Helping West Virginia with its Plague of Addiction and Loss of Life

West Virginia may not be in the news headlines often but perhaps it should be. This small state tucked away in the hollows of the Appalachians leads the country in disastrous effects from our current opioid epidemic.

Consider cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS)—that’s what it’s called when a baby who was exposed to opioids in the womb is born and suddenly no longer gets those drugs via the mother’s blood. Essentially, the baby goes through withdrawal. For weeks, this newborn must be tapered off opioids so it does not die of dehydration from the vomiting and diarrhea and so that it can sometimes sleep. In 2013, West Virginia had the highest rate of NAS in the country.

This graph reveals how this problem has increased in West Virginia. In 2000, there was only one of these births for every 2,000 children born. Now, there are 33.4 of these traumatic births per 1,000.

In 2015, West Virginia also led the country in their rate of overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most families in this state know many people who are addicted or have overdosed – perhaps multiple times before their luck ran out and they finally lost their lives.

How Did West Virginia Get into this Situation?

It only takes looking at one statistic to understand how the problem was triggered. According to in-depth reporting on this problem from the Charleston Gazette-Mail, “wholesale drug distributors shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia over six years (between 2007 and 2012).” That comes to 433 pills a person—and that includes every individual of every age. If you just use the over-18 population for this calculation, it comes to about 730 pills per person. There’s no question that you’re going to get a high rate of tragic addiction-related effects if you drive this many pills into a small area.

It doesn’t help that West Virginia is coal mining country where the jobs are strenuous and often result in injuries. The need to get back to work and protect one’s job would lead many people to rely on painkillers rather than wait until they were fully healed.

An analysis of opioid-related overdose deaths between 2007 and 2012 showed that most of them occurred in the southern part of the state and both panhandles. In 2017, attorneys in West Virginia filed federal lawsuits against the drug wholesalers who shipped these pills, seeking billions in reimbursement for the devastation they caused.

The limited numbers of drug rehab programs in West Virginia, means that help is needed for those people who may never have abused an illicit drug in their lives until they became addicted to painkillers their doctors gave them.

Building New, Sober Lives With Drug Rehab Programs

At Narconon drug rehab centers around the world, tens of thousands of people have found a drug-free path to lasting sobriety. There are no drugs given as part of this treatment program because none are needed. This program focuses on healthy ways of repairing the damage done by years or even decades of drug or alcohol use and then rebuilding the life skills that are needed to sustain sobriety.

Even our withdrawal is drug-free. Symptoms are eased with nutritional supplementation specifically designed to calm aches and pains and support an improved mood. Gentle physical processes and reorientation exercises help a person leave a painful past behind and start focusing on a more positive future.

Following withdrawal, each person will complete the New Life Detoxification. This procedure uses time in a low-heat sauna, a specific regimen of nutritional supplementation and moderate exercise to activate the body’s ability to wash away stored toxins. Drugs, alcohol and other toxins leave residues buried deep in fatty tissues where it is hard to reach. The New Life Detoxification enables a person to wash them away, resulting in a greatly improved outlook and clearer thinking. Before this is done, these residues make rational thinking and choices very difficult.

When this step is complete, many people talk about how much more energy they have and how their cravings are finally reduced. Some people even say their physical cravings are gone.

Without the improvement this step provides, a person may struggle with their dark outlook and incessant cravings, every minute of every day. But with this help, they can focus now on learning how to enjoy a sober life.

Next, Restoring Life Skills

Anyone who has been addicted for a while loses life skills. Those skills don’t automatically return when drugs are gone. They have to be rebuilt.

In the Narconon life skills training component, a person learns skills they will need after they go home. But they also apply these skills to their lives while still in rehab to find relief from guilt and trauma.

For example, they learn the difference between social personalities and antisocial personalities. By working with these concepts, they can identify the “friends” who helped them down the path to addiction and prepare to deal with these personalities in the future.

Likewise with the training they receive on integrity. They learn the basic principles of how integrity is lost and then they learn how it can be recovered. When they put these principles to use in their immediate lives, the relief is enormous. Finally, they can permit themselves to be happy again. They can finally feel like they deserve an enjoyable, sober life.

Still, they must repair the damage they have done to their relationships, work and community. The next life skills course they do educates them on how to assess this damage, and the formulas that enable the repair to take place. Undoing the damage is never instant but they learn how to work through the steps to get the final result of a life they can be proud of.

Fifty Years Helping American Families

In the U.S., there are nine Narconon centers available to help families. A West Virginia family might choose the centers in Michigan, Oklahoma or Louisiana, since they are not so far away. There are also choices in California, Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Texas.

The Narconon drug rehab program has a fifty-year history of offering this drug-free solution to addiction. Learn more about Narconon today.

Call 1-800-775-8750 to find help for yourself or someone you care about.