Drug treatment doesn’t have to be a miserable experience. Too many people talk about drug treatment as if it were a form of medieval torture, as if drug treatment patients were tarrred-and-feathered or boiled in oil or otherwise victimized by some perverse litany of horrors. But that’s not right. Drug treatment, actually, can be the most edifying experience of your life. You’ve just got to know how to recognize edification when it happens to you.

Drug treatment works by effecting wholesale personal change in recovering addicts, the sort of transformation that only occurs by virtue of struggle and sacrifice. Is it easy? Not by a mile. Is it worth it? Yes, more worth it than words can ever say. Drug treatment that works is drug treatment that gives you your life back. If you or someone you care about has succumbed to drug addiction, you shouldn’t need any more incentive than that.

So no: Drug treatment doesn’t have to be a miserable experience. It can be, if you make it…if your approach your time in a drug treatment center with a negative mindset, and choose to interpret the trauma of personal growth as a bad thing. But that, as should perhaps go without saying, is a long way from the truth. Again, drug treatment that works is drug treatment that gives you your life back: that saves you from yourself, and frees you from your Need. If that sounds miserable to you, well…the loss isn’t anyone’s but yours.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 8:06 am and is filed under Drug Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.