymore. At his mom’s urging, he went to a short-term rehab to try to get sober. When he finished, he got his own place to live and started drinking soon after. Still determined to get sober, he went into a very long-term program that would support him and help him get some practice being sober. He was in this program for almost a year.
Now, a Completely Different Kind of Rehab Provides New Hope
But once he left this program, the same trap awaited him. He was sober but bored and unhappy. Alcohol was once again the solution. There was another rehab and another relapse followed by a medical detox to get off the alcohol. But this time, he looked for something completely different to help him get sober. “I had been through so many rehabs that had not worked that I was hoping there was a different kind of program out there for me,” Mick commented. He began to look for a rehab that was not based on meetings as he had been to hundreds of meetings over the years. He found Narconon.
“I liked the idea of the sauna detoxification program that is part of this rehab,” Mick said. “And I liked the fact that there weren’t meetings where you talk about what you’ve done. In earlier programs, I found it was possible to be so glib that I got nothing out of the meetings.”
As he progressed through the Narconon program, Mick found that it was possible to finally let go of bad experiences from the past and start looking forward to the future. He learned to look at his life from a new perspective. As he worked through examining and repairing parts of his life that had been damaged by his years of addiction, he began to feel lighter and freer.
“I found that I learned how to live a drug-free life myself, not from someone else telling me how to do it,” Mick observed. “And I think the Narconon New Life Detoxification would help anyone who had been using drugs.”
If you or a loved one needs help with drug addiction, contact Narconon right away. Our counselors are here for you.
(To preserve privacy, the photo does not show an actual Narconon student or graduate.)