FIND A HEALER NEAR YOU
Episode 4 – Ask Anything
Topics:
- Addiction
- How to tell if you have a problem
- How to get help
- Unique challenges of drug addiction
In this episode, you will learn:
What is addiction and how to tell if you may have an addiction (1:25)
Ways to get help (mainstream and natural methods) (2:40)
Unique challenges of drug addiction (6:45)
Two people to follow who have overcome drug addiction (8:30)
Links for more information:
Addiction isn’t just limited to drugs or alcohol – it can come in many forms. Here a few other things you can become addicted to: sugar, romantic partners, behaviors such as interacting with food or sex. You can even be addicted to healthy eating (it’s called orthorexia).
Questions to ask yourself in discovering if you have a problem (when in doubt, ask someone you trust for an outsider’s perspective):
- Do you have withdrawal symptoms?
- Are you replacing behaviors or substances with something else?
- Are you building a tolerance?
- Is it affecting other areas of you life?
How to get help: remember, you have to help yourself and you have to take action! No matter how many people surround you with love and support, they can’t make you get well – only you have the power to heal yourself.
Mainstream methods:
- Look for a providers or therapists that specialize in addiction
- If you think you may have initially been triggered due to a traumatic event in your life, try EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing)
- Join a support / recovery group: addiction.com or addictionsandrecovery.org
Alternative methods:
- Go inward – what you’re looking for outside yourself is actually within you. Deep inner awareness can be found through prayer or meditation. Lean on whatever higher power you believe in and ask for help. Find the root cause of what’s fueling your addiction and address it.
- How are you communicating with yourself? Are you treating yourself as you would treat others? Be nice to yourself and upgrade your language.
- There’s so many healing modalities that help with this, but here’s a couple to check out: hypnotherapy and energy healing.
- Other methods
- 30 Day Sobriety Solution – Jack Canfield
Unique challenges for drug addiction
- Intense physical withdrawals
- Universal feelings of guilt and shame, which usually leads to isolation from friends and family who are there to help
- While a community of peer support is helpful with any health challenge you’re going through, drug (and alcohol) addiction should be navigated very carefully, as peers aren’t always the best support system if they’re not stable enough themselves to offer help. Also, drug dealers can sometimes attend outpatient therapy programs. While seeking therapy from an outpatient recovery program, my sister fell prey to drug dealers and peers who taught her how to doctor shop, pass drug tests, and supported her drug use and relapses. If you are recommended inpatient therapy by a professional, you should highly consider it as you may be too fragile to do outpatient therapy without first doing inpatient therapy.
- As bad as you think the opioid epidemic is, it’s actually much worse. Approximately 80% of heroin users start with prescription opioid usage. My sister’s drug addiction started with opioids, which led to other drugs as well. Here’s a few resources to check out: how the epidemic got started, recent steps in the right direction (federal sting and criminal charges for a pharmaceutical company fueling the epidemic), and how to take action.
Two recommended people to follow, who have been able to recover from drug addiction and created great programs that can help everyone, including addicts:
- Gabby Bernstein: author of Spirit Junkie and A Course in Miracles guru (how to break addiction)
- Melissa Hartwig Urban: creator of Whole30 (interview on drug addiction)
If you know of other helpful resources, please leave your comments below to help others.
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