National Survey Shows More People Given Drugs in an Attempt to Treat Addiction

The results of the 2003 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services was released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) last week. 

The report indicates that more people are being given drugs during the course of their treatment for drug addiction. The survey of more than 13,000 treatment centers indicated that there was an average of 1.1 million people receiving some form of treatment on a typical day and nearly half of them (47 percent) were addicted to both drugs and alcohol.

Unfortunately, the number of people now receiving methadone or LAAM treatment (both are replacement drugs for opioid addiction) has increased by more than 100,000 individuals over a six year period, despite evidence that each of those drugs are more difficult to withdraw from than heroin.  This method may prove to be useful to get addicts off heroin, but they are definitely not rehabilitated, as they are still dependent on one or more addictive substances.

The report also shows that now more than one third of all programs offer services for individuals with so-called co-occurring disorders, claiming they have a serious mental illness in association with drug or alcohol addiction.  Treatments for this skewed philosophy based on subjective diagnoses also typically use more drugs as attempted relief for the symptoms.  One common drug increasingly used in this approach is an antidepressant, despite the new evidence that this class of drugs has been proven to increase suicidal thoughts and behavior in adolescents.

The goal of rehabilitation should be to get an addict off all dangerous substances, not introduce more complexities and toxic chemicals that have severe side-effects.  This is the philosophy of Narconon Arrowhead, one of the nation's largest and most successful drug rehabilitation and education facilities.

Narconon Arrowhead uses the proven drug-free rehabilitation methodology researched and developed by author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard.  Whereas traditional treatment programs are successful at getting maybe 20% of their clients stably off all drugs, the Narconon program's success rate is more than three times the national average.

To learn more about the program or to get help for a friend or family member, contact Narconon Arrowhead today at 1-800-468-6933 or visit www.stopaddiction.com now.

To read the full report from the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment services log on to www.alt.samhsa.gov/news/index.

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