An Addict Finds a Happy Life at Last

As an addict, Victor was almost completely cut off from his loved ones. For decades, he was overcome by the major factors that prevent recovery from addiction - guilt, depression and drug cravings. Victor described his life of addiction.

For the best part of 40 years, he was an addict and spent many of those years homeless. He did get cleaned up for a few years and got married and had a couple of children, but eventually he went back to the drug.

“I didn’t have any friends,” he said. “I didn’t have any family left. I didn’t have any communication with my family. They had all cut off communication with me. I had not seen or talked to my children in ten or eleven years. I had not spoken to either of my parents in eight years. I had one brother who I still could talk to. Other than that, I was completely cut off.”

He explained how he couldn’t overcome his problem. “What kept me trapped in my addiction was the guilt, the depression and the cravings that I had for the drug. I was like a hamster on a wheel, I just couldn’t stop.”

However, he found the Narconon drug and alcohol rehabilitation program with the help of his brother. Narconon gave Victor back his life.

The Narconon program is one of a kind, an effective way to beat drug and alcohol addiction, and without using drug substitute therapy. Drug substitutes simply replace one addiction with another, and this is not the best way to leave all drugs behind and achieve lasting recovery. The Narconon program includes a tolerable withdrawal, a sauna detox to eliminate drug residues built up in the body and life skills training which prepares the person for a new life without drugs.

The sauna-based detox employs an effective combination of time in a low-heat sauna, daily exercise in moderate amounts and nutritional supplements in exact proportions to flush out toxic residues in the system. The emphasis is on residual drugs that become stored in fatty tissues. Then the recovering addict goes on to do life skills training. Here is where he (or she) discovers how to rebuild a life without drugs, even finding where they went astray and what led them to drug use so they won’t make the same mistakes again.

The six courses that comprise the life skills training deal with topics that are important in a life without drugs. The subjects addressed include integrity, responsibility, and ethics. The student studies about and learns to restore his personal values and self-esteem.

Victor had this to say about the Narconon program: “I felt more alive right after the sauna portion of the program. Toward the end of the program I felt like I had been re-humanized. I was a human being again and I was starting to function like one again.”

He added, “Prior to coming to Narconon I didn’t have a life. All I did was chase the drug. I was an angry, miserable person. Today I have a life. I’m happy, I’m free and I don’t have anything pulling me down.”

Narconon has saved many addicted lives, giving them back hope for a fulfilling future life without drugs. Families come back together, young men and women gain back control of their lives and the world looks once again like a bright and happy place. Narconon is so proud to give back to the world clean and sober people who can be contributive members of society.

Victor graduated the Narconon Arrowhead drug rehab program in Oklahoma.