The caller ID always alerts you.
In fact, you find yourself looking in anguish at your cell phone now when it rings. Although the calls from your college roommate were once filled with laughter and long stories of the achievements of your children, those calls now are both painful and sad.
Once you found out that your best friend from college was dealing with alcohol rehabilitation choices for her oldest son you encouraged her to call you when she needed to talk. As the phone calls spiraled out of control from your friend blaming her son’s wife to the announcement that he was moving home from Florida to stories of nightly binges that lasted for days, you began to almost dread the caller ID. You still wanted to help and listen to your friend, but your heart was aching for this family that was now in its second year of dealing with alcohol addiction. Although the initial calls had been about the benefits of various addiction treatment centers, the reality was that your friend’s son had not yet agreed to admit himself.
Even when a few of the calls included stories of success and days of sobriety, you fear that without an intervention of an alcohol rehabilitation center one of these phone calls will be the announcement that someone has died, either your friend’s son or the victim of a care accident involving your friend’s son. You know all too well that these stories do not miraculously have happy endings. These stories end in disaster unless a successful alcohol rehabilitation stay can break the cycle.
You know this because you lived this same scenario when you were young. You watched and listened as your alcoholic father refused to go to an alcohol rehabilitation center where he could get the help he needed. You watched as your mom received the phone call telling her that there had been an accident. An accident that was caused by your father. An accident that changed your life forever. At least back then there was not caller ID, so you hope that your mom had a few more minutes of hope that this was not the call that would let her know she would now be a single parent to two young teenage daughters.
Substance Abuse Treatment Programs Can Provide the Help You or Your Loved Ones Need
Yesterday’s television news was frightening. Story after story announced that opium addiction is now the leading cause of death in America. More than gun deaths, more than cancer deaths, and more than car crashes, the opium epidemic is not the single leading cause of deaths in America. For many of these victims, the problem starts innocently enough with prescription pain pills. Like an addiction to alcohol, however, the addiction to opium can completely take control of a valuable and meaningful life. Unless these drug addicts have the means to get into drug rehab programs they risk becoming part of the nation’s new, and incredibly sad, statistic.
Whether you have a loved one who is struggling with alcohol or drug addiction, you likely know the dangers that can overtake your life. Consider some of these facts and figures about addiction in America:
- Alcohol is a major drug problem in the U.S.
- 53% of adults in the America have reported that one or more of their close relatives has a drinking problem.
- 10% of the children in America live with a parent who has alcohol problems.
- 7% of the adult population in the U.S. has problems with drinking. This percentage translates into 13.8 million Americans, including the 8.1 million people who suffer from alcoholism.
- Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in America, with a total of 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in the year 2015 alone.
- 2 million of the 20.5 million Americans 12 or older who had a substance use disorder in the year 2015 had a substance use disorder involving prescription pain relievers.
- 591,000 of the 20.5 million Americans 12 or older who had a substance use disorder in the year 2015 had a substance use disorder involving heroin.
Are you ready to get the help that you need to cope with your life threatening addiction?