Families with addictions

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I posting some of these excerpts earlier, but decided to post in its entirety.
Excerpts from The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure

My Pledge To You

Within the covers of this book, I will show you how you can cure your alcoholism or drug addiction. Here, at the outset, I want you to notice that I do not mince words. I do not say "however," "maybe," "although," "perhaps," or use other qualifying terms or conditions. By reading this book, you will learn how to cure your alcoholism or drug addiction. That statement is based on the results we achieve at Passages in Malibu, California, the world’s most effective substance abuse treatment center, where the success rate of our treatment program at the time of this writing is highest in the country.
In 1956, the American Medical Association (AMA) named alcoholism as a disease. Throughout the world today, the existing primary paradigm regarding alcoholism and drug addiction is not only that they are diseases, but also that they are incurable. We’re told that even if we were to stop abusing substances, the disease would continue and we would be addicts or alcoholics forever. It is that belief that is primarily responsible for the stagnation that has existed for the past seventy years or so in the treatment of alcoholism and addiction. It is that paradigm that has given birth to those two terrible, and untrue, slogans "Once an alcoholic or addict, always an alcoholic or addict" and "Relapse is part of recovery."
It is my intention to change that paradigm in your mind, and perhaps throughout the world. Innovators in any field who have brought about revolutionary changes report that longstanding paradigms are exceedingly difficult to eradicate and replace with new paradigms. However, eradicate and replace we must if we are to survive.
Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components - anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain. You will be reading later about the steps to recovery that address these causes, but foundational to them all is this key premise: when the underlying problems are discovered and cured, the need for alcohol or drugs disappears.
Reading this book will open your mind to new ways of thinking that will cause you to see your dependency, and perhaps your entire life, in a whole new light. It will help you understand that all dependency is just a symptom, not a problem. Seeing your dependency in that new light will enable you to heal yourself more quickly and more effectively than ever before - and permanently. Alcohol actually scars your liver. Since the liver cannot feel that type of pain, we can literally drink ourselves to death. It is never a pretty death, because we are slowly poisoned by the toxins our livers can no longer filter out. If your liver could feel that type of pain, you would never consume your second drink…
Excerpts from The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
Healing The Underlying Causes of Alcohol & Drug Addiction

Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components - anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain. You will be reading later about the steps to recovery that address these causes, but foundational to them all is this key premise: when the underlying problems are discovered and cured, the need for alcohol or drugs disappears.
I would like to see the word alcoholism eliminated from the English language as well as the labels alcoholic and addict. There is a stigma attached to them. The word alcoholism alone has a whole world of grim meaning attached to it. We've been inundated with studies of alcoholism, theories about alcoholism, lectures about alcoholism, stories of alcoholism, and essays on alcoholism, when all that has really happened is that people have become dependent on alcohol to cope with their underlying conditions.
Alcohol is just a quick and easy way to change ordinary, everyday reality from unbearable to bearable. All it takes is a short trip to the liquor store and a few drinks. People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating "alcoholism" as if it is the problem, when it has nothing at all to do with the problem. They might as well be studying "scratchism" for people who have a chronic itch.
Suppose you had a chronic itch and scratched it regularly throughout the day. Would you have "scratchism?" Would you be a "scratchaholic?" Of course not. What if you had a constant headache, and to cope with it you took aspirin several times each day. Would you suffer from "aspirinism," and would you be called an "aspirinaholic"? More important, if you sought help for treatment of those ailments, would you be treated for "scratchism" or "aspirinism"? Of course not; you would be treated for the underlying conditions that led you to scratch or use aspirin - perhaps poison ivy or stress.
All Dependency Is a Symptom, Not a Problem
Reading this book will open your mind to new ways of thinking that will cause you to see your dependency, and perhaps your entire life, in a whole new light. It will help you understand that all dependency is a symptom, not a problem. Seeing your dependency in that new light will enable you to heal yourself more quickly and more effectively than ever before - and permanently.


Excerpts from The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
Alcohol Dependency and Psychological Dependence

Alcohol dependency is characterized by craving, loss of control, tolerance, physical and/or psychological dependence, and the production of withdrawal symptoms. It should be noted that developing "tolerance" doesn't mean that we can no longer get drunk, but that it takes more alcohol to get us drunk than it did when we first began drinking. One of the more insidious - meaning slowly and subtly destructive - aspects of alcohol is that it erodes our "stop mechanisms," or our ability to stop drinking. The process occurs so slowly and subtly that we're unaware that our stop mechanisms are being eroded. This becomes obvious only when we try to stop but can't. Even though I usually mention drugs and alcohol separately, they are the same in that alcohol is actually the drug ethanol (CH3CH2OH). Ethanol is toxic and nearly all of it is processed in your liver, which leads to cirrhosis.
CIRRHOSIS
According to the Mayo Clinic, "Cirrhosis is a condition that causes irreversible scarring of the liver. As scar tissue replaces normal tissue, blood flow through your liver is affected, making it increasingly difficult for your liver to carry out functions that are essential for life and health. Among other major tasks, the liver detoxifies harmful substances, purifies your blood and manufactures vital nutrients." Alcohol actually scars your liver. Since the liver cannot feel that type of pain, we can literally drink ourselves to death. It is never a pretty death, because we are slowly poisoned by the toxins our livers can no longer filter out. If your liver could feel that type of pain, you would never consume your second drink.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE
In addition to physical dependence, we can develop psychological dependence. "Psychic need" is the perceived need to use a substance to cope with unpleasant feelings such as despondency, heartache, anxiety, stress, or depression. Relief from something unpleasant is a kind of reward called "negative reinforcement." That cycle is worsened by both the physical and psychological discomforts felt during abstinence. When we stop using the addictive drugs or alcohol that we've been using to cope with unpleasant feelings, those feelings return, as does the strong desire to return to the substances that enabled us to cope with them. That's what characterizes psychological dependence.

Excerpts from The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
Drug Addiction, Tolerance and Withdrawal

Before we go further on our healing journey, it's important to establish some basic definitions and understand some basic terminology. First, through prolonged use of certain drugs that have addictive qualities, we can develop a dependency on those drugs. Among these are alcohol, morphine, cocaine, methadone, amphetamines, nicotine, heroin, oxycodone (such as OxyContin, Percodan, and Percocet), hydrocodones, (such as Vicodin and Lorcet), barbiturates (such as Nembutal and Seconal), and benzodiazepines (such as Xanax and Valium).
Addiction is defined as the compulsive, physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance. It is characterized by tolerance and well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal. All addictive drugs produce a reward system in the brain. Using addictive drugs gives us a feeling of well-being and alleviates bad feelings. After using a drug for a period of time, users frequently develop a tolerance to the drug (they need more of the substance to accomplish the same feeling as when they began using the substance). This effect is thought to be related to our body's homeostatic mechanisms. Homeostasis is a relatively stable state of equilibrium (physiological and psychological balance). Homeostasis is our body's optimum state of functioning, and homeostatic mechanisms are the way our bodies achieve this balance. Our bodies maintain this ideal state by neutralizing any source of detriment to it.
For example, when we eat a candy bar, our blood sugar goes up and our pancreas then releases insulin to help us metabolize the carbohydrate and balance out glucose levels. If we exercise and our body heats up, sweat is released to cool it down again. By the same process, if we take a stimulant like an amphetamine, our body will counteract that change by producing sedative-like chemicals to return us to normal. However, as our body gets better and better at counteracting the disruptive effects of a drug, we experience less and less of the drug's effects because our body is essentially learning how to cancel out a great deal of those effects. The problem is, users don't typically say at that point, "Well, the drug isn't doing much for me anymore, so I guess I'll stop." Instead, they take increasingly larger or more frequent doses to produce the same relief from underlying problems.
That process is tragic. When you put a substance into your body that pushes it outside its range of peak functioning, your body learns to counteract that damage, and you must take more and more, which escalates into a terrible race with yourself. If this race continues long enough, your body will commit a desperate act of self-protection - it will get "used to" the drug. That is, it will shift from normal functioning to a new level of tolerance. The moment your body becomes accustomed to life with the drug, the lack of it is going to be felt as a disruption. So now if you don't get the drug, you'll feel symptoms of withdrawal. Once you shift to this new level of tolerance, you will find yourself taking the substance just so you can avoid the withdrawal symptoms.

Drug Withdrawal
Different addictive drugs have different withdrawal symptoms. They can include nausea, watery eyes, dizziness, fainting, muscle spasms, seizures, bone aches, muscle aches, headaches, intestinal cramping, runny nose, loss of appetite, insomnia, goose bumps, sweating, hallucinations, irritability, diarrhea, tremors, panic, chills, paranoia, anger, convulsions, heart palpitations, rapid breathing, tachycardia (speeding heart rate), apathy (lack of energy and enthusiasm), delirium, pain, depression, disorientation, fatigue, excessive periods of sleep, and even psychosis (a mental state in which a person loses contact with reality). In some cases, death can occur. The length of time it takes to become dependent to the point of experiencing withdrawal upon abstinence is different for each drug and for each person taking the drug.
Relapse Risks
A few weeks of abstinence from the drug is usually enough for the withdrawal symptoms to pass, but after the withdrawal symptoms end, we'll experience a return of the symptoms of the underlying condition, which the drug was masking. If those underlying conditions aren't treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we'll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That's the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent on alcohol and addictive drugs.
law regarding our topic of cure that relates to one of the basic and most important aspects of our Universe - cause and effect. Simply stated, the metaphysical law says: "Every action produces a reaction, and that reaction is in exact accord with the action." (Do not confuse that metaphysical law with the physical law that states that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.")
The metaphysical law of cause and effect applies to your beliefs in the following way. Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. When we apply this metaphysical law to the cure of addiction, we see that healers and therapists who don't believe that a cure is possible will not talk about a cure, will not look for a cure, and will most likely fail to bring about a cure.
Worse than that, they'll poison your mind with the belief that a cure is impossible and that you're doomed to be an addict or alcoholic for the rest of your life. That belief results in a self-defeating attitude that undermines the great gains that are possible. The only time that this poisoning would have any positive effect would be if you got angry when told that rubbish, refused to accept that belief, and set out to prove the therapist wrong.
Would you really do your utmost to succeed in the treatment of any ailment if you believed that you were beyond all hope of recovery? What caliber of treatment would you expect from a therapist who believed that? How do you think your body and mind would respond if you were surrounded by psychologists, psychiatrists, or drug and alcohol counselors who subscribe to the belief that "Once an alcoholic or addict, always an alcoholic or addict," and that your current stay in rehab will be one of many? You would be immediately deprived of hope.
Those misguided "helpers" poison the minds of those who come to them. It's not that they're doing it deliberately; they don't know any better. That is sad, because hope - the hope for a cure, the hope for a bright, clean future free of addictive drugs and alcohol, and the hope for a return to a normal, healthy life free from the excessive fear of relapse - is the most powerful stimulus for complete recovery.
Compare those misguided healers with healers and therapists who believe that a cure is possible. They will talk about a cure, will look for a cure, and will be more likely to bring about a cure. Most important, they will instill in you the belief that a cure is not only possible, but probable, and that you are definitely going to be among those who will be completely cured. That belief alone results in the self-empowering attitude that sets the stage for your recovery.
The First Glimmer of Hope
Confucius, who lived 2,500 years ago said, "It is the saddest of all things, when a person gives up." One of the most comforting and important messages we offer those who contact us at Passages for the first time is hope - the hope that they or their loved one will be cured. We can hear the relief in their voices, as if they had been suddenly pardoned from a long prison sentence. The treatment program for that caller or that caller's loved one begins with that first phone call. At graduation ceremonies, graduates frequently refer to that first telephone conversation with Pax or me as the moment they felt their first glimmer of real hope. They also talk about the first fellow client who greeted them when they arrived at Passages.
Meeting someone who is also in the Passages program is an important moment. When clients first arrive and walk through that huge front door and someone who's been in treatment for a week or two or three comes to greet them and tells them that they're in the best place in the world, that they'll be helped, and that they themselves are experiencing a miraculous cure . . . well, it makes all the difference. And because all our clients have had the experience of being welcomed, they're eager to pass along the comfort to another.
Clients and others have also told me of the despair they felt, the same despair Pax and I felt, when they heard for the first time that addiction or alcoholism is a disease, that it is incurable, and that they would be addicts or alcoholics for the rest of their lives. Those statements make us feel as if we've been sentenced to a cold, dark prison cell.
It is essential to your complete recovery that you surround yourself with people who believe that a cure is possible for you. Your therapists should speak quite naturally of a cure and how to achieve it. The people who offer us love and hope when we come in for treatment are supplying us with courage and enthusiastic support at a time when courage and enthusiastic support are crucially needed. It's like being released from that dark prison cell and walking out into a ray of warm sunshine. You may step out of that cell now, because you're being exposed to that ray of healing sunshine in this book.

Excerpts from The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
A New Chapter In Your Life

Once your dependency is cured, can you stay clean and sober forever? Yes. Will you? The answer to that has a lot to do with your character and willpower. Can someone who has ingested strychnine and been cured drink it again? Yes, but given all the negative consequences of doing so, would they?
I said this earlier, but it is well worth repeating: You cannot be a casual drinker or user once you have recovered. All you have to do is use alcohol or addictive drugs again and you will reactivate your dependency. I have never heard of one person who has been able to remain a "moderate drinker" or "moderate drug user" once he or she has once been dependent on alcohol or addictive drugs. Even after the underlying causes that led to your addiction have been eliminated, addictive substances have inherently addictive properties, particularly for you since you have a history of chemical dependency. As many times as you use them, you will become dependent on them.
A Vibrant Reunion As I was finishing the last few pages of this book, we had our first reunion at Passages for our graduates. They came from all over the United States and from a few other countries. As I greeted them, hugged them, shook their hands, laughed, and talked with them, I thought how wonderful it would be if you could be here to see them and hear them, to look into their eyes and see the joy and happiness that literally flowed from them. Nearly all of the people I have written about in this book were there. They looked like poster people for ads in health and fitness magazines.
They were all so eager to share their stories, their successes, and their accomplishments, including the hurdles they had overcome and the challenges they had faced and used as stepping-stones to gain more strength and understanding. They were brimming over with enthusiasm. It was as if our own children had returned home, which indeed they had.
The greatest feeling was that of love. We all truly love each other. Many of them cried with joy at being reunited with the people who had helped free them from the affliction of their terrible dependencies. Even the men cried. The most common statement I heard from them was "It is just like you and the treatment team said it would be." Everyone at Passages, even those of us who expected it, were amazed at the level of vibrancy in the air.
That vibrancy is what I want for you. I want you to achieve that feeling of great accomplishment, that feeling of joy that comes from knowing you will never again be held in the grip of dependency, that you are forever free.
I know how badly you want to return to a life of health and well-being, free of dependency. I wish I could meet you, talk with you, shake your hand, look into your eyes, and communicate the love I feel for you. We are spiritual beings sharing this magical, wondrous moment on planet Earth. We are fellow human beings. I wish I could be there with you to guide you every step of the way, lending you encouragement and reminding you when you are faced with a challenge that the challenge is only in your life to help you become strong and enduring…
I offer this transformational information in the hope that it will translate itself into the power to carry you through to the success that awaits you. I want to thank you for reading this book. You are a pure, virtuous, spiritual being. You deserve love, you deserve happiness, you deserve success, you deserve all good things, and most of all, you deserve to be forever free of dependency. As the Chinese sages are wont to say, may you mount to the skies of success as though on the wings of six dragons!