Our society places moral blame on addicts, and often views sobriety as a matter of personal willpower or desire. Sentiments such as If they really wanted to get clean, they would! abound. But the truth is, addiction is a chronic, progressive disease that alters and damages the brain. There is no silver bullet for “curing” addiction, and much like other sufferers of chronic disease, recovering addicts must be aware of the possibility of relapse. To an extent, those in recovery don’t have total control over relapse. But they do have control over how they respond after a relapse.   After leaving their addiction treatment center, recovering addicts face a barrage of triggers and challenges. As they return to their homes and daily routines, constant reminders of drugs and drug abuse crop up. There’s a neurological component to this—repetition of behaviors and rewards (such as meeting a dealer on a certain street, or snorting drugs in a particular place in the house) creates an association in the brain. So the next time you pass that street corner or go into that room, your brain fires up the old feelings of euphoria associated with drug use. Spotting drug paraphernalia triggers cravings in a similar way. Drug rehab gives clients coping mechanisms and strategies for these situations, but sometimes the cravings can be overpowering.   So the worst happens: after a month, or two, or 26, of hard-fought sobriety, you relapse. The craving…

According to the Pew Research Center, 92% of teens (ages 13 to 17) go online daily, and 71% of teens use more than one social media site, with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as the most popular.   According to the Monitoring the Future study, in 2015, 48.9% of high school seniors reported lifetime use of illicit drugs.   What do these statistics have to do with each other? Social media is an arena where adolescents and teens share their habits, opinions, and behaviors—a mixture ripe for peer pressure and influence, which both play major roles in whether kids try or abuse drugs.   As children grow up, their parents have the greatest influence on them, teaching them acceptable and unacceptable social norms, behavior, and attitudes. However, as kids grow older, their peers have a greater influence on them. Teens are more susceptible to peer influences because their brains are still developing and because social groups play such a huge role in school. Before the internet, peer pressure occurred at school or when hanging out with friends.   But with the advent of the internet and smartphones, teens can be inundated with peer pressure messages at virtually any time of day, in any location. Maybe they read a friend’s Facebook status bragging about alcohol abuse, or see a snapchat showing a friend smoking marijuana. Over time, images and messages about drug use from adolescents’ peers seep in; when their social media…

Did your loved one attend an addiction treatment program and then experience a relapse? Did he or she agree to check in, only to check out days later? There are several reasons as to why these things could have occurred: the treatment may have been low quality, the addiction treatment program may not have been the right match for the person you care about, or maybe your loved one wasn’t actually interested in getting sober at that time. Addiction treatment at a drug rehab center will never work for those who aren’t serious about making a fresh start.   Let’s Talk About Motivation   Motivation is a tricky thing. It comes and goes throughout any behavioral change, not just addiction recovery. The best time to talk to your loved one is when they are feeling motivated to actually make a positive life change and leave the drugs or alcohol behind. Motivation can be recognized through wishes or hopes. If your loved one says, “I wish I could get a job,” this is a great time to gently bring up that getting clean is the first step to achieving that wish. If he or she says, “I hope I’ll be able to get my own place one day,” this is another good time to ask if they would be willing to look over your research on addiction recovery programs. If the answer is no, don’t get mad or shame them. Just…

Proponents of marijuana use tout its harmlessness, claiming that it’s not addictive and totally innocuous. However, the truth is that around 9% of marijuana users become addicted, and heavy use from a young age can have permanent detrimental effects on brain function. Adolescents who begin smoking marijuana frequently have a risk of becoming addicted, doing poorly in school, and needing treatment in drug rehab.   Marijuana is one of the most used drugs by adolescents and college aged young adults. In 2014, daily marijuana use was at 5.9% among college students. Among younger kids, 6% of high school seniors smoke pot daily, and 21.2% reported last-month use of marijuana. However, only 36.1% of 12th graders believe that regular marijuana use puts the user at great risk. This is a problem, as research has shown that heavy marijuana use from a young age can irrevocably damage brains and hamper academic success, sometimes necessitating treatment in an addiction treatment facility.   The most obvious detrimental effect of regular marijuana use is that it causes students to miss class in order to get high. As students miss out on classes, they fall behind on material, become discouraged, and stop doing homework. They perform poorly on tests and projects, and their GPA suffers as a result.   Unfortunately, heavy marijuana use also affects young adults in less visible ways. A study has found that marijuana impairs the function of working memory. We use working…

No one wants to see their loved one suffer; however, sometimes when we’re trying to help, we end up further enabling the addiction. This can be a hard truth to accept, especially when we would never want to knowingly do something like that. By becoming aware of these enabling behaviours, we can do a better job at constructively helping our addicted loved ones. Right Path Drug Rehab wants to see all of our clients succeed and thrive. We hope that these suggestions help you come up with helpful alternatives when it comes to interacting with your loved one.   Let’s talk about compensating for the behavior. What does this mean? Perhaps your loved one has promised you that he or she is going to find a job but insists a computer is necessary to look for one. Did you give him or a her a laptop? Was it later sold for drug money? Maybe they asked to borrow your car to get to work but crashed it while driving under the influence. Of course you want your loved one to find a job and succeed in life. You don’t want him or her to suffer, but here’s the truth of it: when you take away their suffering, you are also taking away their opportunity to make a real change.   What about lying and covering things up? Do you ever hide things for your loved one or partner? Do you…

MDMA  is a synthetic stimulant and psychedelic made from a compound called 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine. The drug often comes in the form of pills, called Ecstasy, or white powder, called Molly.   In the brain, MDMA interferes with levels of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Serotonin regulates basic urges like mood, sexual activity, pain, sleep, and aggression, and the heightened levels produced by MDMA cause feelings of euphoria, well-being, and empathy or connectedness with others.   However, once someone comes off of MDMA, their brain is starved for serotonin for days or even weeks, causing depression, sleep issues, confusion, or anxiety, and long-term use of MDMA may permanently damage the serotonin system. High levels of norepinephrine cause dangerously high heart rate and blood pressure, while increased dopamine levels form the basis for a strong addiction, often necessitating treatment in an addiction treatment center. MDMA can also cause sweating, chills, nausea, teeth grinding, jaw clenching, and blurred vision.   MDMA is known as a club drug and is popular at raves, concerts, and clubs. However, it’s in these environments that people are more prone to one of MDMA’s more serious side effects, hyperthermia, when the body reaches dangerously high temperatures. As people dance for long periods of time in close quarters, they become dehydrated quickly and increase the risk of hyperthermia, which can work devastatingly quickly to break down muscles and lead to kidney failure, heart failure, and death. Anyone addicted to or abusing…

Chances are, at some point in your life, you’ve experienced insomnia. One in three people complain of mild insomnia, and one in ten have chronic insomnia, defined as trouble falling or staying asleep for at least three months. The effects of insomnia are devastating to the body—impaired attention, focus, and reasoning, as well as  a host of physical tolls like high blood pressure and heart disease—which explains why so many people turn to prescription sleep aids or sedatives like Ambien to help them sleep well.   Ambien, a brand name for the drug zolpidem, is a sedative-hypnotic that depresses the central nervous system and produces a euphoric effect if the user can stave off sleep. Despite the fact that Ambien is regularly prescribed by doctors to treat short-term insomnia, the drug is addictive, and people can form an addiction in as little as two weeks.   As time goes on, the insomniac can develop a tolerance to Ambien and may resort to taking higher doses to fall asleep. Soon, they may be inadvertently addicted to a drug their own doctor prescribed. Unlike other drugs, most people who abuse Ambien acquire the pills from family or friends with legitimate prescriptions, or go doctor shopping to get several prescriptions. Oftentimes, these people—who started out with a desire for a good night’s sleep—must be admitted to drug rehab.   The people most likely to abuse Ambien appear to be females; 68% of ER…

As with any drug, it is entirely possible for the body to become accustomed to the side effects of ecstasy, or MDMA. When the body reaches a point of tolerance, it becomes difficult to achieve the same type of high with the same amount of drugs. MDMA is known as a party drug, and some people claim that casual use doesn’t affect them; however, the more the drug is used, the quicker the body becomes tolerant of the dose. If you or someone you love is ready to seek treatment at a drug rehab center, it is first necessary to undergo a complete detox.   On average it takes anywhere from two to four days for the body to detox from the effects of ecstasy. MDMA is a psychoactive drug that is classed as an amphetamine. It is very easy to become both psychologically and physically dependent on it. After an individual consumes ecstasy, there is generally a buzz-kill feeling during the come down. The duration of these withdrawal symptoms is based on how long the person has been taking MDMA for, how much they have been taking, and if other drugs have been used in conjunction with it. Although it is popular to view MDMA as mostly harmless, we encourage those who have been using it consistently to learn about the lasting effects it has on your body and brain.   Those who are detoxing from ecstasy most often…