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The Low-Down on Addiction
| Article
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14746 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1988 |
2,353 Words |
| Author
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Kathleen Cahill Tsubata
Kathleen Cahill Tsubata, a third-generation Irish-American, is
a free-lance journalist in the Washington, D.C, area. |
Michael Keaton snorts a line of coke at the beginning of the movie Clean and Sober. "Here, get your heart started," he urges the woman he has met the night before as he puts some cocaine on her pillow. But as he runs his hands over her still body, he finds that her heart actually has stopped—completely. With nowhere to run, he checks into a rehabilitation center, and we watch him continue to destroy his life and then struggle to retrieve it.
Addiction (including compulsive eating, gambling, and "sex addition," is not just a subject of interest to moviegoers, but has a real impact upon many of our lives. Soaring crime figures are directly related to addiction. A January 1988 Justice Department study found drug traces in the urine of nearly 80 percent of arrestees nationwide. Nine out of ten suspects charged with serious crimes like murder, rape, and burglary tested positive for drugs. Alcohol is America's most abused drug, the misuse of which costs the nation an estimated $120 billion a year. Alcohol related accidents cause twenty thousand American deaths a year, and an additional one hundred thousand individuals die annually from alcohol-related health problems. An estimated nineteen million Americans are defined as "heavy drinkers," and fetal alcohol syndrome has become the third leading cause of birth defects in newborns. The most common excuse given for abusers is, "I just can't stop.
And in fact they can't. Intervention is a treatment process growing in popularity. Through this method counselors can help the family, employer, and friends of an addict to lovingly confront him with the seriousness of the situation and strongly urge treatment. In most cases, the arrangements are made in advance so the patient can go immediately into a treatment facility.
This is a modification of the traditional view that an addict has to "hit bottom" before he can admit he is helpless and seek to change. Studies indicate that the further the addictive disease has progressed, the more drastic the withdrawal, and the higher the likelihood that the addict may die before hitting bottom.
"Interventions are risky," says Bob, a recovering alcoholic and counselor. "But the percentage of success is high if done properly. That means using a trained counselor, having all the interested parties in the addict's life there, rehearsing a couple of times, and surveying the leverages—the threats which you are prepared to carry out if the person refuses to go into
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