Substance Abuse Treatment Quotes

At the bottom of every person's dependency, there is always pain, Discovering the pain and healing it is an essential step in ending dependency.

Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.

Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.

It is time to embrace mental health and substance use/abuse as illnesses. Addiction is a disease.

One thing you must realize is that: you either kill your addiction or your addiction will eventually kill you.

It's the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That's why I see the United States' War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.

To enable is to kill.

Substance abuse is a very real trap. Drugs and alcohol are very much like an abusive lover who treats you well at first and then beats you up, apologizes, gives you nice treatment for a while, and then beats you up again. The trap is in trying to hang in there for the good while trying to overlook the bad. Wrong. This can never work.

The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which I'm aware.

The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or if they put bubbles in an ethanol product and call it champagne or beer- everyone is selling ethanol.

We recognize that you've used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable.

Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.

The mentality, thought system and relationships that got you into addiction will keep you there unless you disentangle yourself from them.

Your decision to kill your addiction will become a reality only if you believe and reinforce the fact that you have the capacity to do it.

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That it is possible to get so angry you really do see everything red. What a ‘Texas Catheter’ is. That some people really do steal—will steal things that are yours. That a lot of U.S. adults truly cannot read, not even a ROM hypertext phonics thing with HELP functions for every word. That cliquey alliance and exclusion and gossip can be forms of escape. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That you can all of a sudden out of nowhere want to get high with your Substance so bad that you think you will surely die if you don’t, and but can just sit there with your hands writhing in your lap and face wet with craving, can want to get high but instead just sit there, wanting to but not, if that makes sense, and if you can gut it out and not hit the Substance during the craving the craving will eventually pass, it will go away — at least for a while. That it is statistically easier for low‐IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high‐IQ people.

If those underlying conditions aren't treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we'll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That's the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.

Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions. - Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5

...the vast majority of these [dissociative identity disorder] patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as posttraumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.2,10 A history of multiple treatment providers, hospitalizations, and good medication trials, many of which result in only partial or no benefit, is often an indicator of dissociative identity disorder or another form of complex PTSD.

DID may be underdiagnosed. The image derived from classic textbooks of a florid, dramatic disorder with overt switching characterizes about 5% of the DID clinical population. The more typical presentation is of a covert disorder with dissociative symptoms embedded among affective, anxiety, pseudo-psychotic, dyscontrol, and self-destructive symptoms, and others (Loewenstein, 1991). The typical DID patient averages 6 to 12 years in the mental health system, receiving an average of 3 to 4 prior diagnoses. DID is often found in cases that were labeled as "treatment failures" because the patient did not respond to typical treatments for mood, anxiety, psychotic, somatoform, substance abuse, and eating disorders, among others. Rapid mood shifts (within minutes or hours), impulsivity, self-destructiveness, and/or apparent hallucinations lead to misdiagnosis of cyclic mood disorders (e.g., bipolar disorder) or psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia).

In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone's story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived.

Many people are shocked when I say that the incest victims I’ve worked with are usually the healthiest members of their families. After all, the victim usually has the symptoms—self-blame, depression, destructive behaviors, sexual problems, suicide attempts, substance abuse—while the rest of the family often seems outwardly healthy. But despite this, it is usually the victim who ultimately has the clearest vision of the truth. She was forced to sacrifice herself to cover up the craziness and the stress in the family system. All her life she was the bearer of the family secret. She lived with tremendous emotional pain in order to protect the myth of the good family. But because of all this pain and conflict, the victim is usually the first to seek help. Her parents, on the other hand, will almost always refuse to let go of their denials and defenses. They refuse to deal with reality. With treatment, most victims are able to reclaim their dignity and their power. Recognizing a problem and seeking help is a sign not only of health but of courage.

On September 30, 1988, I got another summons to the dean’s office. This time, the president of the college, all of the deans, and two Resident Assistants were present, each holding a 3 x 5 card. I knew exactly what this was, an intervention. I didn’t give anyone a chance to read their cards; I simply started crying and asked them what I had to do. One of the deans said that they had made a reservation for me at a treatment facility in Atlanta and that I had until 8 PM to get there or be terminated. I went back to the dorm, packed a small suitcase, gathered up the liquor bottles and threw them in a trash bag. Before I left, I taped a purple sheet of construction paper to my door saying, “Ms. Davis will be away for the weekend.” Six weeks later, I returned from treatment.

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That it is possible to get so angry you really do see everything red. What a ‘Texas Catheter’ is. That some people really do steal—will steal things that are yours. That a lot of U.S. adults truly cannot read, not even a ROM hypertext phonics thing with HELP functions for every word. That cliquey alliance and exclusion and gossip can be forms of escape. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That you can all of a sudden out of nowhere want to get high with your Substance so bad that you think you will surely die if you don’t, and but can just sit there with your hands writhing in your lap and face wet with craving, can want to get high but instead just sit there, wanting to but not, if that makes sense, and if you can gut it out and not hit the Substance during the craving the craving will eventually pass, it will go away—at least for a while. That it is statistically easier for low‐IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high‐IQ people.

All the substances that are the main drugs of abuse today originate in natural plant products and have been known to human beings for thousands of years. Opium, the basis of heroin, is an extract of the Asian poppy Papaver somniferum. Four thousand years ago, the Sumerians and Egyptians were already familiar with its usefulness in treating pain and diarrhea and also with its powers to affect a person’s psychological state. Cocaine is an extract of the leaves of Erythroxyolon coca, a small tree that thrives on the eastern slopes of the Andes in western South America. Amazon Indians chewed coca long before the Conquest, as an antidote to fatigue and to reduce the need to eat on long, arduous mountain journeys. Coca was also venerated in spiritual practices: Native people called it the Divine Plant of the Incas. In what was probably the first ideological “War on Drugs” in the New World, the Spanish invaders denounced coca’s effects as a “delusion from the devil.” The hemp plant, from which marijuana is derived, first grew on the Indian subcontinent and was christened Cannabis sativa by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It was also known to ancient Persians, Arabs and Chinese, and its earliest recorded pharmaceutical use appears in a Chinese compendium of medicine written nearly three thousand years ago. Stimulants derived from plants were also used by the ancient Chinese, for example in the treatment of nasal and bronchial congestion. Alcohol, produced by fermentation that depends on microscopic fungi, is such an indelible part of human history and joy making that in many traditions it is honoured as a gift from the gods. Contrary to its present reputation, it has also been viewed as a giver of wisdom. The Greek historian Herodotus tells of a tribe in the Near East whose council of elders would never sustain a decision they made when sober unless they also confirmed it under the influence of strong wine. Or, if they came up with something while intoxicated, they would also have to agree with themselves after sobering up. None of these substances could affect us unless they worked on natural processes in the human brain and made use of the brain’s innate chemical apparatus. Drugs influence and alter how we act and feel because they resemble the brain’s own natural chemicals. This likeness allows them to occupy receptor sites on our cells and interact with the brain’s intrinsic messenger systems. But why is the human brain so receptive to drugs of abuse? Nature couldn’t have taken millions of years to develop the incredibly intricate system of brain circuits, neurotransmitters and receptors that become involved in addiction just so people could get “high” to escape their troubles or have a wild time on a Saturday night. These circuits and systems, writes a leading neuroscientist and addiction researcher, Professor Jaak Panksepp, must “serve some critical purpose other than promoting the vigorous intake of highly purified chemical compounds recently developed by humans.” Addiction may not be a natural state, but the brain regions it subverts are part of our central machinery of survival.

If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was dependencyism. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Yet it's no sillier than the word alcoholism. The reason alcoholism no longer sounds silly to you is because you're used to hearing it, reading it, and thinking about it.

Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.37 When

I once had a burning desire to become a therapist. Then I realized I am not altogether impressed with the field. All they really had to do was get me to stop drinking, and after 8 years, they are still failing miserably. I still Love Booze... and Now I get the secondary payoff of 'beating' my substance counselor. hehehe. Idiots.

Prisons themselves could actually start preventing violence, rather than stimulating it, if we took everyone out of them, demolished the buildings, and replaced them with a new and different kind of institution — namely, a locked, secure residential college, whose purpose and functions would be educational and therapeutic, not punitive. It would make sense to organize such a facility as a therapeutic community, with a full range of treatments for substance abuse and any other medical and mental health services needed to help the individual heal the damage that deformed his character and stunted his humanity. If it seems utopian to replace prison with schools, let me remind you that prisons already are schools and always have been — except that they are schools in crime and violence, in humiliation, degradation, brutalization and exploitation, not in peace and love and dignity. I am merely suggesting that we replace one already existing type of school with another. Such a program would enable those who have been violent to adopt non-violent means for developing the feelings of self-esteem and self-respect, for being respected by others, and of being able to take legitimate and realistic pride in their skills and knowledge and achievements, which all human beings need if they are to be able to find alternatives to violent behavior when their self-esteem is threatened. It would also enable them to become employable and self-sufficient, and to make a productive contribution to society when they return to the community. But before that can happen, we will have to renounce our own urge to engage in violence — that is, punishment — and decide that we want to engage in educational and therapeutic endeavors instead, so as to facilitate maturation, development, and healing.

The punishment and/or rehabilitation of those who have already been so damaged that they have become violent is also far more expensive and less effective than preventing violence in the first place, and it causes far more suffering, not only to the perpetrators but also to the victims. We spend incomparably more money on police, prisons, punishments and criminal courts than we do on providing the kinds of community services that have been demonstrated to achieve equal reductions in criminal violence for one-fifth of the price. As our prisons have become more and more crowded (and costly), the waiting lists in our substance-abuse treatment centers have become longer and longer — despite the fact that treatment is at least five times more effective than imprisonment, dollar for dollar, in preventing both substance abuse and the property crimes and violence associated with substance abuse.

What programs would a prison need to utilize in order to maximize the likelihood that the people sent to it would renounce violence as a behavioral strategy? To begin with, it would need to be an anti-prison. Beginning with its architecture, it would need to convey an entirely different message. Current prisons are modeled architecturally after zoos — or rather, after the kinds of zoos that used to exist, but that have been replaced with zoological parks because the animals' keepers began to realize that the old zoos, with concrete floors and walls and steel bars were too inhumane for animals to survive in. Yet we still keep our human animals in zoos that no humane society would permit for animals. And the architecture itself conveys that message to the prisoners: "You are an animal, for this is a zoo, and zoos are what animals are put in." And then we act surprised when the men and women we treat that way actually behave like animals, both when they are in this human zoo and after they return to the community. So we would need to build an anti-prison that would actually look as if it had been built for human beings rather than animals, i.e. that was as home-like and pleasant and civilized and human as possible. Once we had done that, we could offer those who had been sent there the opportunity to acquire as much education and/or vocational training as they had the ability and energy and interest to obtain. We would of course need to provide treatment for whatever medical, dental, psychiatric, or substance-abuse problems they had, and would want to incorporate many of the principles of a therapeutic community into the everyday routines of this residential school, with frequent group discussions with the other residents and staff members with training in psychotherapy. The goal would be to replace the "monster factories" that most prisons now are with therapeutic communities designed to enable people who are deeply damaged, and damaging, to recover their humanity or to gain a degree of humanity they had never been able to acquire; in short, to help them heal themselves and learn, in the process, how to heal others and even repair some of the damage they have done.

To grasp the significance of these numbers, we should note that for most disadvantaged groups today “the criminal justice system increasingly is the main provider of health care, substance abuse treatment, mental health services, job training, education, and other critical social and economic supports. . . .”[31]

Women involved in out-patient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the 105 women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, the majority (81 %) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. They also reported greater intensity of feelings at the time the abuse happened.

My reasons for arguing that resources should be disproportionately devoted to those at greater risk are rooted in criminal justice literature. Though counterintuitive, the evidence is clear: when low-risk inmates receive treatment in prisons, or in the community, their recidivism actually goes up. Lower-risk inmates are not “broken” to begin with, but putting them in treatment they do not need tells them they are broken, makes them angry, and mixes them with higher-risk inmates who are broken and who negatively influence other people. In one study, high-risk offenders averaged a 92 percent recidivism rate under minimal treatment conditions, but their rate dropped to 25 percent under intensive treatment conditions. The lower-risk offenders, on the other hand, averaged 12 percent recidivism under minimal treatment conditions, but their rate increased to 29 percent under intensive treatment conditions (Andrews & Friesen, 1987). Many meta-analyses have confirmed this counterintuitive pattern of higher-level offenders getting better with the right kind of treatment and lower-level offenders actually getting worse (Andrews, et al., 1990). By putting lower-risk people in prison we also take them away from all the things that make them low risk—supportive wives and children, meaningful jobs, pro-social friends, etc. Higher-risk inmates are broken and when they receive the right treatment their recidivism goes down. This is called the “risk principle.” It tells prison administrators who they should focus their scarce treatment resources on—the higher-risk inmates. The “need principle” tells administrators what they need to focus on once they know who requires the most help. Many need areas such as mental health, poverty, and self-esteem are not predictive of crime. Most people who are poor and have low self-esteem, and most people who are suffering from clinical depression, do not commit crimes. Other need areas, known as “criminogenic need,” are highly predictive of crime. For example, individuals who have antisocial attitudes, values, and beliefs, antisocial friends, antisocial personalities (traits of impulsivity, low self-control, and narcissism), or substance abuse problems, are highly likely to commit crime and need help with these areas of their life. The risk and the need principles are just two of several, counterintuitive principles of effective correctional programming (Andrews, et al., 1990; Bogue, Diebel, & O’Connor, 2008; Bonta & Andrews, 2010; McNeil, Raynor, & Trotter, 2010).

A diagnosis of ED is a good time to rethink your bad habits. Smoking, alcohol and substance abuse restrict blood flow, which is critical, as blood needs to flow to the penis for an erection. What’s more important? A shot of whisky or sex? “Whisky Dick” is real—a shot might calm your nerves, but it won’t help you get it up! Whisky is ED’s best friend.

Summit Detox in South Florida offers a variety of highly effective treatment programs by using the most advanced medical procedures for treating withdrawal and addiction. Each addictive substance has its specific impact and produces its own telltale symptoms during the withdrawal process. This is why Summit offers an individualized detoxification treatment plan based upon the substance being abused. Whether it's benzos, alcohol, opiates, or something else entirely, you can trust Summit to help.

Substance Abuse Recovery Network is the leading network of addiction treatment nationwide, for helping others find evidence based treatment & mental health care.

Ascend Treatment and Wellness Center is a New Jersey addiction treatment center and therapy services. We are located at 100 Enterprise Dr Suite 301, Rockaway, NJ 07866. We provide many different services related to mental health and substance abuse treatment. Some of the issues we treat include depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, anger, and more. Contact our Rockaway New Jersey treatment center if you have any questions on how we can help you or a loved one. We are a top rated New Jersey therapy and treatment center in Rockaway.

•  Addiction is a chronic medical illness that attacks the brain, damaging key parts of the cerebral cortex and limbic system. •  With standard traditional treatment, the chance of recovering from addiction and maintaining that recovery is 20–30 percent. •  With the new Recovery Science approach to treatment, the chance of recovering from addiction and maintaining that recovery can approach 90 percent. •  Seventy-five percent of alcoholics are not in treatment, even though alcoholism is nearly as life threatening as heart disease and cancer.

1.Steven Yohay is the former Principal Shareholder & CEO for ACI Healthcare Group. He was born in 1950 in New York, and he has invested in theater–on and off Broadway–contributing to such hits as The Producers and Little Shop of Horrors. He is a recovered heroin addict who used his experiences to inform his career overseeing ACI’s substance abuse and alcohol treatment endeavors.

At a meeting in early 2011, staff showed the board data indicating that 83 percent of patients who were admitted to substance abuse treatment centers had started using opioids by swallowing them.

Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.37

Zee brought in Yale University substance abuse experts to describe the sudden physical and psychological stress caused by dopesickness, outlining a hard truth that many Americans still fail to grasp: Opioid addiction is a lifelong and typically relapse-filled disease. Forty to 60 percent of addicted opioid users can achieve remission with medication-assisted treatment, according to 2017 statistics, but sustained remission can take as long as ten or more years. Meanwhile, about 4 percent of the opioid-addicted die annually of overdose.

Self-destructive behavior: When someone has been in a controlling relationship long enough, they carry on with the feelings of shame and fault even after the relationship has ended. This can flow over into forms of self-harm and substance abuse to continue with what the abuser did to them. ●     Overly obliging: Being forced to make the needs and wants of another person a number one priority from wake up until bedtime can result in extending the people-pleasing into other areas of your life. ●     Trust issues: Being mentally abused to the point where a person doubts themselves, or doesn’t even trust themselves or others, it can create severe trust issues. This can even lead to more severe concerns such as social anxiety. It instills mistrust of what others say, what they really mean and their sincerity. ●     Emotionally disconnected: It’s not uncommon to not understand how to emotionally respond to situations or people, or even express emotions at all. ●     Cognitive issues: This can be the result of the ill-treatment itself or the physical symptoms impairing health. Lack of sleep can result in many of the symptoms listed earlier as can digestive issues. Additional concerns also include memory loss, inability to concentrate, losing focus performing basic tasks or “spacing out”. ●     Inability to forgive the self: Feelings of unworthiness, shame and blame dissipate over time they never completely go away. Similar to PTSD, one small trigger can be all it takes to relive the trauma. Another aspect of this is a damaged self-worth that causes us to not make an effort to reach goals or dreams, or we self-sabotage because we’re convinced we don’t deserve happiness or success.

As with all social service projects, a lexicon of terms accumulated around the Housing First movement. Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) described the movement’s general aim and means, and a model program conducted in the 1990s in New York had shown that housing for chronically homeless people could indeed be long-lasting and beneficial, provided they received adequate support. This trial—The Consumer Preference Supported Housing Model (CPSH)—had involved 242 people who suffered from either mental illness or substance abuse or both. The model had housed them, via various grants and public subsidies, in apartments situated in “affordable locations throughout the city’s low-income neighborhoods.” And they had been supported by Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, somewhat modified from the general prototype, but substantial. These included nurses, social workers, drug counselors, administrative assistants, and “peer counselors,” who directed the support services with the advice and consent of the tenants. Each team had access to psychiatrists and other professionals, and each stood ready to help the tenants every night and day of the week. After five years, 88 percent remained housed—a remarkable result.

In those early days at the VA, we labeled our veterans with all sorts of diagnoses—alcoholism, substance abuse, depression, mood disorder, even schizophrenia—and we tried every treatment in our textbooks. But for all our efforts it became clear that we were actually accomplishing very little. The powerful drugs we prescribed often left the men in such a fog that they could barely function. When we encouraged them to talk about the precise details of a traumatic event, we often inadvertently triggered a full-blown flashback, rather than helping them resolve the issue. Many of them dropped out of treatment because we were not only failing to help but also sometimes making things worse. A turning point arrived in 1980, when a group of Vietnam veterans, aided by the New York psychoanalysts Chaim Shatan and Robert J. Lifton, successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to create a new diagnosis: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which described a cluster of symptoms that was common, to a greater or lesser extent, to all of our veterans. Systematically identifying the symptoms and grouping them together into a disorder finally gave a name to the suffering of people who were overwhelmed by horror and helplessness. With the conceptual framework of PTSD in place, the stage was set for a radical change in our understanding of our patients. This eventually led to an explosion of research and attempts at finding effective treatments

We provide confidential, safe, and non-judgmental educational groups. Group members discuss AOD issues, alcohol poisoning, club drugs and decision-making skills. A variety of topics are addressed during this 2-days education program:

were not only healthier but also less likely to report having been abused or neglected than a similar group whose mothers had not been visited. They also were more likely to have finished school, to have stayed out of jail, and to be working in well-paying jobs. Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs. 37