Drugs: How People Give Them Up
Taking up drugs is easy. Giving up is the hard part. While you are on drugs and having a good time, you don’t think about quitting. That only happens when it all starts turning bad. As a result, giving up drugs is usually a hit and miss affair with a lot of unnecessary suffering. The only certainty in the drug world is that every drug user will have to give up one day. Recreational drug use is not permanent and all drug users know this. But because we don’t understand, we have no idea how to give them up. The different methods of giving up are as follows:
o Using personal willpower to quit
o Using the love and support of others
o Dramatic lifestyle change
o Voluntary retirement
o Using drugs to fight drugs
The idea of using licit drugs to treat illicit drugs has been around for a long time, but from the perspective of Complimentary Health Therapies, taking one type of addictive mood altering drug to counter the effect of another type of addictive mood altering drug is not a viable long-term solution. It’s not even particularly sensible.
The Unasked Question
Recreational drugs are a huge business and for a good reason. Drugs can make you feel so good it is almost incomprehensible, and everything after that seems dull and lifeless. The rest of the truth is that we don’t need drugs to feel that good. By far and away the biggest mistake that is made upon giving up is not replacing the drugs with any other way to feel good. If you have been using drugs daily, letting go of drugs can mean letting go of the most important thing in your life. Drugs structure your life and make it predictable. Stages of drug use are follows:
o Discovery phase, the best place to make the break
o Medicinal phase, the transition from taking drugs to feel good to taking drugs so that you don’t feel bad is so gradual that most people don’t realise that it has happened, until it has.
What to Expect
Telling someone to stop drugs does not work. Offering them another way to get what drugs provide is a better idea. When the day of giving up arrives it is usually because of wanting to give up the bad feelings, not because of wanting to give up the good feelings.
For drug users there is the additional complication that post-drug pain is invisible, relatively uncharted and widely misunderstood, throw into the mix that non-drug users have no idea what ex-addicts are going through and you have a recipe for isolation, despair, pain and suffering.
However pain encourages us to change so it is an opportunity for personal growth, and our physical body is the means by which this is achieved. The better prepared you are for life after drugs, the more chance you have of staying off drugs permanently.
When you are on drugs you accept and understand the lows. This strategy needs to be applied to the lows after quitting drugs, because even if you rest, eat well, take supplements have regular therapeutic treatment and do all the right things, hard days will still happen. When you give up drugs you will naturally face grief, sadness and loss. On the positive side the post-drug high starts at the baseline of depression then inclines, falls, then inclines again. Each peak is higher than the subsequent fall and if you draw a line connecting the peaks and lows you have an average that constantly ascends. The truly great news is that this trend can keep going.
Working with Cravings
Hard drugs are such a powerful source of fuel that you burn so brightly that you feel as though all of your desires are met. At the same time hard drugs empty your fuel tanks. Cravings are massive physiological and emotional urges that are focused purely on what you are missing. Whilst they can be hard to fight against, they can also be a potent force to harness. There is no motivation more powerful than craving. It makes you creative and makes you find a way to get drugs. Addicts always achieve their goals and it is cravings that drive them to do this. Hunger draws your attention to something important that is missing. Cravings carry the message that your body, mind and indeed soul needs nourishment.
The following video presentation is entitled, “From drugs to spirituality” and is from Jost Sauer, pioneer in the field of REAL drug repair and recovery.
Enjoy a:)
