Effective Recovery for a Brighter Future for the Netherlands and Its People

The Netherlands is famous for many things including windmills, little Dutch boys in wooden shoes, its system of dikes, vast tulip fields—and, many people think, legal marijuana. Actually, marijuana is not really legal in this country. The law enforcement agencies have decided not to enforce the laws on the illegality of cannabis as long as certain criteria are maintained. The discretionary nature of drug laws has permitted cannabis “cafés” to be established, where the drug can be purchased and consumed without the threat of arrest.

The idea of permitting these cafés was to give people who wanted to smoke marijuana the ability to purchase it from a controlled and regulated business. Also, in earlier days, cannabis dealers normally offered “hard” drugs like heroin and cocaine as well as marijuana. Therefore, by channeling buyers to regulated cafés, fewer people came in contact with these drug dealers and so they were less tempted to buy other, more damaging drugs.

To keep selling cannabis, cafés must refuse to sell to underage customers, must limit advertising and transaction size, must not sell any other drugs, and must not create a “nuisance” in their environments.

The rules have had to change from time to time. Because of heavy “cannabis tourism” in the early days of this policy, residents of neighboring countries were flooding across the borders just to use the drug in the cafés. Therefore cafés near the borders were shut down and in Amsterdam, cafés were converted into private cannabis clubs, with membership limited to citizens of the country.

Drugs Sending the Dutch to Rehab

You might think cannabis sends the majority of people to drug rehabs in this country. Actually, it doesn’t—quite. About 47% of those seeking drug rehab state that cannabis is the primary drug they are struggling with. In second place is cocaine, associated with 24% of admissions to treatment. Heroin and amphetamines are just about tied in third place.

About 7% of young adults are consuming MDMA (ecstasy), making it the second-most popular drug in the country. It just does not send as many people to rehab as cocaine, heroin or amphetamines.

Still, among 15 and 16-year-olds, alcohol gets the heaviest use. Nearly half of these students have drunk alcohol in the last 30 days (more than in other European countries included in this particular survey) and most of these students are binge drinking. Also, an increasing number of people are using the “new psychoactive substances”—synthetic drugs—on the market.

Drug Rehab in the Netherlands

In the last few years, there has been a shift from inpatient drug rehab services to outpatient. Those addicted to heroin may receive “heroin-assisted treatment” or HAT—which means they are prescribed pharmaceutical heroin to replace the illicit drug they were taking. Methadone and buprenorphine are also available.

There are about 14,000 high-risk opioid users, which basically translates to those addicted to and being daily users of opioids—heroin, methadone or a prescription painkiller. There are also 7,400 people receiving substitute opioid treatment. But this means that they have not been able to find their own freedom from drugs and the bright, fresh feeling of being free from any intoxicants. Some people receiving free pharmaceutical heroin from the government complain that they are being dismissed by society without really being helped to recover from addiction.

At Narconon Zutphen, the definitions of treatment and recovery are completely different. Here, the emphasis is on recovering the ability to live free from any drugs. No substitutes are ever administered and each person in recovery is carefully taught how to enjoy a drug-free once again. Where a step down is medically required in the case of certain drugs such as benzodiazepines or heavy alcohol use, we work with medical detox services so they can be weaned down before starting the Narconon program. This puts them safely on the road to living a truly drug-free life.

Here, Each Person Progresses at Their Own Rate

There’s no set time limit. A person isn’t asked to leave after 30 or 45 days. What is truly important is that he (or she) is ready to face life’s challenges with his new life skills. Otherwise, a person might hit the streets before he has learned to cope with cravings. Or before he knows how to deal with triggers that cause him to think of using drugs or drinking again. This lack of complete preparation is why so many people use drugs again within hours or days of leaving rehab.

Early in this program, each person experiences the New Life Detoxification. This is a unique procedure for enabling each person to rid their bodies of old, stored drug toxins. These toxins stay lodged in the fatty tissues until the body gets the right support to flush these residues out. This support is an exactly designed, precisely supervised process of moderate daily exercise, a strict regimen of nutritional supplementation and sweating in a sauna. As the person sweats, drug residues are washed out of the body. The result is brighter, clearer thinking, a better outlook on life and, very often, reduced cravings. Some people even say their physical cravings are gone.

Increasing Ability and Self-Control

Reduction of cravings is a good start but it’s no place to quit. A person must find relief from the severe trauma, guilt, and loss of the past. He must learn how to identify and deal with the events in life that could drive him back into drug abuse. Those lessons follow the New Life Detoxification. This is how a person learns to protect and preserve his own sobriety.

First, each person learns how to draw his focus out of the trauma of the past and place it on the present and the future. This is the improvement that results from the Objectives. Day by day, the exercises, and drills on the objectives helps free a person from the pain and losses that dragged down his soul. After the objectives, he will have a better grasp of the present and more control over his own decisions and his destiny.

Finally, he must learn the active life skills that help him walk that narrow sober path in the future. He will find out how to identify people who might secretly wish him ill and learn how to keep himself safe from their influences. He needs also to learn how to recover his personal integrity and retain it in the future. And he will learn how to resolve problems and overcome obstacles so he is not tempted to escape into drug use to avoid disappointments.

It’s a very different experience than in most drug rehabs but, in fact, many families send a loved one to a Narconon drug rehab center like the one in Zutphen after having tried multiple other centers before. And for so many of the tens of thousands of people who used Narconon as a solution for addiction, it was the last rehab they ever needed.

Contact Narconon International to learn more about this lasting solution to addiction. We are looking forward to hearing from you and helping you or a loved one get started on the road to sobriety and recovery today.