The Narconon® drug rehab program, first established in 1966, is unique. It is a proven "get off and stay off drugs" program. The Narconon program has been used successfully by thousands of people around the world to rid themselves of the need for drugs and regain control of their lives.

WHAT THE NARCONON PROGRAM CONSISTS OF

“The addict has been found not to want to be an addict, but is driven by pain and environmental hopelessness...As soon as an addict can feel healthier and more competent mentally and physically without drugs than he does on drugs, he ceases to require drugs.” L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard

A Narconon Program Graduate is someone:

•  Who has completed the Narconon program;
• Who knows he is, in fact, capable of living a drug-free life thereafter;
• Who has improved his or her ability to learn and thus can accept new ideas on how to change life for the better;
• Who has personally absorbed the fundamentals of ethics and morality well enough that he or she can be productive and contributive to society and will have no further troubles with the justice system;
• Who knows how to solve the problems of life in a rational manner to the best of his ability, without the use of mind-altering drugs.

Each Narconon program graduate is expected, no matter the severity of his or her earlier life experience, to achieve and to live a stably drug- free, ethical life, one for one.

There is no such thing as a “victim” in the Narconon program way of thinking. Even if life has dealt one a bad hand of cards, the road out is through personal recognition of responsibility for one’s own condition.

The steps of the Narconon program are done in a specific and exact sequence designed to get a person off drugs and living a drug-free life. These services are based on the research, writings and developments of L. Ron Hubbard. The Narconon program books and manuals contain the technology used in the Narconon program.

After orientation and any needed withdrawal from physically addictive drugs, there are eight steps which comprise the program. The entire program generally takes three to four months to complete.

Most of the steps are delivered in the form of a course. For this reason, at a Narconon center, a substance abuser is not called a patient or a client, but rather a student.
 

At a Narconon center, rehabilitation is very much a learning process.

The eight sections of the program address those exact things which must be handled if a person who has used drugs or alcohol is going to be fully rehabilitated.

The program consists of:
0. Intake: Screening and Orientation

Here, the student is interviewed. All pertinent information is gathered on his addiction, his family relations, and medical condition. As well, the student is oriented to the program and he is educated on how drugs affect the body, mind and the person himself.
 
00. Drug Free Withdrawal (Where Necessary)

Heroin, methadone, alcohol and even many prescription drugs can cause very uncomfortable symptoms and reactions when a person stops taking them.

A Narconon center uses a carefully designed program to enable a person to come off drugs without experiencing much of the agony of the usual drug withdrawal. In fact, many students attest they have experienced virtually a painless withdrawal with a minimum discomfort.

This withdrawal procedure helps to restore the ability of the student to be in communication with his or her body, others around the student and the environment and includes nutritional supplements of vitamins and calcium with magnesium in a special formula that has been shown to reduce or eliminate the physical reactions associated with withdrawal.

The withdrawal period at a Narconon center is done under 24- hour supervision when any student is physically addicted to drugs. (Note: There are some cases in which a drug-free withdrawal may not be possible due to some life-threatening medical condition or the nature of the drug itself. This is determined by a competent physician during the initial medical examination and those instructions laid out by the doctor are closely followed. However the Narconon withdrawal procedures are completely drug-free and any person not physically ready for a drug-free withdrawal according to a doctor's determination would be treated medically, in a hospital first. He would only begin the Narconon withdrawal program once he has been cleared by the doctor to begin a totally drug-free withdrawal.)
1. Therapeutic Training Routines Course

Drugs are frequently looked upon as an escape from life. They are a way of blocking off unwanted sensations, pain or emotions. Another way of looking at this is that drugs block off or seem to enable a person to avoid aspects of his life which he has difficulty confronting and dealing with. However, a person's confront and ability to handle life can be greatly improved through a series of exact drills. "What a person can confront, he can handle," wrote L. Ron Hubbard. "The first step of handling anything is gaining an ability to face it.”We are looking here at the basic anatomy of all problems.

Problems start with an inability to confront anything. And whether we apply this to domestic quarrels or to insects, to garbage dumps or Picasso, one can always trace the beginning of any existing problem to an unwillingness to confront. "Training Routine drills were developed by L. Ron Hubbard. They improve a person's ability to confront life and people and to communicate better.

Many students who start the Narconon program are greatly introverted because of their drug use. In many cases they have experienced life-threatening situations or feel mentally and spiritually destroyed and they are not willing to communicate readily with others and the environment around them.

The Training Routine drills are used to get the student into better communication with others and with his environment, an important step in the rehabilitation process.
Students also begin to work with each other at this level under the supervision of a trained Narconon center course supervisor. Students begin to learn to take responsibility for each other. Each student is assigned a "twin” another student whom he works with on a course and helps, and receives help from in return.
 
2. The Narconon New Life Detoxification Program

This part of the program has already been described at some length. It has been found that drug residuals in the body can trigger cravings for more drugs as well as "flashbacks" and the whole range of previously mentioned drug related conditions.

"The New Life Detoxification Program is done under close supervision; Students completing this routinely report that they literally have found a "new life."
 
3. The Learning Improvement Course

As students at a Narconon center undergo the rehabilitation process through a series of courses, it is of vital importance that they have the ability to study. While many people in our modern culture may have studied many things in the past, few have ever actually learned how to study effectively.

There is a technology of study. When applied, a person finds that he can study and learn any subject, And that he can truly apply what he has studied. L. Ron Hubbard developed the first complete technology of study which gives a person the ability to rapidly learn and to fully apply what he is studying (a breakthrough in the field of education which is recognized by a growing number of educators around the world).

After completing the Learning Improvement Course, a student at a Narconon center gains the ability to study, retain and use knowledge. He learns the various barriers to study and how to handle each one so that he can be successful in all his future studies.
 
4. The Communication and Perception Course

Drugs tend to push a person into experiences of the past and stick him in these experiences. Often he is not aware that this is occurring. It is difficult for a person to handle his life when he is stuck in moments of the past, for he does not properly see what is going on around him in the present environment. A person is not in communication with the environment around him as it exists. His perception is to a greater or lesser degree different from the objective reality of others, and this can make things rough for all concerned.

The Communication and Perception Course gives the student the ability to get into the present improves his ability to control and put order into his environment. And it gets him into better communication with his surroundings and other people.

In other words, the course gives the student the ability to better control his own life.
 
5; The Ups and Downs Course

There are influences and sources of stress in the environment that can influence a person negatively. A person may become the effect of suppression, ceasing to operate causatively in his environment. When this occurs with a substance abuser, his recovery and stability can fall into jeopardy. In fact, these factors most likely led to him resorting to drugs in the first place.

On this course, the student learns the characteristics of social and anti-social personalities so that he can spot the difference and so better choose his friends and associates. He also learns how to spot suppressive influences in his environment and how to address these so that they cannot adversely affect him which is a major part of being able to stay stably off drugs.
 
6. The Personal Values and Integrity Course

The subject of personal values, integrity and honesty is one which concerns everyone. Despite any propaganda to the contrary, the truth is that a person does not survive well unless he conducts himself in an honest and ethical way.

Man is basically good. When he starts to commit harmful acts against himself and others, he actually takes steps to try to restrain himself. He begins to do himself in, one-way or another.

This course teaches the student how to establish for himself what is right and wrong, how to formulate guidelines for personal behavior and how to constructively survive. These are all aspects of ethics and are vital to address to achieve successful recovery.

As well, the student learns to confront those actions in the past which have adversely affected himself and others, actions which are holding him back from being able to function more causatively in his life.
 
7. The Changing Conditions in Life Course

Often when one attempts to improve some activity or area of his life and fails at the attempt, one can work oneself into a state of mind that nothing can be done to change things for the better.

There are correct and incorrect ways of going about improving anything. When one goes about trying to improve something but takes an incorrect approach, the result win not of course be wholly successful.

This course gives the student exact procedures or formulas to go about successfully improving any part of their life.

As part of this course, a student isolates past conditions which still may be hanging him up in the present and he correctly goes about handling them.

Students learn that any condition can be changed for the better as long as it is correctly addressed.
 
8. The Way To Happiness Course

"True joy and happiness are valuable!” wrote L. Ron Hubbard. "If one does not survive, no joy and no happiness are obtainable. Trying to survive in a chaotic, dishonest and generally immoral society is difficult. II

The decline of moral values in our society is making it harder and harder for people to survive and find happiness. There are often great confusions over what is moral and what is immoral.

The Way To Happiness Course centers around the first moral code based entirely on common sense, It is a moral code which also can fully be applied in life,

Happiness lies in engaging in worthwhile activities. "One can feel at times like a spinning leaf blown along a dirty street, one can feel like a grain of sand stuck in one place, wrote L. Ron Hubbard.

"But nobody has said that life was a calm and orderly thing; it isn't. One isn't a tattered leaf nor a grain of sand: one can, to a greater or lesser degree, draw his road map and follow.

"One can feel that things are such now that it is much too late to do anything, that one's past road is so messed up that there is no chance of drawing a future road that will be any different: there is always a point in the road when one can map a new one. There is no person alive who cannot make a new beginning."

The Way To Happiness Course gives the student a common- sense moral code which he can use to make a new start in life, a life not only free from drugs, but also a life where real happiness and joy are possible.

Program Completion
Follow-up Plan

Working with a Narconon counselor, each student develops a personalized plan of the specific steps that need to be taken in his personal life and environment after graduation. This includes some continued contact with Narconon staff.

It is the complete program of Narconon steps listed above which produces a drug-free, productive and ethical individual. Although each action of the Narconon program produces significant gains, it is the combined effect of all the steps interweaving that result in full and permanent recovery. Thirty years have shown this to be true. Narconon can proudly claim and has demonstrated with thousands of case histories that addiction can be ended.

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