Narconon Original

Today marks the 44^th anniversary of the Narconon drug rehab program and Narconon of Georgia is celebrating with a special event hosted by one of the original members of the program.

The first Narconon was started and founded by William Benitez, an inmate at Arizona State Prison. Mr. Benitez was a heroin addict who could not seem to get off of drugs using traditional forms of treatment. After being sentenced to prison he had a realization that drug addiction had caused most of the problems in his life, including the current one. He set out to change himself through self-improvement.

Mr. Gordon Weinand, one of the original members of the original Narconon Program in 1967, currently works in Public Relations for Narconon Drug Rehab in Georgia.

“Success equals 40 years of being dedicated to the greatest self-help program in the world – Narconon,” says Gordy, “My own personal successes in the past 40 years have given me the strength and courage to be a part of helping others fight their fight.”

The event at Narconon of Georgia highlighted Gordy’s achievements, the event entitles “Lunch with Gordy” is not new, Gordy often plays host to the students lunch hour, but today was special and Gordy recalled the old days and told the students that  if this was 44 years ago he would be sitting right where they were.

Today, Narconon has spread from that one program in Arizona State Prison to include community programs in many states and countries such as Denmark, Italy, Holland, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Columbia, Switzerland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, Taiwan, Argentina, and Brazil.

“That’s a long way from an Arizona State Prison, but what we learned then is still valid today”, stated Gordy.  Gordy has spent a lifetime encouraging and helping drug addicts.  The lesson we can all learn from Gordy is that there is no greater gift than to give back.

Narconon exists for the purpose of helping individuals overcome alcohol and drug addiction and return them to society as drug free, productive and happy individuals.  We do this well and our 76% success rate shows that.

Passed Out?

Once again Lindsay Lohan is attracting publicity – not about her upcoming movie, but about her substance abuse difficulties.  In recent years, this kind of  publicity  has overshadowed news about her tremendous talents and accomplishments.

On May 24^th Lindsay, already on probation, in Los Angeles, was placed on continuous monitoring through an ankle bracelet, which detects alcohol, and she will be required to submit to random drug testing.  Lindsay reportedly had failed to attend alcohol classes, required after a 2007 DUI and this failure brought her the ankle bracelet ruling. She is now required to attend the alcohol classes weekly.  She was ordered to random drug testing because of reported evidence that she had been under the influence of cocaine.

Judge Revel, obviously short on patience with the starlet, showed little concern that Linsay’s movie shoot in Texas would be delayed next month because of the Court’s restrictions.

Lindsay began her career as a child model and was in her first motion picture, THE PARENT TRAP, at age 11.  Between 2003 and 2005 she met with great success, landing leading roles in major motion pictures and independent films.   Her talent found its way into pop music world and in 2004 she produced the album SPEAK and A LITTLE MORE PERSONAL (RAW) in 2005.

In 2007 an all too familiar celebrity profile began to emerge when Lindsay’s two DUIS and three attempts at drug rehab were spotlighted.   Movie deals were lost and her image changed.  The public becoming intensely interested in her personal life and there was little talk of movies.   Most of the cameras that focused on her were those of the paparazzi.  While there has been some rebound with a guest appearance in a TV series in 2008 and a movie in 2009, there has been an apparent continuous battle with addiction and failed attempts at rehab that have stayed in primetime.

ED Mary Rieser of Narconon of Georgia stated, “It is unfortunate to see anyone with a bright future be so affected by substance abuse.  When it is a celebrity, the bad effects ripple out to the public and the message seems to be ‘If you’re rich and famous, you are likely to become addicted and if you want help there is none because even the expensive rehabs don’t work.’

It is important that people don’t buy what they see on TV. Stable recovery IS achievable for anyone.  An important component is developing and practicing a realistic sense of ethics.  I wish some of these celebrities could be lucky enough to learn what our clients learn here every day at rehab- it is possible to get clean and to be happy.”

Jason Lawing With Family

The following article appeared in the Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina.  Not only is it inspiration for other addicts to stay clean.  It was responsible for several others to come to Narconon and get clean.

ASHEVILLE — Jason Lawing looks at a picture of himself and his 2-year-old son, Jaden, a few months after Jaden was born. Jason Lawing’s pupils are completely dilated above dark circles, and his skin clings against his jaw. He was two hours late to pose for the picture, he recalled, and high on cocaine.

No longer. Lawing, 28, celebrated his two-year-anniversary of being drug-free May 25, a success he credits to spending four months at Narconon in Georgia. The nontraditional treatment center encourages addicts to stay for a much longer recovery period than is typical in Western North Carolina.

Lawing’s recovery has brought the rewards of a stable life. He now works at Allied Wheel and Alignment in West Asheville with his father, and the courts awarded him full custody of Jaden in January, choosing him over his ex-girlfriend. It’s important to Lawing that his son is brought up by a drug-free parent. “I know what it’s like,” he said. “I’ve been around people that have kids that are drug addicts. If you had a child, how would you feel if every Tom, Dick and Harry came beating on your door at 3 a.m. because they needed another hit?”

Father and son now live close to Jason’s parents, Bruce and Nancy Lawing, who baby-sit Jaden when his dad is at work. Nancy Lawing started her son on the road to recovery when she went to the courthouse during a hearing that would decide whether Jason, having unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and obtaining property by false pretense, was released or held in prison. “I told the judge that Jason was not a criminal but a drug addict and needed help,” said Nancy, who works at UNC Asheville Copy Center. She wanted to get her son out of the area and into a residential program longer than those she found offered by the state.

She went online and found Narconon, which treats patients for an average of 150 days. Most programs shorter The state-operated Julian F. Keith Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center in Black Mountain treats people for an average of 18-20 days, according to director Doug Baker. That’s long enough for some people, he said, but it’s only a fraction of the lifelong commitment to recovery necessary to stay clean. “You can’t dismiss what we do here based on someone’s particular needs or experience,” Baker said. “Addiction is chronic relapsing disease, you don’t come in and get a cure and then go out and you’re fine.” The center is now extending its facilities, Baker said, adding 30 beds to the detox unit.

“Jason had known people that had been through (a local) program, and it was a big joke,” Bruce Lawing said. “It was a month off of drugs and three free meals … . It takes time and understanding to make someone quit.” Added Nancy Lawing, “They told us that we could go to jail if we took (Jason) out of Buncombe County, but Buncombe County only has a 28-day (residential) program. We found out that once we got him to Narconon they wouldn’t be able to do anything to him because he was under a doctor’s care.”

The multifaceted program Jason Lawing agreed to go to Georgia as long as he could have one last week in Asheville. He “smoked so much crack in that week, it wasn’t even funny,” he said, but at the end of the week he boarded the plane and headed to Narconon. For the next four months, Lawing went through an extensive program, complete with saunas, exercise, group therapy and a life plan to prepare him for reintegration into life outside the program.

“The first part of our program is a sauna/exercise program where we cleanse the person of the drug metabolites that have been stored in the fatty issue,” said Mary Rieser, founder and director of Narconon of Georgia. “After this step, the person starts clean. We recognize that not only is drug addiction social and psychological, it is physical.” Lawing said the four weeks in the detox regimen were “the meat and potatoes” of the program. Intensive supervision was also important, he said. “I had extensive probation, where I was checked in with every night, for six months.Then I had supervised probation for two years (where he was randomly drug tested each month), which really helped when I would run into people I had known from the past who wanted me to do drugs with them,” he said.

Lawing started doing drugs in the sixth grade, popping pills and smoking pot, while his parents thought he was at friends’ houses. He eventually ended up making and selling 1-2 kilos of methamphetamine a week. He even asked his parents for a surveillance system for Christmas. “We bought him a surveillance system; we thought he was doing it to be safe,” Bruce Lawing said. “Boy were we were dumb.” He continued, “We laugh about it now because we went through it. It was the meanest, the sorriest and the worst I’ve ever felt about anyone in my lifetime. My daddy was a drug addict, but when you find someone like your own child (is addicted), you don’t know how much it hurts.”

Copyright (c) Asheville Citizen-Times. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.

Drug Addiction

The idea of using hallucinogenics for treatment must come from someone who had one too many “trips” themselves or from someone who simply isn’t old enough to know the real truth about acid like drugs.

This article refers to the era of acid trips fading from memory.  For those who do remember knowing “trippers” from that time there are some bad memories.  There was always the story of that one person who never quite returned from a trip – they were never quite the same.

Unlike treating heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine addiction there is probably no addiction treatment program that would be able to return someone from a bad trip.  A person either comes back or they don’t.  It is not something to mess around with.

“As memories of Woodstock-era acid trips fade from memory, researchers are revisiting hallucinogenic drugs as possible treatments for addiction and mental illness, the New York Times reported April 12.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins, for example, are studying whether psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, can be used to treat depression. Others are studying the effects that psychedelics can have on individuals with alcohol and other drug addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

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Virginia Wins

This is great news that someone is taking responsibility on some front when it comes to substance abuse.   Virginia has decided that college papers can’t advertise alcohol and the state has the right to enforce the ban.  There is too much advertising of alcohol to youth and now there will be a little bit less in Virginia.  This means there will be a little bit less alcohol abuse, few alcoholics and less need for addiction treatment down the line. 

“The state of Virginia’s alcohol regulatory board was within its rights to ban college newspapers from running alcohol-related advertising, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled.

Inside Higher Ed reported April 12 that the court ruled 2-1 to reverse a lower-court decision that had favored the student newspapers at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia. The newspapers, The Collegiate Times and the Cavalier Daily, had sued the state over the ban, which they said violated the First Amendment and would cost them $30,000 in ad revenues annually.

The Virginia alcohol board said the ban was needed to prevent illegal underage drinking and other dangerous alcohol use by college students. The majority on the appeals court agreed.”

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Football and addiction

It should not be hard to find football players who have not smoked pot, but apparenty it is, according to this article. 

It seems as a nation we have thrown in the towel when it comes to pot.  Instead of insisting on standards we are going “case by case” and in many states marijuana is legal.  Pot is the gateway drug to cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs of abuse.  It is also the gateway to addiction treatment. 

“A history of marijuana use still counts as an unsavory mark on football players coming out of college and entering the National Football League (NFL) draft, but NFL personnel officials say that use of the drug has become so widespread that it has almost become discounted as a measuring stick of a player’s character, Sports Illustrated reported March 23.

“Marijuana use is almost epidemic, with more guys having tested positive for marijuana at some point in their college background than I can ever remember,” one personnel official told SI columnist Don Banks under condition of anonymity. “It’s almost as if we are having to figure out a new way to evaluate it as part of the character and background report, because it’s so prevalent. There’re enough instances of it that it’s hard to know how to set your board. You can’t throw out that many guys. You have to go case-by-case and do your homework on them.”

Narconon of Georgia is one of the most successful drug rehabs in Georgia and the country.   76% of those who complete the program are drug free after 2 years removed from treatment.  If you or your loved one is suffering from addiction and would like to break free from drug abuse, intake counselors are available and  will help guide you or your loved one into the Narconon of Georgia program. 

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Drug Free Youth?

If an American child can run the gauntlet and escape the temptation of drug and alcohol abuse through youth, one would think that they would land safely and drug free into adulthood.  Not the case – at least not in this country.  Escaping the drug dealer in the school yard does not guarantee that a child will remain drug free. 

Drug ads directly to the consumer, the higher percentage of psychiatrists and differences in philosophies further decrease the chances for someone growing up drug free in America.

We have never had such a doped up society as the one we are creating, where possibly many of the leaders of the future will be on mind altering medication.  We don’t really know what such a society would be like.

Let’s hope that the future has enough clear minds to contemplate alternatives and move society in another direction.

At a more enlightened time, perhaps in the very distant future, this age will be viewed as the darkest of dark ages.  It will be describe as a time when too many people were doped up either by the dealer on the street or the drug industry and too many died from the manmade epidemic.

“Doctors in the U.S. are more likely to prescribe stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs to youth than doctors in the Netherlands and Germany, Medpage Today reported Sept. 24.

Researchers at  the University of Maryland examined administrative claims data for the year 2000 on insured children and teens in the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. and found that use of psychotropic medications in the U.S. was 2.27 times higher than in the Netherlands and 3.33 times higher than in Germany. Prevalence of prescription psychotropic drug use was 6.66 percent among American youths, compared to 2.9 and 2 percent, respectively, among Dutch and German youths.”

Narconon of Georgia provides drug education and rehabilitative services for anyone who is suffering from prescription drug abuse.  Intake counselors will help guide you or your loved one into a drug rehab that 76% of those who complete the program live successful drug free lives.

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Alcohol Abuse

In the lives of high school students all across America, prom night is one of the highlights of their academic careers.  According to a USA Today report, 90 percent of students in the 11^th and 12^th grades will, more than likely, participate in drinking alcohol.  In this, 70 percent of those students who drink at their proms will also get behind the wheel and drive while intoxicated.  Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) also report that more that “more than one in three students also said their parents had let them attend a party knowing that alcohol would be served.”

Parents have a huge responsibility in making sure their kids are not part of a percentage that lives are ruined or destroyed because of not talking to them about the dangers of alcohol abuse and addiction.  This is the time when high school students should be concerned with charting out the course of their lives through education instead of going to funerals because of one bad mistake due to drinking and driving.  Also, “add to the alcohol factor distractions like texting or talking on the cellphone while driving, or the greater likelihood of multiple people in the car, and the crash potential is very real.”

Narconon of Georgia is a non-profit (501 c-3) organization providing addiction treatment for alcohol and drug abuse.  Educational tools are provided to each client ensuring that those who are suffering from addiction become active and productive members of society.   

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With the advent of Oxycontin there have been too many deaths and too many ruined lives and not enough effective addiction treatment available.

Addiction Hearings

The problem needs to be addressed from top to bottom, beginning to end and should include culpability of the purveyor. 

House To Look At OxyContin, Heroin Addiction In MA

“ A U.S. House subcommittee is holding a special hearing at the State House to look at the problem of OxyContin and heroin addiction in Massachusetts.

The Monday hearing by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law will review the state’s ongoing efforts to curb the addiction problem and what the federal government can do to help”

Narconon of Georgia is on the frontlines in the war of drugs, offering help with addiction through our drug education and rehabilitative services.  Intake counselors are available to discuss the particular needs you or your loved one’s have in regard to effective drug rehab. 

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Deadly Dose

This article about the addicted nurse who killed a patient with prescription medications points out two situations that have grown to epidemic proportions in our society.

The first is the fact of an increase of addiction to prescription medication, out numbering the number of persons addicted to heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine combined.  The nurse falls into this category.

The second situation is the unfortunate fact that one of the fastest growing markets of pharmaceuticals is senior citizens.  Often time only their families are aware that the elderly person is losing their mind more quickly than they should be.

There is disaster on all ends of this story, but the only entity that seems to escape the consequences of this world wide problem is the purveyor of the pharmaceuticals – “the silent pusher.”  There is not enough drug addiction treatment available at this time to address the situation.  If we are to carry forward, we must start educating the generation that is growing up now.

“Rachel Baker, 44, a registered nurse, gave Lucy Cox a “massive” overdose of the painkiller tramadol at the Parkfields Residential Care Home in Butleigh, Somerset. Baker, who is thought to have stolen thousands of units of medication from the home, was convicted of Mrs Cox’s manslaughter yesterday.

A jury was told how Baker, who was addicted to painkillers, became “erratic” in her management of medication, stealing drugs and administering the wrong ones. The court heard she may have had “a dsire to control the terminal destiny of some of her residents”.

Baker was originally investigated over the deaths of 12 residents at the privately run home, which resulted in a police inquiry and the exhumation of three bodies. But, some bodies were cremated which destroyed evidence, and those who died had underlying health problems.

Last night, police said they were still “suspicious” about some of the deaths. They added that more residents could have died prematurely had two care assistants, Sarah Barnett and Kathy Slade, not reported their concerns to the regulatory body, the Commission for Social Care Inspection (now the Care Quality Commission).

Narconon of Georgia specializes in providing educational tools and rehabilitative services for those searching for a successful  drug rehab program.  76%  of those who complete the program go on to live a life free from drug and alcohol abuse.  If you or your loved one need the help that Narconon provides, an intake counselor is available to help guide you and provide a full program description and outline of the services offered.

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