There is no alternative to depression treatment. There is no other way for healing to happen, no other way for recovery to be real. Depression is a disease, not a choice. Like all diseases, it can’t be overcome by a mere act of will. On the contrary, if you or someone you care about is a depression sufferer, depression treatment may well be the last best chance you to get back to living life as you used to know it. No one gets better without help. Please, don’t force yourself to learn that lesson the hard way.

Your first day of depression treatment will quite literally be the first day of the rest of your life. To be a victim of depression is to be stripped of one’s capacity for hope. To enroll in a depression treatment program is to rediscover it. If you want to get better, you can. If you commit yourself to the healing process at a private depression treatment facility, you will. Here’s hoping you can muster the strength to make the right choice.

The amount of drug abuse in this country is nuts! it’s everywhere. on tv, at school, at home, everywhere! sometimes i wish there was a huge drug abuse treatment center where all the people with substance abuse problems could go and get well. it sucks there’s so many people who need drug abuse treatment and never get it. i know a bunch of people that could use it, and will probably never get it. i bet a bunch of soldiers will come home from the war needing it. you think they would have a lot of drug abuse treatment centers for them. it gets me angry. not at the addicts, it’s not their fault. i know that. i get angry that we treat drug abuse as some weird problem. it’s a huge national problem and something tells me if we just talked about it, like we all talk about other stuff, that it would get better. i know a lot of people who have gotten better after they went to a drug abuse treatment center. this one dude i know, this surfer from Malibu, Ca… dude had a huge cocaine problem. he went to a rehab, got better and now i see him surfing all the time. that’s one. why can’t the rest of them get help too?

So what? I’ve heard too many addicts say that about drug treatment. So what?, they say. So what if drug rehab can help junkies? So what if drug rehab centers are places of hope, and of healing. So what if drug treatment is that last best chance any addict could ever have to get clean?…because I am most certainly NOT an addict, and anyone who tries to tell me otherwise is either a liar or clown.

Sound familiar? Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, remember.

The unfortunate truth is that most addicts don’t realize they’re addicts…and are thus exceedingly unlikely to enter drug treatment of their own accord. The practical implication, of course, is that they need all the help they can get in making the right decision, from friends and family member who can recognize a problem for what it actually is.

If someone you care about has succumbed to the whiles of drug abuse, you can’t afford not to act. It’s not good enough to wait for an addict to reach an epiphany on his or her own. Successful drug interventions save lives. They just save lives. For your own sake, for the sake of the addict you care about, make it a point to learn that lesson sooner rather than later.