“You cannot fully recovery unless you help the society that made you sick, recover.” New Jerusalem Now, a community of former addicts helping each other achieve a “fullness of life” formerly prevented by drug and alcohol abuse. From the residents’ narratives, you learn how they run their community within a community in one of the poorest neighborhoods in North Philadelphia, PA.

New Jerusalem Now was started by The Simple Way, a web of subversive friends conspiring to spread the vision of ‘Loving God, Loving People, and Following Jesus’ in our neighborhoods and in our world.

They are not just treating the people but building up the community. This is an important activity. Creating a healthy community will not eliminate drug and alcohol abuse but it will help both reduce the amount and reduce the impact of the abuse. Just as a healthy body can get sick and recovery quickly a healthy community can help people recovery more quickly than a sick community.

Related: Shane Claiborne: Interview with a New Monastic – Betty Ford Center – Finding Rehab Centers – New Owner Updating Celebrity Rehab Center, Promises

Beyoncé Opens Cosmetology Center at Phoenix House

The new Cosmetology Center will offer a seven-month cosmetology training course, helping our clients gain the career skills they need to lead productive, rewarding lives in recovery.
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Beyoncé spoke about meeting with women in treatment at Phoenix House while preparing for the role of Etta James in the 2008 film Cadillac Records. “Through their stories, I realized that all of us have our personal struggles and we all have something to overcome,” she said. “Drug addiction… has a stigma that must be removed. Addiction is a disease and these beautiful women I met did not choose to become addicts, but they have chosen to get better.”

Later donating her salary from the film, Beyoncé wanted to create a program that was geared toward women, “something that would teach them skills that would give them hope even after Phoenix House.” Together, she and her mother, who owned a popular hair salon in Houston when she was growing up, came up with the idea of our new cosmetology program.

As a child, she observed that her mother’s salon was a place for women to “share stories, cry, laugh, and get advice” – and she wanted to bring that experience the women at Phoenix House. “The first sign of recovery is caring about your appearance,” she said. “And hopefully, this Center will be a place that will change lots of lives every year.”

Photo by Hassy, 2009.

Related: Smokey Robinson Helping Fight Against Drug Addiction – Eminem’s ‘Relapse’ Explores His Drug Addition and Rehabilitation – Maradona Drug Rehab – Carrie Fisher’s Novel Explores Drug Addiction and Rehab

Promises Treatment Centers became famous for its Hollywood clientele, including starlets Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.
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Promises charges $38,500 for a 90-day stay at its West L.A. facility, while treatment at its Malibu location – with panoramic views of the ocean and perfectly manicured lawns – starts at $54,500 for a 31-day stay.
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Sack then turned his attention to improving the centers’ treatment programs. He started a service program where patients volunteer with organizations such as homeless veteran projects while they are being treated. He upgraded the staff and contracted with more licensed professionals who provide care in a wider range of areas, including post-traumatic stress disorder, sex addiction and other compulsive disorders.
Susan Blacksher, executive director of the California Association of Addiction Recovery Resources, said Sack is making the program better by not just treating a patient’s drug and alcohol issues.
“More and more, people of good programs are dealing with the entire person,” Blacksher said, “including an assessment of any underlying medical or psychiatric needs that could interfere with a person’s ability to stay with a commitment of a more sober lifestyle.”
A big part of Sack’s efforts have been focused on improving Promises’ follow-up care, which he said will help patients remain sober and allow staff members to better track information such as relapse rates.
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Promises started setting goals for discharged patients. They are now held responsible for attending 12-step meetings, finding a group home and sponsor, and remaining sober.
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He said the most recent data shows that 79 percent of Promises’ alumni were continuously sober for 90 days. The national relapse rate for that period is 40 percent to 60 percent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Obviously the luxury addiction rehabilitation centers are out of the price range of most people. But the basic rehab strategies are the same as many other centers.

Related: Betty Ford Center – Rehab Center Reality Check – Should Rehab be Enjoyed?

Drug addiction is a complex illness characterized by intense and, at times, uncontrollable drug craving, along with compulsive drug seeking and use that persist even in the face of devastating consequences. While the path to drug addiction begins with the voluntary act of taking drugs, over time a person’s ability to choose not to do so becomes compromised, and seeking and consuming the drug becomes compulsive. This behavior results largely from the effects of prolonged drug exposure on brain functioning. Addiction is a brain disease that affects multiple brain circuits, including those involved in reward and motivation, learning and memory, and inhibitory control over behavior.

Because drug abuse and addiction have so many dimensions and disrupt so many aspects of an individual’s life, treatment is not simple. Effective treatment programs typically incorporate many components, each directed to a particular aspect of the illness and its consequences. Addiction treatment must help the individual stop using drugs, maintain a drug-free lifestyle, and achieve productive functioning in the family, at work, and in society. Because addiction is typically a chronic disease, people cannot simply stop using drugs for a few days and be cured. Most patients require long-term or repeated episodes of care to achieve the ultimate goal of sustained abstinence and recovery of their lives.

Too often, addiction goes untreated: According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 23.2 million persons (9.4% of the U.S. population) aged 12 or older needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol use problem in 2007. Of these individuals, 2.4 million (10.4%) received treatment at a specialty facility (i.e., hospital, drug or alcohol rehabilitation or mental health center). Thus, 20.8 million persons (8.4 % of the population aged 12 or older) needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol use problem but did not receive it.

Scientific research since the mid–1970s shows that treatment can help patients addicted to drugs stop using, avoid relapse, and successfully recover their lives. Based on this research, key principles have emerged that should form the basis of any effective treatment programs:

• Addiction is a complex but treatable disease that affects brain function and behavior.
• No single treatment is appropriate for everyone.
• Treatment needs to be readily available.
• Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug abuse.
• Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical.
• Counseling—individual and/or group—and other behavioral therapies are the most commonly used forms of drug abuse treatment.
• Medications are an important element of treatment for many patients, especially when combined with counseling and other behavioral therapies.
• An individual’s treatment and services plan must be assessed continually and modified as necessary to ensure that it meets his or her changing needs.
• Medically assisted detoxification is only the first stage of addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long–term drug abuse.
• Treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective.
• Drug use during treatment must be monitored continuously, as lapses during treatment do occur.

When looking for drug rehab centers it is valuable to keep these facts in mind. Even the best rehab centers have many failed attempts to beat drug addiction. By finding centers that have adopted scientifically tested strategies success rates can be improved.

Related: How Effective is Treatment for Drug Addiction? – Methods to Treat Drug and Alcohol Addiction – Drug Rehab Centers in Los Angeles – University of Wisconsin-Madison Program Aims to Improve Drug Treatment

Tiger Woods has greatly increased the focus on sex addiction recently. A few years ago, David Duchovny, of X-Files fame, rehabed to the Pine Grove Behavioral Health & Addiction Services Treatment for a sex addition. That is the same rehab center that Tiger Woods is rumored to be a patient at now.

Taking sex addiction seriously by Nicole Baute

Statistics claim that from 3 to 10 percent of Americans have a sex addiction, but the condition is not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and not all experts agree that problematic sexual behaviour should be called an addiction at all.
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Vermeire describes sex addicts as people struggling with sexual compulsions they cannot stop, despite negative consequences.

The addiction is not limited to the rich and famous. In Toronto, there are therapists who specialize in sexual addiction and support groups like Sex Addicts Anonymous. Bellwood Health Services has a 12-week, $12,000 residential program and outpatient counselling.

Margaret Hicks, a Toronto psychotherapist and social worker, says the addiction is often about shame and low self-esteem. Sufferers are trying to fill a void in their lives, she says: “You can fill the hole with alcohol, you can fill it with drugs, you can fill it with sex.”

Hicks says Internet porn is increasingly driving the addiction, and exposure to certain types of porn can change a person’s sexual template in destructive ways.
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“Treatment for sexual addiction involves abandoning the unhealthy sexual behaviours and, after a period of abstinence, developing healthy sexual functioning with a primary partner – which often requires learning how to function in a healthy emotional way,” says Lawson, manager of family services and special programs at Bellwood.
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“With sex addictions we are sort of where the people supporting the idea of alcoholism were 50 years ago,” she says.

“When they started talking about alcohol addiction and being an alcoholic back then, there was the same reaction, ‘No way, there’s no such thing, what are you talking about?’ So, it takes time.”

Related: Brett Favre Overcomes Painkiller Addiction – Robin Williams Reflects on Rehab – Eva Mendes on Rehab

Photo of United States Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (son of Senator Ted Kennedy) at the ADA rally at the Capitol, 17 September 2008.

Rep. Kennedy returns to Congress after month in rehab

After a four-week course of addiction treatment, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy returned to Congress Wednesday with what he called “excellent” prospects for long-term sobriety – in large part because he sought help before he landed in the kind of trouble that has brought him criticism in the past.
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In May 2006, a late-night car crash on Capitol Hill attracted harsh publicity and prompted Kennedy to enter an addition treatment facility and to acknowledge that he had been an alcoholic and drug addict for most of his adult life. Since then Kennedy had become a public face for recovery from addiction.

On June 12, Kennedy announced through his office that he had left the House for an indefinite period of time to enter a treatment facility. He has since disclosed that he underwent a 28-day treatment regime at Father Martin’s Ashley, a Maryland center well-known in recovery circles.
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Kennedy said Wednesday that he hopes his decision to seek treatment was another “sign to people that this is a chronic illness not unlike a cancer that goes into remission but then becomes malignant again.”

He said, “This is a chronic illness that needs lifelong attention. You can’t ever be cured of it. It needs to be monitored on a day-to-day basis for your whole life.”

Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy Statement on His Drug Addiction (May 2006)

Over my 15 years in public life, I’ve felt a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about my challenges with addiction and depression. I’ve been fighting this chronic disease since I was a young man, and have aggressively and periodically sought treatment so that I can live a full and productive life. I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans. I’ve dedicated my public service to raising awareness about the chronic disease of addiction, and have fought to increase access to care and recovery supports for the too many Americans forced to struggle on their own.

This past Christmas, I realized that I had to seek help again so checked myself into the Mayo Clinic for addiction to prescription pain medication.
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I am deeply concerned about my reaction to the medication and my lack of knowledge of the accident that evening. But I do know enough to know that I need to seek expert help. This afternoon, I’m traveling to Minnesota to seek treatment at the Mayo Clinic to ensure I can continue on my road to recovery.

Related: Cindy McCain Drug Rehab – Brett Favre Overcomes Painkiller Addiction – Drug Rehab Centers in California – Top 10 Luxury Rehab Centers

Early experiences with drugs, whether in the womb or as an adult, have ineradicable effects. Drug users often describe a wish to recapture the bliss of their first high. But this goal proves elusive because once the brain has neuroadapted to drugs, it is physiologically and structurally changed. The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and many others argue that voluntary drug consumption alters the brain in ways that lead to involuntary drug consumption. The question of whether drug habits are voluntary or not leads us to ask how people get over their addictions, and raises some of the moral issues surrounding compulsive behavior.
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Addiction is not all pharmacology, neurotransmitters, and intrapsychic states; the social settings of drug consumption have powerful effects. They can influence basic brain chemistry–which is one reason Gene Heyman rejects the notion that “addictive behavior is insensitive to persuasion, that there’s an irresistible urge to take the drug.” Heyman agrees that drugs alter the brain, but disputes the idea that they change the brain in ways that make choice impossible–he does not believe, in other words, that neuroadaptation makes drug use involuntary. Exhibit A, he says, is 50 million ex-smokers who have voluntarily ended their intake of nicotine.
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One reason people believe drug use is involuntary is that recovery rates for addicts treated at clinics are quite bad. Within one year of treatment, relapse rates of 67 to 90 percent are common for alcohol, opiate, cocaine, and tobacco users. “But most of the people who become addicted to drugs don’t go to clinics,” says Heyman. “Actually, only 30 to 40 percent go to clinics. Yet this clinic population has greatly influenced our vision and concept of addiction.”

It turns out that addicts who don’t go to clinics have much higher recovery rates.

This is an interesting article with interesting data. Remember the different recover rates for those that go to clinics and those who does not mean going to a clinic reduces the odds of success. It seems reasonable to guess most of those that go to clinics are drawn from the subset that failed to quit without going to a clinic. So it could be that fail to quit on their own then will fail only quit on their own 3% of the time and quit in a clinic 10% of the time (these numbers are not based on anything just an example of what you must consider about the above statistics).

Even though cigarette smoking is the direct cause of 400,000 American deaths annually, while alcohol directly causes only 100,000 deaths, “alcoholism is a major reason that people don’t stop smoking,” says Vaillant. “Those who keep on smoking after age 50 tend to be alcoholics.” In hospitals, alcoholics cost six times as much as other patients. Half of all people who show up in emergency rooms with severe multiple fractures are alcoholics. “But the emergency rooms treating multiple fractures ignore blood alcohol levels,” Vaillant says. “The causal link isn’t made.”

“No other drug of addiction impairs one’s aversion to punishment the way alcohol does,” he continues. “Yes, compulsive gambling impairs your aversion to being poor, and heroin use impairs your aversion to being arrested. But alcoholism goes across the board. When drinking, people are much more likely to engage in all kinds of dangerous, life-threatening behavior–wife beating, child abuse, unprotected sex with strangers, smoking, drunk driving. You can be five foot two and willing to take on anyone in the bar.”

Related: Alcohol is a Major Cause of Drug Rehab Admissions – How Effective is Drug Addiction Treatment? – Methods to Treat Addiction – Why Can’t Drug Addicts Quit on Their Own?

The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts is a book exploring an experiment to deal with addicted criminals.

The farm was the first place to look at drug addicts as patients that were in need of treatment instead of criminals in need of punishment. The farm did experiments to learn about addiction including on methadone (which is commonly used to try and ease the transition from narcotic addition today). Certainly the methods practiced on the farm were of debatable ethical ground however there was a great deal of learning and desire to learn and treat drug addition.

From 1935 until 1975, just about every junkie busted for dope went to the Narcotic Farm. Equal parts federal prison, treatment center, farm, and research laboratory, the Farm was designed to rehabilitate addicts and help researchers discover a cure for drug addiction. Although it began as a bold and ambitious public works project, and became famous as a rehabilitation center frequented by great jazz musicians among others, the Farm was shut down forty years after it opened amid scandal over its drug-testing program, which involved experiments where inmates were being used as human guinea pigs and rewarded with heroin and cocaine for their efforts.

Published to coincide with a documentary to be aired on PBS, The Narcotic Farm includes rare and unpublished photographs, film stills, newspaper and magazine clippings, government documents, as well as interviews, writings, and anecdotes from the prisoners, doctors, and guards that trace the Farm’s noble rise and tumultuous fall, revealing the compelling story of what really happened inside the prison walls.

Listen to an NPR podcast on America’s First Drug-Treatment Prison

Related: How Effective is Drug Addiction Treatment? – Drug Rehabilitation Centers in California – Why Can’t Drug Addicts Quit on Their Own?

Masekela’s message for ‘addictive’ SA

One of the biggest names in world music – trumpeter Hugh Masekela – has said the message behind his latest album Time is to help the fight against drug and alcohol addiction in his native South Africa.

Masekela himself is a recovering addict, having gone into rehabilitation six years ago before establishing an organisation to help those with similar problems in his homeland. And he told BBC World Service’s The Ticket programme that he felt a duty to help others suffering from the same problems.
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“I myself am a recovering addict and alcoholic. Six years ago I came to England, took up counselling, and learned the psychology of addiction.”

Drug-busting Masekela calls a brave new tune

The project, called the Musicians and Artists Assistance Programme of South Africa (Maapsa), is a partnership between several South African celebrities, including musicians Jabu Khanyile and Family Factory, actress Connie Masilo and talkshow host Felicia Mabuza-Suttle. Masekela said: “This organisation will make South Africans aware that addiction is a dynamite powder-keg. In South Africa, people are often praised for being able to drink a lot. They think drinking is something to be proud of.”
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Victor Ntoni, another respected musician, said alcohol and substance abuse among musicians was exacerbated by the increasing exploitation of artists in South Africa.
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Mabuza-Suttle, one of the trustees of Maapsa, said that because she came from a background of alcoholism, she knew about the devastating effects of addiction on families.

Hugh Masekela Biography

As the brutality of the Apartheid state increased, Hugh finally left the country with the help of Trevor Huddleston and his friends Yehudi Menuhin and Johnny Dankworth who got him admitted into London’s Guildhall School of music. Miriam Makeba who was already enjoying major success in the USA later helped him with Harry Belafonte, Dizzy Gillepsie and John Mehegan to get admission to the Manhattan school of Music in New York. Hugh finally met Louis Armstrong who had sent the Huddleston Band a trumpet after Huddleston told the trumpet king about the bank he helped start back in South Africa before deportation.

With immense help from Makeba and Belafonte, Hugh eventually began to record, gaining his first breakthrough with “The Americanization of Ooga-Booga” produced by the late Tom Wilson who had been producer of Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel’s debut successes. Stewart Levine his business partner in Chissa Records went on to produce hit records for Hugh on Uni Records, beginning with “Alive and Well at the Whisky” in 1967 and then “”Promise of A Future” which contained the gigantic hit song “Grazing in the Grass” in 1968.

By the beginning of the 1970’s he had attained international fame, selling out all of America’s festivals, auditoriums and top nightclubs. Heeding the call of his African roots, he moved to Guinea, then Liberia and Ghana after recording the historical “ Home is where Music is” with Dudu Pokwana.

photo from Ritmo Artists

Related: Winehouse to Rehab – Yes, Yes, Yes – Eva Mendes on Rehab

Actor, Who Wanted To Be A Better Dad, Is Glad To Be Sober

“I knocked that on the head, I haven’t had a drop in six months,” the Irish actor said Monday on The Late Show With David Letterman. “It was tough. It was something that I did every day for about fifteen years so it was tough, yeah, absolutely.”

The 30-year-old actor said that he decided to get help when he realized his fast-paced Hollywood lifestyle was taking its toll on him and affecting his ability to be a good father to his two-year-old son James.
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“It was horrible in one way, because I went away because I was pretty sick,” he said. “But in another way it was great, because it was a very safe environment with a bunch of people who were looking to sort out things in their life.” “But I don’t want to go back,” he added.

Colin Farrell: Drink and drugs nearly killed me

The Dublin-born star of Miami Vice was renowned for his wild lifestyle, but made the decision to enter rehab two years ago as he said he knew he was “dying”. “It was a fairly drunken life for 16 years so it was a tough life change, but I was dying and I’m one of the lucky ones in that so far I’m out of it,” he said.

“For me there was no choice. I was pretty sick. I went away for five or six weeks and that was a very safe environment and I began to come out of the haze that I had burrowed myself into so deeply. “I came back into the world and everything was in a degree of focus that I hadn’t experienced.”
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“I don’t believe I have any chemical predisposition towards depression, but let’s just say I was suffering from a spiritual malady for years and I indulged it.
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Farrell is now in a relationship with novelist Emma Forrest and seems to have put those dark tendencies behind him. “I’m glad I’m out of that cycle of my life, and I’m very lucky,” he admitted.

photo © Eric Charbonneau

Related: Robin Williams Reflects on Rehab – Robert Downey Jr. Rehab Success – Winehouse to Rehab: Yes, Yes, Yes