Addiction Retreats

Addiction is a brutal development regardless of the vice. Addiction retreats offer unique treatment programs that are helping addicts recover.

Addiction Retreats

A new weapon in the battle against addiction has emerged recently. Instead of just working through a 12-step program, or being helped medically, a number of people who are having problems with addiction have chosen a different route. Addiction retreats have popped up in several areas of the United States, taking a new approach to helping those who have addictions to substances and other addictive behaviors.

One of the new addiction retreats that has started recently is the Essence Recovery Center, located in Asheville, North Carolina. This retreat offers an all-inclusive vacation-like feel, all while helping you to work through your problems with addiction. There are therapy sessions, which include individual "talk" therapy, as well as music and art therapy. They also offer massage therapy and acupuncture, which help to detoxify your body. Meditation, 12-step group programs, sauna and whirlpools, and even spa cuisine help to round out this holistic spa retreat. Week long programs and 28 day programs are available, and the spa is careful to point out that you should get your doctor's approval before starting this program, as it is not a medical program.

One of the addiction retreats located outside of the US is the Soukya Holistic Health Center in Bangalore, India. This retreat is one that combines many different health approaches, such as Ayurveda, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture and Western (allopathic) medicine, in order to help people beat their addictions. With their approach including counseling, homeopathic remedies, relaxation techniques and more, they have earned the praise of people such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, a well-known doctor and philosopher from here in the US. Bangalore is known for having many English speaking residents and is a city that is often visited by US and British citizens. As with all programs, your doctor should be consulted before you start (or book your stay).

This new group of addiction retreats is sure to grow as more people discover the healing benefits of total body cleansing and relaxation. Whether you are in need of a long stay or just a short trip to rejuvenate your mind and spirit, these retreat centers offer more than just the usual massages and facials found at most other spas. They offer a new way of life and a new way of thinking, along with the luxury of a spa atmosphere.

Addiction is a scary thing and breaking it is a difficult task. Addiction retreats offer people the ability and time to break the addiction curse.

A Step Closer to Drug Addiction and Phobia Treatment

Scientists are now looking into solving drug abuse cases by studying on a certain medication that could possibly be the most effective drug for treating addiction. This specific drug is also known to control phobias. The US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides further evidence that a drug known as D- cycloserine could play a role in helping to extinguish the craving behaviors associated with drug abuse, or specifically, with the addiction to psychotropic drugs. Their study found that mice treated with D-cycloserine were less likely to spend time in an environment where they had previously been trained to expect cocaine than mice treated with a placebo.

A graduate student from Stony Brook University working under Brookhaven Laboratory, Carlos Bermeo said that since the association between drugs and the places where they are used can trigger craving and/or relapse in humans, a medication that could aid in the reduction or even extinction of such responses could be a powerful tool in the treatment of addiction.

The D-cycloserine was originally developed as an antibiotic. But this drug has also shown to extinguish conditioned fear in pre-clinical (animal) studies, and has been successfully tested in human clinical trials for the treatment of acrophobia or fear of heights. This finding led the researchers to wonder whether D-cycloserine could extinguish drug seeking behaviors as well. Last 2006, a group of scientists not associated with the Brookhaven Lab tested this hypothesis in rats. They found out that D-cycloserine facilitated the extinction of “cocaine conditioned place reference”-- in which the tendency for the animals to spend more time in a chamber where they had been trained to expect cocaine than in a chamber where they had no access to the drug whatsoever. This study builds on the previous work and adds information on the drug dose effect, the lasting properties of the treatment, and the locomotor effects of this compound.

In the study, the group worked with C57bL/c mice. The animals were first trained to receive cocaine in a specific environment. Once conditioned, place preference was established (animals willingly spent more time in a cocaine-paired environment than in a neutral environment), the mice were treated with either D-cycloserine or saline and were allowed to spend forty minutes in either the previously cocaine-paired environment in which the drug was no longer available, or the neutral environment. According to one of their researchers, this paradigm would be analogous to a clinical approach where the addict is returned to their natural environment where drug use was done, but this time with no drug available. He added that reduced seeking of the drug in the same environment—that is the extinction behavior—is a great indicator of future success in treatment and reduced chance of relapse.

However, these researchers said that it is important to remember that these are very preliminary results from a small animal study, and much further research will be required before testing this drug in humans. Nonetheless, it is inspiring to know that this drug may show promise in treating cocaine addiction that continues to take a toll on society and for which no pharmacological treatment currently exists. Such research studies would take us a step closer in treating phobias, as well as drug abuse.

3 Simple Factors to Beating Cocaine Addiction

3 Simple Factors to Beating Cocaine Addiction
Ok, someone you love and care about has a Cocaine Addiction Problem.  Now what?

At this point many thoughts will go through your mind.  Most people actually follow a common series of thoughts, believe it or not.  The first thought is denial.  The addict actually goes through this several times as well.

When the actions of the Cocaine Addict make this impossible to consider further, the next thought is that there is only a minor problem, not a drug addiction.  This is where the majority of Cocaine Addicts fail to get the help they really need.  It is the extreme exception that someone is a true casual cocaine user.  There are no casual crack users as this is clearly the most addictive drug known to man.  So the answer is clearly a cocaine addiction program.  But how to you choose the right one?

Ultimately, you want your loved one back. You want that person free from drug addiction. You want that person to live a healthy and productive life.  The answer is the right drug rehab program.  But how do you find that one?  The answer is actually much easier than most people think.

The majority of people do look into a number of drug rehab programs before making a selection.  However, no one really knows the right questions to ask.  In fact, because most people really have no understanding of effective drug rehabilitation, they actually eliminate the right program very early in their search.  This is unfortunate simply because all that time and money invested then becomes a waste.

There are only 3 issues you need to address for any drug rehabilitation program to make sure your loved one is getting the best and you are getting not only your money's worth, but your loved one off drugs for good.

#1.  What is the Program Success Rate?

This is clearly the most obvious question to ask.  What few people know is that the very best programs have a better than 75 success rate and try to convince you that this is somehow the best that can be done.  Obviously, these programs are a waste of time and should be avoided.  All you need to know is to look for the program with a 75% success rate or better.

#2.  What is the Drug Detoxification Method?

Any Drug Rehab Program that you would choose simply must have some sort of drug detoxification method.  This is an absolute requirement if there is to be any serious chance that the addict will really get off drugs for good.  The single greatest cause of relapse was drug residuals remaining in the body.  This is why a drug detox program is required.

All drug detox methods are not the same.  There are many detox methods that are very expensive, but no better for the addict.  There are several hospital monitored detox methods that are not only very expensive but may also put your loved one into a coma-like state for a day or more.  You want a simple, risk free drug detox program and the best of this is the time-tested sauna based detox method.  This is not only the lowest cost method, but offers nearly zero risk to the addict.  The drug rehab program that uses this approach is more concerned about getting your loved one off drugs permanently than trying to make a profit from you.

#3.  What Guarantee do you offer with your Program?

Only the best programs will offer a rehabilitation result guarantee.  Most people have never heard of this simply because so few programs actually offer it.  You know that a program that will offer not only a medically safe drug detox, but extensive life skills training plus a long term follow-up program really cares about addicts.  But a program that offers all this and a guarantee where the relapsing addict is re-treated at no additional cost really has the best interests of your loved one in mind.  This is a program that is more concerned about the full rehabilitation of your family member back into the family and society than making profits.

If you simply use the above three questions in your rehabilitation program search, you will find the right program for your loved one, simply, easily and quickly.

Recovery From Addictions, Part 3

In Part 1 of this series of articles, I defined substance and process addictions, and described the four major false beliefs that underlie most addictions:

1. I can’t handle my pain.
2. I am unworthy and unlovable.
3. Others are my source of love.
4. I can have control over how others feel about me and treat me.

Part 2 was about the first of these beliefs – learning how to handle pain. This article addresses the second and third beliefs – “I am unworthy and unlovable” and “Others are my source of love.”

As small children, most of us decided that it was our fault when we didn’t get the love we needed. We decided that there must be something basically and intrinsically wrong with us that caused our parents or other caregivers to not love us or to abuse us. Since we were too small to give ourselves the love and attention we needed, we were naturally dependent upon others for our survival. Deciding it was our fault that we were not being loved gave us the feeling of control: we could change ourselves and become the “right” way in order to get the love we needed. We put aside our wonderful essence and developed our ego/wounded self to try to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. We went about trying to get the love we needed from others.

The problem is we became addicted to trying to get love from others and never learned that we can, as adults, access love directly from our Source.

Are you operating from the false belief that you can’t do this for yourself – that you can’t access the love you need directly from your Source? Do you believe that you are somehow defective and that the Source of love that is God will not come to fill you with love, peace and joy? Do you believe that you were born flawed and are therefore undeserving of receiving love from your Source? If you are operating from any of these false beliefs, then it is likely that you are still looking outside yourself for a dependable source of love.

If you could see love, you would see that we live in a universe of love – that it is all around you as well as within you. Your feeling self – your inner child – needs that love to survive and thrive. It is everywhere, yet your Child may be starving for love.

When you don’t know how to access the love that is always available to you, and you believe that it won’t be there for you anyway because you don’t deserve it, it is likely that you will turn to outside sources. You might use food as a substitute for love, or alcohol or drugs. You might use things – toys, clothes, objects – as substitutes for love. Or, you might think that another person needs to be your dependable source of love – that you need sex or attention or approval to fill the empty place within that needs love. You might sense that love exists within that other person, and you might believe that he or she has more ability to access love and bring it to you than you have. Many of the people I work with tell me that they cannot love themselves as well as someone else can, so they keep trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their feelings and needs. They keep trying to hand over their inner child to someone else, thus creating inner abandonment.

The inner abandonment that comes from using substances, things, activities or people as your source of love is the real source of your pain. As long as you are making something or someone outside yourself your dependable source of love, you will be creating - through your self-abandonment - the very pain you are trying so hard to avoid.

As children, our parents were supposed to bring us love from our Source. As adults, we are supposed to be doing this for ourselves. But when our parents didn’t show us how to do it for ourselves because they were not doing it for themselves or for us, we never learned how access our true Source of love. Without this access, you will remain stuck in your addictions, trying to fill the inner emptiness that can only be filled with love from your Source.

In the next section of this series, I will explore the ways you might be attempting to get others to fill you – coming from the false belief, “I can have control over how others feel about me and treat me,” and in the final section, I will show you how to access love from your Source.

Recovery From Addictions, Part 2

(This is Part 2 of a 5-part series on addiction).

In Part 1 of this series of articles, I defined substance and process addictions, and described the four major false beliefs that underlie most addictions:

1. I can’t handle my pain.
2. I am unworthy and unlovable.
3. Others are my source of love.
4. I can have control over how others feel about me and treat me.

This article addresses the first of these beliefs, and goes into the process of learning to manage your pain. Learning to manage pain is essential if you are going to move out of addictive behavior, since the intent of most addictive behavior is to avoid pain, coming from the belief that you cannot handle your pain.

Small children have few skills in managing pain. Parents are supposed to be there to help them with painful situations. Loving parents help children with pain by lovingly holding them, acknowledging their pain, hearing their pain, and soothing them in various ways, such “kissing it and making it better” when there is a cut or scrape, and being in compassion for difficult situations. Compassion toward a hurting child helps the child move through the pain and move on.

However, many adults had parents who, not only did not help them with their pain, but were the cause of the pain. When parents abandon children with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse or neglect, children are on their own regarding handling their pain. They are not receiving help and they have no role model for managing pain. When this is the case, addictions become the way to manage pain. Children learn early to eat, drink or take drugs to manage their pain. They learn early to numb out or act out with destructive or self-destructive behavior to avoid their pain. They may even learn to block out emotional pain by inflicting physical pain on themselves, such as cutting themselves.

In order to move beyond destructive and self-destructive behavior, you need to be in a process of developing a loving inner parent - a loving adult self - capable of giving your hurting inner child what he or she never received as you were growing up. The loving Adult is who we are when we are connected with a powerful spiritual source of love, strength and wisdom.

Your inner child is your feeling self. When you are experiencing the unbearable pain of rejection, loneliness, aloneness and abandonment and the unbearable terror of helplessness, it means that you are that child, with no inner adult to help you handle these terrible feelings. As an alone and terrified child, you will reach for whatever addiction has worked to sooth or block out the pain.

The reason the 12-Step programs have worked so well is because they help people to open to a spiritual source of strength. Without this source of strength, there is no way to manage the pain without the addictions.

We teach a Six-Step process, called Inner Bonding, which works very well along with the 12-Steps to help people in recovery from addictions. (See www.innerbonding.com for a free course). The key to recovery is to create a loving and powerful inner adult self, capable of connecting with a spiritual Source of love and compassion. The loving adult learns to bring to your hurting child all the love and compassion you didn’t receive as a child.

Love and compassion are not feelings that are generated from within the body. These feelings are the essence of what God/Higher Power is. God is love, compassion, peace, truth and joy. When you open to learning about what is loving to yourself, with a personal source of spiritual Guidance, you will begin to be able to bring through the love and compassion that you need.

Love and compassion is what you need when you are hurting. Substance and process addictions do not fill the place within that needs love and compassion. Addictions merely block out the pain of the inner abandonment you feel when you are not giving yourself the love and compassion you need. The needed love and compassion is not going to come from another person. No matter how much you wish that someone could give to you what you didn’t get as a child, it is not going to happen. You need to learn how to give it to yourself. When you do, you will be well on your way to recovery from your addictions.

Learning how to heal core shame and give yourself the love and compassion you need to recover from your addictions is the focus of the remaining articles in this series.

Recovery From Addictions: Part 1

(This is Part 1 of a 5-part series on addiction).

Just about everyone in our society is addicted to something.  Addictions can take many forms:

SUBSTANCE ADDICTIONS: addiction to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription meds, caffeine, nicotine, food, sugar, carbohydrates.

PROCESS ADDICTIONS: addiction to love, connection, caretaking, anger, resistance, withdrawal, and to activities such as:

    •     TV
    •     Computer/internet
    •     Busyness
    •     Gossiping
    •     Sports
    •     Exercise
    •     Sleep
    •     Work
    •     Making money
    •     Spending money
    •     Gambling
    •     Sex, masturbation, pornography
    •     Shopping
    •     Accumulating things
    •     Worry
    •     Obsessive thinking (ruminating)
    •     Self-criticism
    •     Talking a lot
    •     Talking on the telephone a lot
    •     Reading
•     Gathering information (if only I know enough I will feel safe)
    •     Meditation
    •     Religion
    •     Crime
    •     Danger
•     Cutting themselves
    •     Glamour, beautifying

We can use anything as a way of avoiding feelings and avoiding taking responsibility for our painful feelings. Whenever we engage in an activity with the intention of avoiding our feelings, we are using that activity as an addiction. We can watch TV to relax and enjoy our favorite programs, or we can watch TV to avoid our feelings. We can meditate to connect with Spirit and center ourselves, or we can meditate to bliss out and avoid responsibility for our feelings. We can read to enjoy and learn, or read to escape. Anything can be an addiction, depending upon our intention.

For example, when your intention is to take loving care of yourself and your work is something you really enjoy, then working is not being used as an addiction. But when the intent is to get approval or avoid painful feelings, then work is being used as an addiction. The same is true for most of the above behaviors – they can be addictions or not, depending upon your intent.

All of us have a wounded part of us – our wounded self or ego self – that has been programmed with many false beliefs through our growing-up years. There are four common false beliefs that underlie most addictions:

1. I can’t handle my pain.
2. I am unworthy and unlovable.
3. Others are my source of love.
4. I can have control over how others feel about me and treat me.

I CAN’T HANDLE MY PAIN

While this was true when we were small, it is not true as adults, yet many people operate as if it is true. When you believe that you are incapable of handling pain – especially the deep pain of loneliness and helplessness – then you will find many addictive ways to avoid feeling your pain. All of us are capable of learning how to manage painful feelings in ways that support our highest good, rather behaving in addictive ways that hurt us.

Anything you do to avoid taking responsibility for managing your pain is self-abandonment, which creates even more pain - the deep pain of aloneness. Whether you abandon yourself to substances, processes or people, your inner child – which is your feeling self - will feel abandoned by your choice to avoid responsibility for your feelings. If you had an actual child who was in pain, and you got drunk instead of being there for that child, he or she would be in even more pain from the abandonment. It is exactly the same on the inner level. Addictive behavior is an abandonment of self and causes the very pain you are trying to avoid.

I AM UNWORTHY AND UNLOVABLE

When you did not receive the love you needed as a small child, you might have concluded that the reason you were not loved was because you were bad, flawed, defective, unworthy, unlovable, or unimportant. This is core shame – the false belief that there is essentially something wrong with you. When you adopt this belief, you become cut off from your Source, believing that you are unworthy of being loved by a Higher Power.  

OTHERS ARE MY SOURCE OF LOVE

You will become addicted to attention, approval, love, sex, or connection when you believe that another person needs to be your dependable source of love. In this case, you will be abandoning your inner child to another person, which causes as much pain as abandoning yourself to a substance. Until you learn to tap into a Higher Power as your source of love, you will continue to be addicted to people as your source of love.

I CAN HAVE CONTROL OVER HOW OTHERS FEEL ABOUT ME AND TREAT ME

If you believe you can control others’ feelings and behavior, you will become addicted to various ways of trying to control, such as anger, judgment, blame, or people-pleasing. When you believe you can’t handle your pain and that others are your source of love, then you want control over getting that love. This is the cause of the codependency that underlies most relationship problems.

There is a way to heal from addictions. The rest of the articles in this series will address the process of recovery from addictions.

Beating an Addiction

Beat your  addiction:

The 4 stages of addiction come in to play mainly when you try to change an eating habit or anything that is self medicated. Food is the most common addiction for the majotity of us - Bread, drinks, Desserts, alcohol Alcohol. Other addictions are fast fatty foods, this is a high addiction. People usually consume generous helpings of steak, burgers, and chips(fries), large salads, which ar healthy but not with great big mountains of dressing. Chunks of cheese also tend to appear as a part of a daily food consumption.

Calories are units of energy, after your dinner you want to be full of energy no feeling tired.

Eating more than you need you start to feel like you are in a different state similar to a slight drugged state, so when you are eating your not really thinking about anything else, which is why it is said when your unhappy you comfort eat.

Stage One – Resistance to change

A certain program comes says, At breakfast each morning try not to have a drink, except water take a beverage every other day, have a soup as a meal instead of something heavier, and weigh your self every day.

This may be scary stuff. You are probabily thinking that you are just fine this old way and that the new way wont be the same. You are apprehensive about doing something new and something different that isnt as easy as the normal way you do things, but you know the way thing are now are producing negative results.

It is the narrow minded view that the outcome of what you attemping will end badly, even though you dont know or havent even experienced the possible outcome yet. It is the addiction to the old ways that have contorded your way of thinking to give up and make you feel justified for doing so.

Stage Two – Begrudging attempts

You decide to join a weight loss program and have obtained information on dieting, however grudgingly, you will try it out. You think - I dont want to do this, I will just pick 1 or 2 days a week were I wont have coffee and a bun on my break, I don’t want to weigh myself twice a day. I really dont want to document everything I eat. I wnat to have my fry or danish in the morning not cereal. I don’t want breakfast in the morning, but I will because I want to weigh XX pounds.

Stage Three – Surprise, I enjoyed it

I actually tried a bowl of hot cereal in the morning and found it to be most enjoyable. For lunch I took a walk down to the deli and had the most delicous soup, that I was quite surprised to have enjoyed so much. For the evening time I had a cup of hot water instead of my usual coffee and thought it strangely satisfying

Stage Four – The new way becomes the comfortable and preferred way

It is very important to differentiate between the foods that were familiar and the foods that you really love, just try not to overload yourself on food to numb the senses. Striving to get the food and consuming it has become an intrigal part of the self medication that you put yourself through. The mere thought of not getting your food fix induces a feeling of anxiety and you become slightly annoyed. You just eat what ever it is to feel comfortable hense the "comfort eating" term. Consider it this way - not drinking coffee and getting a sore head then drinking coffee to relieve the discomfort caused by not getting it, it’s like horse chasing a corrot on a stick.

Having the knowledge of the 4 stages of addiction with help you to be pro active in getting rid of any resistance to making that move described in stages 2 and 3 and all the way to knowing the new way is the comfortable, preferred way.