Life Skills and Their Relation to Recovery

Until Betty Ford went public with her addictions and her recovery, no one knew much or talked much about addiction treatment. A drunk might go to the hospital to “dry out” – in other words, get off alcohol. But that left the cravings and desire to be drunk untouched. About the only method a person had for getting off heroin was a “cold turkey” withdrawal, a very grim process.

But then Betty Ford established her center and celebrities began to arrive for treatment. This took the idea of addiction recovery into the mainstream.

But by the time the Betty Ford Center was being covered in the media, the Narconon program had been saving lives for 16 years. In the earliest days, a big white house in Los Angeles was the site for recovery, and then centers were established in Italy, Sweden, Russia, even Taiwan.

The word “rehabilitation” means to return something or someone to a former state. Drug rehabilitation should be returning a person to the way they were before they used drugs, to the furthest extent possible. Therefore, there should be ways for the addicted person to recover their own self-respect, to find relief from guilt and trauma and to know how to make drug-free decisions, even when there are challenges in the environment. When a person dried out or went cold turkey, there was no rehabilitation. They only got sober. They were left with their full measures of guilt. If there were some situations that would “drive them to drink,” they did not have new skills to deal with these situations.

One of the reasons that the Narconon drug rehabilitation program has no set time limit is that there is a lot of emphasis on those in recovery gaining the life skills they need to stay sober. Sometimes, a person never developed these skills at all before becoming addicted, as in the case of a teenager who became addicted very early. And in other cases, a person loses these skills, especially when addiction goes on for a long time.

A large portion of the Narconon program is dedicated to developing these skills. The list of skills addressed includes:

• Communication skills, including the ability to communicate clearly and honestly and the ability to listen and acknowledge

• Self-control over one’s actions, decisions, and thoughts

• Recovery of one’s personal integrity and relief from the results of poor decisions in the past

• Ability to make drug-free choices plus set goals and achieve them

• Understanding of personal values and the ability to apply these to one’s life.

This emphasis on life skills is one of the factors that sets Narconon programs apart from others. Everyone is going to progress through these lessons at their own rates. And because each person is required to apply these lessons to their own lives to bring about a repair of relationships or problems caused by addiction, it’s important that each person have enough time to make these changes.

Many people take eight to ten weeks to complete the Narconon program, but some may take longer. What is important is that they gain the ability to stay sober.

If this sounds like the kind of program you are looking for, give us a call and let us explain how the Narconon program can work for you or someone you care about.