People tend to try and keep alcoholism and drug abuse “hidden”, but statistics are widely available from various government sources to show that large numbers of our juvenile and adult population suffer from alcohol and or drug addiction.
Evidence from the departments of criminal justice, mental health, family and children’s services, drug detox, and rehabilitation programs indicates widespread and endemic drug and alcohol problems at all socio-economic levels, affecting unborn children, right through to aged alcoholics in dementia wards.
Have government institutes and medical authorities simply got it wrong in how to best treat alcoholism and drugs of addiction?
From a medical point of view, the good news is that doctors see addiction as a treatable “disease”. The bad news is that they see no possibility of a cure, you will need to monitor your “condition”, for fear of relapse, for the rest of your life, the craving will not go away.
From a holistic viewpoint the news is better – that by treating the whole person, with respect, there is no reason why any addiction cannot be fully rehabilitated, although you might need to rethink the entire way that you “do” life in order to fully understand and remedy the causes of your addiction.
Judging by the long waiting lists for a free government department and medical help with substance abuse and people queued up in doctor’s surgeries seeking help for anxiety and depression, and being handed prescription pills for their trouble, most either have either not heard about holistic, healing therapies or are not yet ready to take personal responsibility for their mental, physical and emotional health and obtain freedom from addiction.
Using substances and “short therapy” as a “quick fix” for your gloom, anxiety or addiction might seem to be a reasonable proposition. Being placed in an emotional straight jacket, with some severe side effects, addressing symptoms but not causes, with no assistance towards full recovery, would seem to be medication tailored more to the needs of an ordered society than to the good health and well being of the individual.
The connection between mind and body is an intricate mechanism. When life does not provide what we need or want, we all “feel” disappointed, but it is our body, our organs, our endocrine system that takes the burden, we “feel” our emotions through the body, particularly in the throat, the chest and the stomach. Using addictive substances simply means that we have discovered what for us is the perfect antidote to relieve ourselves from the physical pain of emotional suffering. As our body habituates to the substance, we might need more, physical changes occur. Our relationship with the world diminishes except in terms of supply and attainment of a “fix”.
Failure to fully nurture the body and mind, especially by limiting one’s experience of happiness to the draining of a shot glass, or smoking a joint leaves one depleted and at a loss to deal with anything good or bad that happens in your life. When addiction takes over your life, the last thing you need is a bevy of sympathetic, ineffectual co-dependents, making a living at your expense.
