Coming down/off everything from alcohol to some correctly administered and taken prescriptions, to many street drug concoctions is so physically painful, nauseating, anxiety-producing, depression-triggering, trauma recreating, insomnia-producing, loneliness-creating, shame-producing, and crave-triggering that many people may need to be prescribed one or more medications to help alleviate symptoms. These medications may be needed to be taken anywhere from months, to years, to the rest of a patient’s life.
Additionally, almost all sufferers need connection with self, others, purpose, and a higher power/spirituality.
Medications, connections, even emotional, sexual, and physical trauma recovery help sufferers to begin to think and feel in a dramatically healthier way, when off these debilitating substances.
Working on interpersonal skills, life-skills, job skills, financial needs, as well as helping people understand and work with their own perfectionism, shame, embarrassment, anger, frustrations, and anxieties are very often needed.
Just entering people into an evidence-based detox and rehabilitation program is the first of many necessary uphill struggles. These struggles are unavoidable and are part of the healing process.
By the way, there are no textbooks or studies that tell us to give up on people trying to recover…regardless of how long, how many times, or how much effort (their’s and our’s) has been spent in the process.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/community-groups-medical-experts-work-combat-emerging-tranq/story?id=101716074
Charles Tadros, M.D.
July 29, 2023
Saint Louis, Missouri