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Posts Tagged ‘addiction’

Many choose to stop smoking abruptly rather than gradually. Quitting smoking is not easy and some turn to nicotine replacement therapies to ease the process. Not all smokers succeed with nicotine-based products. When they are in crisis, oftentimes, they end up smoking again.

If you are one of the smokers who need some help to quit smoking, then you need to rely on stop smoking aids. Deciding which quit smoking aid to use may make your head spin a little as there are many to choose from. The one you purchase may not always work for you.

Using nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) may help. They contain nicotine but at a reduced level. You will receive less nicotine each time you use the NRT, preventing nicotine dependence eventually.

Overcoming the withdrawal syndromes is not easy and can cause a smoker to succumb to the addiction. You can find aids that do not use nicotine. The best quit smoking aids do not come in the form of a drug prescribed by your doctor. You can beat the withdrawal symptoms with a herbal solution.

Nicotine is normally not used in any herbal quit smoking aid. You don’t have to include nicotine into your quit smoking efforts. As herbal stop smoking products contain natural ingredients, they reduce the possibilities of getting side effects. It is the most ideal way to overcome the cravings for nicotine and the effects of withdrawal symptoms.

When you try to cease smoking, you will experience the unpleasant cravings whether you like or not. FinalSmoke is a quit smoking aid that can make a difference between make or break.

Studies also reveal that the gradual decrease of smoking cigarette makes the withdrawal symptoms worse and the habit more difficult to break. Thus, many go into relapse and smoke again.

If you want to beat the withdrawal symptoms the natural way, you must try FinalSmoke. It’ll take a few weeks before you get rid of your nicotine cravings. Many people complain that they feel hungry all the time when they quit smoking and that leads them to being overweight. However, the natural ingredient in FinalSmoke helps to keep that urge under control. Although you may want to buy Final Smoke but you can learn more about it by checking the comments made by users.

Stopping smoking will make you a healthier person. You will notice health benefits such as a renewed sense of vitality, improved mental clarity, and easier breathing.

If you or someone you know needs alcoholism help then you might want to consider taking action. So what is the best route to go? In my opinion the best action for the alcoholic is to find a treatment center or drug rehab facility that has a medical detox and check themselves into it. This is the best course of action for a number of reasons:

1) Safety – it is actually very dangerous to stop drinking alcohol and in fact the withdrawal from alcohol can kill a person. This might sound ridiculous but it’s actually more dangerous to stop drinking cold turkey than it is to continue nursing a bottle until you can get professional help. So what you want to do is get to a treatment center with a full medical detox unit so that you can sober up safely.

2) Support – there is a lot of peer support in a drug rehab facility and this is based on the other residents who are in the same boat as you are. Having peers in early recovery who are on the same path as you are is very important because you can learn so much from each other.

3) Aftercare – most residential treatment programs will not just push you out the door without some sort of plan for you. This plan could consist of going to a long term treatment center, using one on one therapy sessions, or simply going to AA meetings. Either way you’re bound to receive some extra help and knowledge about how to overcome alcoholism when you check out of treatment.

What if someone is not willing to go to treatment? If this is the case then there is not much you can generally do. In some states there is the option to commit someone to treatment but this is usually a mistake because there will be a huge resentment created which typically acts as fuel for more drinking. The best route to go in this case is to inform the alcoholic that alcohol treatment is an option when they want to finally make a change in their life.

How can we help alcoholics recover? Our typical treatment options try to fulfill this question but come up short when we look at the statistics. You may have pushed someone in your life towards recovery without much success. If you are at this point then you are probably want to know how best to help alcoholics.

Part of the issue here is that most treatment paths do not really tailor to the individual – they are set up to treat anyone and everyone. They are one size fits all and that ends up not really helping anyone as much as they could if they were tailored to individuals. For example, the twelve step fellowships that are so common these days have essentially remained the same for years and years.

When someone needs help with addiction or alcoholism, we typically send them to a traditional recovery program such as AA or NA. When that fails to produce decent results, instead of blaming the program we always blame the individual, saying that “they just didn’t want it enough,” or that “they just did not get into the spiritual side of the program.” These types of excuses point to a failing in our quest for better recovery and we can do better then just blaming the failed alcoholic. I would suggest:

1) Push alcoholics to use treatment for early recovery. This is crucial because early in an alcoholic’s recovery is an especially vulnerable time when it can be hard just to get a few days clean.” In a safe setting such as rehab it is much smoother when trying to get a hold on early recovery.

2) Encourage the struggling alcoholic to set goals and create a better life. This is critical as just stopping the booze will not really help much. When a true alcoholic consumes booze they do it with enthusiasm and so it turns into a driving force in their life. In their recovery journey, an alcoholic must find new meaning and depth in their life or they risk sliding back into a relapse of destruction and despair.

3) Push alcoholics to grow holistically. If you can convince someone to make progress in one area of their life, this is decent. But if you can convince them to grow in several areas of their life, this is even better. Holistic growth is indicating that the person is treating their disease as a whole, not simply as a spiritual problem (as some treatments deal with it).

For the true alcoholic, the idea that they can just stop drinking is no light matter. Since there are several different strategies that can be used to quit drinking with, which ones give good results in most situations?

1) Willpower – This is essentially the same as not using any technique at all, but only relying on one’s own willpower to avoid picking up another drink. Of course this technique has been tried over and over again but thousands of struggling alcoholics and they majority would agree that this is a terrible route to go. Ever.

2) AVRT – this stands for “Addictive Voice Recognition Technique,” so this is essentially an example of a cognitive therapy for quitting drinking. The trick is to realize when your “addictive voice” kicks in and realize that it is only your addiction talking to you and not your true self. The you can deny the addictive voice once you are aware of it and can actively respond to it.

There are other cognitive devices out there as well, each with the idea that we can change the way we react to situations through changing our thinking. Some of us in sobriety can likely do well by using cognitive tools such as this, but for most alcoholics we will probably need to expand our solution set beyond these therapies by themselves and seek more help.

3) AA – Twelve step programs are probably the most widespread solution for alcoholism, and because of this, they offer the most amount of hope and the most realistic solution for most people in most situations. But there are some drawbacks and shortcomings with 12 step programs as well. For one thing–while it is difficult to find accurate data regarding this–the success rate in AA is probably somewhere in the range of 3 to 10 percent. To be fair, though, no other treatment method seems to offer substantially better numbers than this, and AA certainly has helped a lot of those who wanted to know how to stop drinking.

The problem is not that AA doesn’t work for people, but only that it does not work for the majority and if it does then it usually requires a supplemental strategy. The real solution for recovery is a holistic approach that addresses all aspects of the recovering individual. This is what’s known as the creative life theory of recovery. Finding your way to this solution requires a holistic approach if you want to stop drinking.

Getting drug addiction help will involve contacting either professional services of some sort or a 12 step treatment program. This is the program that is most popular and therefore easily located when it comes to beating an addiction. These professional treatment services could include a stay at a drug rehab center with a medical detoxification unit as well. In addition to rehab, an addict could also seek help from meetings, therapy groups, or from professional counseling.

Many addicts will use these services after they leave rehab as a type of long term follow-up care.

It can be quite a struggle to get someone else to take action and do something about their problem and ultimately you will find that we cannot really change anyone, only ourselves. But we can influence their behavior and their decisions over the long run by becoming more conscious of how we interact with them.

For example, we have to stop enabling addicts if we happen to play a part in their drinking or using. This includes bailing them out of problem situations or covering up for them if they screw up because of their drinking or using. We can have an impact on their life by deciding not to support their addiction.

Unfortunately this is what has to happen in order for some drug addicts to become open to the idea of change. If a drug addict doesn’t endure heavy consequences then they probably won’t be motivated to make a change. So we learn in trying to help others that we should not deny the addict of their pain. This does not mean that we need to go out of our way to trip them up or be mean to them – instead we just have to get out of their way and let them endure the natural consequences of their actions.

Trying to give help to a drug addict or alcoholic is not an easy thing to do and for some people it can be downright tricky. The answer is to only help an addict if they are willing to go to treatment or meetings or counseling and not to assist them when they are making demands of their own. We can still have an impact on a struggling addict but not necessarily in a direct manner. Instead we have to do our part in the relationship as far as no longer rescuing them in any way.

How can we give drug addiction help to addicts who are struggling with addiction?

The real secret to this lies in empowering the drug addict to take control of their own life. In what way can we do that? It can be a hard truth to accept, but we can’t really convince another person to change, no matter how much we desire for them to be clean. Some addicts are not real willing to do that and so it can be hard to give them any sort of assistance in making a change.

The first issue concerning drug addiction help is in taking a look at your own actions regarding the situation. Are you allowing them to continue their destructive habits or behaviors in any way? If this is the case then you should consider changing your own actions first so that you’re not part of the problem. For example, if they are drinking or using and they end up in legal trouble over it, and you are the one who is bailing them out of jail all the time, then this is enabling behavior on your part. How? Because you are not allowing them to experience the natural outcomes of their destructive behaviors.

If you are protecting them from the consequences that they should be experiencing then you are not helping them, you are actually making things worse. Another example might be if they are out all evening drinking or using and you call in to work for them the next day to cover for them. Doing these actions might seem beneficial to you, but in fact you’re probably hurting their chances for success in recovery. If real change is going to occur in their life then they are going to have to suffer through some ill effects of their using at some point.

The instance that they hit bottom is the point when they become able to get help from other people. This is how you know when they are truly ready for change and are no longer just manipulating and playing games. When they ask you for help in the form of guidance and direction about how to live, then you know they are ready for real change.

Getting the addict to this point is not easy and there isn’t much that you can do that will directly push them towards the point of surrender. The critical thing here is that you cease enabling them so that they can hit their natural bottom and start the process of surrender. The less frequently that you try to intervene and save their skin the faster they will be driven to real change.

In early recovery it is all we can do to just stay sober for another day. We might have a hard time staying dry for a single day at a time and just to make it without drinking we will have to use our friends and support from the meetings. This is OK but as you stay sober for longer you'll realize that you are becoming more reliant on your self and on your level of growth. This is not to say that you are eventually cured or that you do not need other people to stay sober, but only that there is a shift in focus on these priorities. Recovery is fueled by passion and purpose and the striving for personal growth, whereas early recovery is more about learning and networking with others. Both stages use all of these strategies, but the emphasis is going to be different for those who find success in recovery.

So you want to know how to stop drinking alcohol? My first suggestion is that you do so in a medically supervised facility. This is crucial because not consuming alcohol can actually kill a person if they stop it abrubtly and without supervision. There is also the added bonus that if you go to a treatment center to detox then you will also receive a ton of support from doing so. The associations that you have from others in eary sobriety are critical, and if you go to drug rehab then you will invariably make friends with those who can help you. Because of these 2 reasons I highly recommend attending a treatment center if you are serious about quitting drinking.

Now at this point many people think that their job is done when they walk out of the treatment center but in fact it has not even started yet. The real challenge in long term sobriety is in maintaining it without slipping back to your old ways and eventually drinking again. It is not always the drinking that got us in trouble but also the lifestyle itself. If you leave treatment and try to stay off the sauce but revert right back to the same lifestyle then you're probably not going to stay sober. We need to make big, structural changes in our lives if we are to maintain long term sobriety. This is not unrealistic but it does require some effort.

So many people who leave treatment do not follow up with the action required to stay sober. If you want to be successful with your sobriety then you're going to have to go way overboard when it comes to your recovery strategy. We put a lot of effort into our drinking and we need to put just as much, if not more, into our recovery. Most people underestimate what it will take to stay sober. The secret is to go way above and beyond what you think is necessary to keep you clean.

And that is the bottom line right there: If you want to stop drinking then you have to take action. At first your actions will be very specific and focus on getting you detoxed and learning how to live a sober life. But as time goes on in recovery your actions must shift towards those of personal growth and development. In early recovery your networking and support from others is critical. In the long run in recovery, your push for growing as a person and your overall health consciousness become important.

If you or someone you know needs help with alcoholism then you might want to consider taking action. So what is the ideal action to take? In my opinion the ideal siutation is for the struggling alcoholic to find a rehab center that has a professional detox area and get checked in. This is the best course of action for a number of reasons:

1) Safety – it is actually very dangerous to stop drinking alcohol and in fact the withdrawal from alcohol can kill a person. This might sound ridiculous but it’s actually more dangerous to stop drinking cold turkey than it is to continue nursing a bottle until you can get professional help. So the best course of action is to find a full medical detox in a treatment center where they can safely bring you down off the alcohol and prevent any seizures.

2) Support – there is tremendous benefit to the peer networking that occurs in a rehab center and this is derived from being in there with others who are all trying to do what you are. Having a recovery network of friends is a big help because the support is critical for staying sober in early recovery.

3) Aftercare – most treatment centers will have a detailed action plan for residents who are on their way out to follow. This plan might include long term treatment, counseling, or meeting attendance. Either way you are going to get some additional guidance and help in how to stay sober after you leave the facility.

What happens when a struggling alcoholic isn’t willing to make a change in their life? If this is true then there’s not much to be done about it. In some countries or states there is the possibility of committing an alcoholic to rehab but this can create ill feelings and might actually backfire in the end. What works better in this situation is to simply to let someone know that rehab is available to them if and when they decide to quit drinking.