Am I an Alcoholic?

One major university has concluded a study indicating that underage drinkers consume 90% of their alcohol while binge drinking. This is no surprise to me really. Our culture, including the media, often promotes this attitude towards drinking. The problem for young people, is that younger drinking increases the chances of dependent drinking later on, and for some of us, that happens much earlier than others. The way I know that I was different from my drinking peers is that my life became quite unmanageable pretty quickly. I was consumed with the need to drink, and the longer I drank, the more I turned to other substances to increase my levels of intoxication. It was hard for me to see my peers “successfully” partying without the consequences I seemed to have. I couldn’t understand how they could be more in control than me. I resented having to go to adolescent rehab while my friends stayed home and continued to have fun. Fortunately, I was so miserable deep down that I felt desperate enough to give rehab a chance.
The following questions are taken from Alcoholics Anonymous’ website. These are the questions that really stood out to me and helped me honestly see my addiction to alcohol for what it was:

Do you ever wish people would mind their own business about your drinking- stop telling you what to do?
Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble?
Have you had problems connected to drinking in the last year?
Has your drinking caused trouble at home?
Do you ever try to get “extra” drinks at a party because you do not get enough?
Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking?
Do you ever have “blackouts”?
Have you ever had an “eye-opener” upon awakening during the last year? (a drink in the morning)
Have you ever decided you would stop drinking for a week only to last a couple of days?
Have you ever switched from one kind of drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk?
Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink?

These questions helped me realize that maybe I wasn’t participating in normal social drinking. For whatever reason, I am an addict and alcoholic, and I just can’t succeed when I drink and use. Visions gave me the safe environment to build a new way of life. If these questions have led you to a similar conclusion, don’t hesitate to contact Visions today.

A new way of life is right in front of you.

http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=71

Adolescent Drug Treatment in Manhattan Beach

A 20-year study has concluded that abstinence from alcohol rather than controlled drinking has proven to be the most beneficial method of recovery for alcoholics. It makes sense to me. When I first entered adolescent drug rehab, it made sense to me that I should probably stop using drugs, but alcohol? I wasn’t even old enough to drink legally. I wondered what I would do when I went to college, or turned 21, or got married. What would I drink on New Year’s Eve? How would I ever have a normal life? Some of my friends and family shared similar concerns. Not even a glass of wine at dinner? None of Nana's famous eggnog? The decision to remain completely abstinent from alcohol and drugs was made after I realized in adolescent drug treatment that it didn’t matter what the substance was. If everything was taken away from me, I got creative and abused over-the-counter medications and inhalants that I could find around the house. If left to my own devices, I found myself taking heroin and nearly dying.

Understanding the root of my addiction helps me to make the decision to remain abstinent one day at a time. I know that if I were to drink, all of the work I’ve done will go out the window, and let me tell you- that work was painful and difficult, so I’m not going to just toss my progress away! It is rare that I encounter a situation where I feel like I wish I was drinking. In my age group now, my peers in Manhattan Beach still like to binge drink, and that never looks good to me. I don’t want to puke on my shoes anymore, you know? In day to day life, I feel proud of my teen recovery. I don’t tell everyone I know about it. Many people think that maybe what I went through was just a phase and that I’m being dramatic. It doesn’t matter what they think. I learned in teen drug treatment to put my recovery first, no matter what. I have watched peers relapse and end up worse than when they started, and I don’t want to trade the life I have now for a life of shame, guilt, and puking on my shoes.

I don’t worry anymore about what my life will be like without alcohol. I worry about what it would be like with alcohol. I continue to take the steps to protect my sobriety that I learned in adolescent rehab. I stay connected with my support group. I attend 12-step meetings. I don’t spend an unnecessary amount of time around alcohol and I don’t hang out with people who are using drugs. Sometimes these decisions make me feel awkward, but I can deal with awkward. I will take awkward any day over the despair and hopelessness I felt when I was drinking and using. Teen drug and alcohol treatment gave me an opportunity to honestly look at the destructive force drugs and alcohol were in my life, and showed me a new way to live, one day at a time.

For more information about Visions please click here teen drug treatment

Teen Drug Dealers offer "Candy Drug" to Kids

Strawberry Quik

So once again drug dealers prove they are some of the lowest of the low in our society.

There's a new drug on the market being handed to kids in school yards. It's a type of crystal Meth that looks, smells and tastes like strawberry pop rocks (it fizzles and pops like the popular candy) Its being called "strawberry quik" or strawberry meth. This new and kid appealing version of this highly addictive drug is also being made in chocolate, peanut butter, cola, cherry, grape, and orange flavors.

Drug Dealers are obviously looking to turn teens and pre-teens into their new adolescent and teen addict customers. Kids are showing up in Adolescent rehabs and teen treatment centers.

If parents don't still tell their kids to not accept anything from strangers now is a time to start having those conversations! Its sad that "cooks" would be making this destructive drug so easily marketed as a candy for kids only to have serious and even deadly results.

There is a fox news report on this at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,271215,00.html .

Meth is a highly addictive and destructive drug. Please make sure you children are informed so that they are not rushed to the hospital or morgue because they took "candy" from someone at school!

amy lawhorn

Adolescent Addiction and the Disease Concept

As a chemical dependency counselor at Visions Adolescent Treatment Center one of my duties is to educate the Adolescents on the disease concept of addiction and alcoholism. As an southern Californian, with a mother who has been sober through Alcoholics Anonymous for the last eight years, I am very familiar and comfortable with the disease concept. I am not going to lie, when my mother first got sober I was an ornery 13 year old teen who believed that the disease concept was an excuse that alcoholics used to disregard their horrid behavior. I thought that alcoholics and drug addicts, not knowing that I was one, needed to buck up and take the blame for their behaviors. (I did not know at this point that the twelve steps were solely aimed at taking responsibility for our actions and making them right.) However, through the process of going to adolescent rehab at Visions Adolescent Treatment Center myself and getting sober I became very familiar with the disease concept and readily accepted it. When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them, with pride, that I am a chemical dependency counselor for adolescents. Many are intrigued to learn more about the recovering community and most people praise me for helping others. Not once have I received negative feedback or people giving me weird looks, as I originally expected. So you could imagine my surprise, when I found out through a gentleman who was touring our facility, that around the world many people are skeptical about the disease concept. When I say skeptical, I mean that the impression that I got was that is was widely discarded as hogwash, for lack of a better term. This gentleman explained to me that he taught a course in the U.K. on the disease concept. He described the way that his students reacted to it and the various ways that he had to go about getting the information to these people without the entire class balking at him. I was speechless. Sometimes, I for one, take for granted the recovering community that I have grown up in, in southern California.