There’s not so much in the news these days about the group of drugs nicknamed “Spice” but that should not make you think that it’s not being used any more. In our drug rehab centers across America, we are getting plenty of calls from concerned families about a loved one using Spice.
“He’s been using Spice for a week and he’s crazy! We don’t know what to do,” said one mother.
This mother was not alone. By 2010, more than 11,000 people had arrived at emergency rooms to get help for terrible reactions to this type of drug. They were complaining of symptoms like these:
• Agitation
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Extremely fast heartbeat
• High blood pressure
• Tremor
• Seizures
• Hallucinations
• Paranoid behavior
• Non-responsiveness.
Getting a person into rehab when they are hallucinating or highly paranoid is going to be impossible. What you really need to do is catch this person’s drug use much earlier, before psychosis sets in. A psychotic person can’t effectively participate in their own recovery. With luck, an otherwise-healthy person will come out of the psychosis with the correct medical care and can then make use of drug rehab services to recover from the need to use drugs.
But some people will not come out of this condition. That’s why it’s so essential to address drug abuse preventively, and jump on any signs of drug use as soon as they show up.
Suppose you see your teen-to-twenty-year-old son or daughter smoking some pot. Or drinking. Whether or not THAT is a good idea is not the subject here. For now, you should realize this: Once a person starts using any drugs, it is very common for harsher, more addictive, more damaging drugs to be right around the corner. The novelty of a drug like alcohol or marijuana wears off pretty quickly for some people and they want to try something else. No matter what drug they progress to, it is almost guaranteed to be more addictive and damaging than these two gateway substances.
So suppose you take up this alcohol or marijuana use with them and they see the changes and the problems being created by their drug use and they promise to stop – but don’t. What should you do then? You should start thinking of rehab right then and I’ll tell you why.
Most families don’t. They keep trying to help, keep trusting, keep loving. But the problems continue and even get worse. The person migrates to Spice, heroin, cocaine or other drug. Two or three years later, there’s been a divorce, a bankruptcy, lost jobs, lost health, lost freedom. Now a family is desperate for rehab. But now they may be broke.
As soon as you start realizing that a person is having trouble controlling their drug habit, you should be thinking of rehab. As soon as you see them unable to quit when they need to or want to, you should be making calls to find the right rehab.
So what to do if your loved one is suffering serious effects from Spice use? You need to bring in a medical professional to get your loved one through these symptoms. Hopefully in your case, they are temporary and the person’s next stop can be a rehabilitation program. And that can put them on the road to lasting recovery.