preview

12 Step Drug Addiction Essay

Decent Essays

We all know celebrities who have come to grief because of their cocaine use. Their inheritance, their professional standing and their personal and social lives are destroyed. They make news. We imagine that we could never be like them because we were not born with a silver spoon up our nose. Nor were we brought up on sink estates or involved in gang culture and warfare. We would be wrong. Cocaine, as with alcohol, is an equal opportunity drug: it can destroy anyone.

Some people use it recreationally on rare occasions. Others find that they get hooked on it. In severe cases, paranoid psychosis may result from cocaine use and cause fearful clinical and social consequences.

In each case, the user will believe that he or she is not as bad as …show more content…

However, simply coming down from one high is insufficient treatment in itself. The fundamental nature of addiction is its recurrence. Getting off cocaine or crack is not insuperably difficult. The challenge comes in staying off it. For that we need the guidance of those who have done it themselves and continue to show positive effects in their current lives.

The Twelve Step programme, first formulated by Alcoholics Anonymous but now widely applied to other addictions, is the essential long-term treatment. It helps to maintain abstinence and peace of mind in spite of unsolved problems. It leads towards happy and mutually fulfilling relationships, creativity, spontaneity and enthusiasm. These are the building blocks of a good life. Trying to achieve those beautiful end results without the discipline of a daily Twelve Step programme would be as shaky as building a house on quicksand or a bog.

Cocaine treatment is no different from treatment for problems with alcohol or any other drugs, eating disorders or any behavioural addiction such as compulsive gambling, shopping and spending or exercising. All these behaviours are part of the addictive spectrum. Getting off one addictive outlet, while leaving others still raging, is no great achievement. It cannot achieve long-term sobriety and positivity. It simply delays the ultimate decline into

Get Access