It was the cards, the chips, the dice, everything. It was the smoky back rooms, the casino tables, the garage, or a buddy’s kitchen. It didn’t matter what it was about gambling. I liked the places it was done and I loved the things that enabled you to do it. I liked getting money, losing it and then winning it back again. There was nothing in life that compared to gambling for me and that’s why I ended up with a gambling addiction. I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to do more. I loved gambling and I never wanted to stop. I’d go to Vegas and stay in the casinos all night when my wife didn’t go with me. I’d always be the last guy at my buddy’s weekly poker night and I was always the most excited to get it on. I’d play dice during my lunchbreak at work and I’d never stop searching for better ways to win at poker and blackjack. It was my thing and it had to stop. Eventually it did. I got help for my gambling addiction and started on the road to recovery as soon as I could. I was glad that I was able to find a place that could help my with my gambling addiction and keep me from gambling with my life.

 There’s nothing worse than being recommended something to cure what ails you, just to find out that it’s destroying your life. That’s what happened to me when I got hooked on prescription drugs. I got in a bad car accident a few years ago and the pain that I felt was killer. After the whole stay in the hospital the doctor thought it would be best if he prescribed a little something for the not so little pain that i was feeling all over. Since I could barely move from all the injuries that I sustained I agreed with the decision that the doctor had made. It all seemed like it was going to work out before I ended up getting hooked on my prescription drugs. It was a nightmare. I found myself popping more and more pills everyday. At first it was to numb the pain and then it was to keep my mind off of the pain that i was trying to numb. After it went on for a while my wife found a drug treatment center that was experienced in handling prescription drugs addiction. It added a little more pain to my life, which sucked, but I’ve managed to stay away from the pills for over three years already. Drug treatment made me better again and it wasn’t even that painful after all.

 

Addiction treatment is never anything more than a means to end. Addiction treatment patients, after all, don’t enroll in private addiction treatment programs just for the sake of the enrolling. On the contrary, addiction treatment patients enroll in exclusive addiction treatment centers because they want to get sober. Because they need to get sober. And the only meaningful addiction treatments facilities, obviously, are those that can help addicts get where they need to go.

Addiction treatment, when it works, is driven by addiction treatment patients themselves. Here’s an obvious point: No one else can get sober for you. The addiction treatment center process must be an intimate one, because addiction itself is an intimate disease. If you’re going to get better, you’ve got to do it on your own terms, and through your agency. And your California addiction treatment program has got to give you the power to do it.

Even luxury addiction treatment, when you really get down to it, isn’t a spectator sport. It can’t be. If you’re going to get better in an addiction treatment center in Los Angeles or Malibu, it’s going to be because you play an active role in your own addiction recovery. Anything less just isn’t good enough.

 

You gotta give it up to alcohol rehab programs. They do the work that most people can’t do. The funny thing is that most people wish that they could do what alcohol rehab programs do. Addiction rehab programs help people get their lives on track and they also help them rehabilitate themselves. People who go to an alcohol treatment program come out feeling better about their lives and they go on to do bigger and better things than they were doing when they were still drinking. I know all this because my mom got herself in a terrible bind with alcohol abuse and it seemed like she would never get well. But, she did get well and she went on to remain sober and she opened the recording studio she wanted. It was amazing to see the change that took place in her because it seemed like she would never have gotten better. Luckily she got well and became an inspiration to all of us that were having problems in our own lives. Mom’s struggle taught us all that anything in the world was possible as long as you could stay focused and get the right help from the right people.

I didn’t have a cocaine problem. That’s what I told people, at least: I don’t have a cocaine problem. I can quit when I want to. I’m in control. I’m not a cocaine addict.

Yeah, right. Funny how easy it can be to believe your own lives.

I first new I was in trouble when I tried to give up cocaine for a week, just to prove to my friends that I could do it. I didn’t last three days. I tried to quit again a handful of times after that, but none of them took…and a year later I was finally ready to face up to the truth:

I was hooked, and I needed substance abuse treatment.

You can’t beat cocaine addiction, or any other kind of drug addiction, without help from professional drug rehab experts. That’s not the way drug recovery happens. Drug addiction treatment, in the end, is that last best chance any addict could ever have: the last best chance to get clean, the last best chance to get free. Without checking into a drug rehab center, you can’t ever expect to get better.

Remember, addiction treatment can’t start until you let it. Please, don’t wait any longer to finally make the right decision. Drug rehab can help. All you’ve got to do is give it a chance.

Now it wasn’t the thing that I would have said would have worked, but it did. Who would’ve thought that an intervention would be the thing to get Mom into rehab? Not me. I thought she’d never get back on track. She had been so messed up for so long that it just seemed impossible for her to straighten out. She did straighten out though. It was crazy. We held the intervention at the house and made it as comfortable as we could. Everybody was there. My aunts, my cousin, my brother, my sister, and even Pops came by. We all sat there waiting for Mom to get home, each with our own stupid look on our faces. When she finally got home. We all just froze. No one said anything for a minute. It was like she knew that it was an intervention before we even started and somehow she seemed cool with it. We all talked and cried. Then, when we were finished we all cried again. It was a shock to all of us, but Mom actually agreed to go to drug rehab. It was crazy how well it worked, but at least it did. I haven’t seen Mom be Mom in years and it’s a great feeling.

I remember it all as more of a blur than anything else. My addiction to prescription drugs was the worst. It all started after my car accident. Well, it wasn’t so much a car accident as it was me riding my bike and getting hit by a car. I was in a coma for a couple of days and when I woke up on third day, I woke up alone and in serious pain. I was in the hospital for about a week before being discharged and I was still in a terrible amount of pain. The doctor said that I would experience a great deal of more pain before actually feeling better. It was okay for me as long as I was no longer in the hospital. The good doctor prescribed some pain killers that I was more than happy to take and away I went. The problem, however, was that I never really felt like the pain went away and by the time it did I was hooked on my prescription drugs. Being hooked on prescription drugs was a terrible pain to feel. It was even worse than the pain from my accident. I immediately signed up for drug treatment and got my life back in order and now the only pain in my life is my car note. Oh well, you can’t have it all.