Alcohol and Drug Addiction: Issues of Self-Esteem

When a person struggles with chemical, alcohol or behavioral addictions, self worth often suffers and in a strange manner, it perpetuates the addictive process.

Self esteem means the appraised and felt "self worth" of an individual at any given time. We all suffer with periodic poor self-esteem. For example, when we lose a competition, or making mistakes that hurt others, etc. However, many people have fixed, chronic low self-worth.

In the early days, weeks and months of substance abuse the effect is euphoria, "top of the world". However, this is a false, delusional reality. You've done nothing to earn such a euphoria. That is the drug's allure! Later, when you cannot stop the addiction, you begin to realize how the drug, alcohol, sex, etc. has caused you tremendous personal, interpersonal, vocational and economic crises.

How to sustain a healthy self-worth? First, to understand you are vulnerable and permit others in to assist you. Later, you may be one of those people and help others. Once you gain your self-worth back you will feel no greater, no lesser than anyone. You are able to thrive...being FULLY ALIVE!

NO DRUG ADDICT OR ALCOHOLIC CAN TRULY ATTEST TO BEING FULLY ALIVE! If you, or someone is suffering with drug/alcohol addiction please call us at our 24/7 Call Center at (866) 478-9898 and speak with one of our recovery counselors.

Recuperatio Primoris,

Dr. Bill

Cocaine treatment and detox

Cocaine addiction is one of the most devastating experiences that anyone can go through, not to mention the havoc it wreaks on family, friends, and loved ones. Not only is cocaine expensive in real cost, with users going through tens or hundreds of thousands or dollars in drug, but it is expensive in the toll that it takes on the addict and everyone around them.

Cocaine addicts rarely experience the addiction in isolation from deeper core issues. There is usually a lot of "other stuff" going on psychologically with the cocaine addict. That "other stuff" needs to be treated in a comprehensive way. To treat the addiction without treating the individual core issues behind the addiction means you have missed the boat. The person will soon be on their way to relapse.

Paradise Recovery offers an intensive, private cocaine treatment and detox program that is comprehensive in nature. Core issues, individual work, and family work are all part and parcel to the program. Give our HelpLine a call today for more information: 866-478-9898.

Eastern medical treatments for Addiction

East meets West. Or is it the other way around? There is research showing that acupuncture could help cocaine addicts to quit, as reported by Reuters. According to a Yale University study, more than half of the cocaine addicts participating in the research tested free of cocaine at the end of acupuncture treatment, more than double the quitting rate of a control group. In this particular study, addicts were treated with acupuncture needles in their ears five days a week for eight weeks.

"Our study supports the use of acupuncture for cocaine addiction and shows that alternative therapies can be combined with the arsenal of Western treatments for fighting addiction," said Arthur Margolin, a Yale psychiatrist and principal investigator. Margolin said this was the first study of its kind, so additional research is needed.

Part of a holistic approach to addiction treatment involves a multi-pronged attack against the disease of addiction. That's what the best drug rehabs and best alcohol rehabs offer.

Auricular acupuncture has been shown to be beneficial in alcohol detox as well. I suspect that as more and more Eastern medicine practices are studied in a "western" scientific way, that we will find out that many Eastern practices are effective in ways that we had never imagined. The East has known it for thousands of years. We're a little slower.

The Many Faces of Addiction

The definition for addiction:

"The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma."

The word addiction embodies so many different habits that can be formed, sometimes they can be minimal, where a particular habit doesn't interfere with any aspect of your life, other times the habit may consume you to the degree where it affects one or more aspects of your life.

There is an array of addictions that are out there, some of which are:

1. Sex Addiction
2. Cocaine Addiction
3. Heroin Addiction
4. Alcohol Addiction or Alcoholism
5. Opiate Addiction
6. Vicodin Addiction
7. Benzodiazapene Addiction

If any of the above have become a habit and have affected one or more aspects of your life, and you feel that stopping it may cause severe trauma in your life, you may want to seek out a treatment center or rehab that specializes in the different forms of addictions out there.

Preferably a treament center or rehab that offers a detox program. Whether it be cocaine detox, opiate detox, vicodin detox, alcohol detox, heroin detox, benzodiazapene detox, or a combination of any above. At Paradise Recovery we offer detox for all of the above, in our medically monitored detox program.

If you or a loved one needs help for drug addiction or alcoholism, there is help out there!

Blessings to you...