Recovered Heroin Addict Now Says He Has Never Been Happier
The handsome young man was speaking about his experience with drugs. Travis L. was 16 when he first tried heroin. Even before that he had taken Ecstasy and smoked a lot of marijuana. He was only thirteen or fourteen when he began to drink. And he added, “It all progressively got worse.”
Unfortunately, the education of the young suffers greatly when they become addicted to drugs or alcohol. Like Travis, young addicts often skip out on school, and even if they go, learn little while sitting in a fog from drug abuse. He said, “I was kind of going to school. I mean I was enrolled but I was skipping a lot. My friend and I would just not go to class and go to get drugs, mainly heroin.”
Luckily Travis was later given a chance at recovery when loved ones got him to Narconon Louisiana. The Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program is a holistic recovery program which takes on addiction from all angles. The participant first goes through a drug-free withdrawal, made more tolerable by employing generous nutritional support and care by the trained staff. The next step is a sauna detox that removes residual drugs that linger in the body, even long after the person stops using drugs. Known to be involved in triggering cravings, these drug residues can have long-lasting effects unless eliminated.
Travis experienced some remarkable changes early in the program. He commented on the sauna program: “It was in the sauna that I really had that ‘click’ that I knew I wanted to be clean. You start feeling a lot better about yourself. You start feeling better physically. You can see, you can smell.”
The final phase of the Narconon program consists of courses that teach life skills to the recovering addict, skills that he either lost in a life of addiction or ones that he never learned before. Each recovering addict needs to be proofed against the factors in their lives that could lead them to start using drugs after they get home. They must learn how to deal with challenges and obstacles in life so they will not feel the need to turn to drugs or alcohol again.
Travis talked about returning home after studying these courses: “When I got home, there were some realities I had to face. I had to pick things back up with my family and school and everything. I handled it pretty well, I think,” he says, smiling. “When I got back I was easily able to take care of things.”
A drug-free life is possible with Narconon. About his new drug-free life, Travis said, “Life is perfect right now. I moved to Florida, live on the Gulf, have a job and I’m going to school. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”
