It has now been two years since Narconon Tijuana opened its doors, providing a new way for people in the populous Gold Coast region and indeed throughout Mexico to get sober and put an end to their struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. Narconon Tijuana has been a great success in the short time since it opened in 2012, but there was a major drawback to the way that the center was organized, namely that it was not open to women who needed its services. This is understandable given that Narconon Tijuana was founded by a Catholic priest, Father Jorge Loaiza, who described the center he started as “a Catholic Narconon.”
Operating within the rules and prohibitions of the Catholic religion, it has not been acceptable for an in-patient drug rehab center like Narconon Tijuana to present itself as a co-ed facility, with women sharing a living space with men and being attended to by an all-male staff.
Rather than leave the doors closed to women who need help, the staff of Narconon Tijuana took an expansive approach and added a new wing to the center where women could have their quarters and be assisted by an all-woman staff.
The women’s wing at Narconon Tijuana lives up to the words of Father Loaiza in saying that it is a Catholic Narconon, inasmuch as the staff of that area of the center is headed up by Sisters Angelica and Veronica, two Catholic nuns who have been trained in the delivery of the Narconon drug rehab program. In speaking about their role as Catholic sisters while providing the solutions of the Narconon program, Sister Veronica said that “as religious Samaritans of Jesus and Mary of Guadalupe, we pray for the inner salvation of a person.
Padre Jaime Lares of Narconon Tijuana asked us to come and study in the area of addiction. With these Narconon tools, we are learning to help women not just with the spiritual area, but physically as well.” They strive to help the women entrusted to their care to make a full recovery from the ravages of addiction. Sister Angelica chimes in saying of the Narconon training that it “gives you the ability to learn about, and better understand, addicted persons. This is really helping us serve our community.” The training that they received and the position into which they have been placed gives Sisters Veronica and Angelica an ideal opportunity to serve those in need, because they have been equipped with effective tools for making a real difference in people’s lives and helping to redeem them.
Narconon Tijuana: Helping Women Find a Better Future
Padre Jaime Lares, the President of Narconon Tijuana, envisions a sweeping mission for the center he heads and the new women’s wing in particular. “The role of a woman in society is very sensitive. When a woman injures herself in drug addiction, the harm is much greater, as children are in her care. So when we help women recover, we are working for the future.” Helping an individual woman recover from drug addiction is a goal worthy in and of itself, but it also has wide ranging implications for society as a whole, in light of the overarching importance of the well-being and health of women.
A woman who is suffering from drug addiction will have a much harder time raising her children, and this sets those children up for a rocky future. The importance of helping women get off drugs has an even more immediate importance when you consider the possibility that a woman might be pregnant while still an addict. For example, women who use heroin while pregnant often give birth to babies suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome, a term used to describe an infant who has gotten addicted to drugs while in the womb and thus spends the first days of his or her live suffering from the torture of withdrawal symptoms.
Now that Narconon Tijuana’s women’s wing is in operation, more women in Mexico can make a fresh start and turn their lives around after falling under the sway of drugs and alcohol, a turning point in the fight to give Mexico a drug-free future.