Georgia Rehab Blog

Bad kids want to harm your good kid. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to get him to try illegal drugs. Once he’s done drugs, a good kid can rapidly become a bad kid and his life can become a shambles. I’ve seen this all too often in the Georgia drug rehab programs where so many once good kids wind up.

There’s nothing more satisfying to a bad person than to bring a good person down. Bad people, you see, feel better when they’re surrounded by other bad people. They’re inclined then to undermine the nature and integrity of good people around them. This is as true with kids as it is with adults.

If you want to keep your good kid safe, tell him what’s right and what’s wrong. Tell him what to do and what not to do. Tell him he’s a good kid not a bad kid. And being a good kid is all right and being a bad kid isn’t. He may not always listen to you, but that’s no excuse for not telling him the score. Because if you don’t tell him the score, about the good and the bad in this world, somebody else will, and that somebody else may just tell him that wrong is right and that bad is good.

Most parents want the same things for their kids. They want them to be happy, to be healthy and to be successful. Given a safe environment to grow up in, kids will thrive and achieve what their parents want for them.

But today’s environment is not particularly safe. We don’t live in the 1950’s. Kids are subjected to bad influences and peer pressure. With both parents typically working, kids have less support and defense against these bad influences.

Bad influences and peer pressure make it even more important to stay close to your good kid. Make it safe for him to talk to you about what bad kids are telling him. Counter the bad messages with good ones of your own. As a parent you can make a big difference in your good kid’s life. Or not.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance
A helpline for Georgia rehab programs

Down deep an addict is just like you and I. A regular guy, a sweet young woman. Addiction does not change an individual’s true nature. It may seem that way, but it’s a lie.

Addiction is a debilitating condition brought on by drug or alcohol abuse. But as terrible as it appears, the condition is like a shabby pair of shoes which needs but a fresh coat of polish and a good, strong buffing to restore its luster. The luster has always been there; it just needs to be brought out with a little hard work and a lot of love.

Last night I worked with a group of addicts who are participants at my favorite Georgia drug rehab program, one I commonly refer Clients to. They helped move my church from its current location to a new location. The move has been in the works for several days now. As the deadline loomed, we realized that without help, there was no way in hell we’d make the move on time.

I called over to the director of the Georgia rehab facility, the one I mentioned earlier, to see if she knew anyone who could give us a hand. She asked around. Several young men volunteered their services, despite being tired from a full day of drug detoxification and life skills education.

The guys were clean cut, polite, funny and hard working. If they hadn’t come directly from their drug rehab program, I wouldn’t have known they were addicts. They were just like you and I. After we finished for the evening, one of the guys told us about a young girl who had approached him earlier that day. She asked him for bus fare, he said. “I’m stranded here in Atlanta”, she explained. “I just need a few bucks so I can catch a bus and get home to my kids. Can you help me?”

The guy had been where he sensed this young girl was now. Panhandling for drugs.“I’m in rehab”, he replied. “I don’t have any money on me.” He chuckled as he told the story. “Man, I’ve used that line before. Hell I’ve used every line in the book before!” “Me too!” another guy shot back. “You can’t play an addict.” They all nodded their heads in agreement.

As they joked and laughed among themselves, I was struck by how much these guys are just like you and I. Playing the game of life, doing the best they can and having as much as they can while they’re at it.

But you wouldn’t know it by the way guys like these are treated at most drug rehab programs. Guys like these are treated in other rehabs like there’s something wrong with them. They’re sick and they’re treated as patients.

But addiction is not a disease and addicts shouldn’t be treated as patients. Drug abuse changes a person but it doesn’t change them forever. Drugs affect their way of life and the way they operate in life, but no more than that and that can change. They have a condition and they can do something about the condition.

If a Georgia rehab program doesn’t understand this critical point, if through ignorance it treats an individual as a patient not as a participant, the program is guilty of changing an individual into something less than he really is. Because down deep an addict is just like you and I.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Drugs are everywhere, even in our schools. Virtually every student will have been offered drugs by the time he graduates. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1950’s, for example, drugs were used sparingly in society and rarely by teens in school. But make no mistake, even if they didn’t take drugs, teens were nevertheless involved in self destructive behavior.

In that regard, they were little different than today’s teens. They were still subject to peer pressure. They did things they wouldn’t want their parents to know about. And they broke the law, if not by taking illegal drugs then by drinking before they were legally entitled to.

Inherently then the problem with both alcohol and drug abuse lies not so much with the substances but with the users. Teens are subjected to severe peer pressure and influenced by this pressure to act irresponsibly. Unless we teach teens how to stand up to peer pressure and how to make the right choice no matter the social consequences, teens will continue to suffer from drug and alcohol abuse. All the interdiction at the border is for naught if the attitude toward drugs amongst teens does not change.

The good news is that wonderful drug educational tools and materials exist to help teens and young adults find out the truth about drugs, namely that they are dangerous poisons that could very well ruin their lives. These materials must be made available in the schools. Otherwise, we face burgeoning drug abuse and an even greater burden to our Georgia drug rehab programs.

We cannot wait nor move slowly in this effort. It is much easier to keep someone off drugs than to get him off once addicted. The poor track records of most Georgia rehab programs is a testament to my point.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

What if there were no drugs in the world? What if when we felt down and out or when we were in pain, we didn’t reach for a bottle of pills because there weren’t any pills? Would that be good or would it be bad?

My guess is you thought it would be bad. Who wants to live in pain, right? Giant pharmaceutical companies, a kind of pharmaceutical industrial complex, have manufactured a pill to take care of every pain and have sold us or at least tried to sell us on the miracles of modern medicine. They’ve enlisted hundreds of thousands of doctors who lend credibility to their profit driven cause.

How could we live in a world full of allergens without Claritin? How we could make it through the teen years without Accutane? How could we handle old age without Lipitor or the myriad other drugs loosed upon this population who’ve come to believe their very life depends upon taking a handful of powerful drugs each day.

How could we? Well, we did once. There was a time when there were no drugs in the world. But life expectancy was less back then the pill pushers would argue. True, but not because of the dearth of drugs. In fact, nearly a hundred thousand people die each year from legally prescribed drugs. Add to that the number who die from illegal drugs and what I see is a social tragedy which is bigger than what can be handled by Georgia rehab programs.

Two people I know committed suicide while taking anti depressants. So maybe we can’t do away with all drugs, but if as a society we learned to live without the ones that are just for our creature comforts perhaps people wouldn’t turn to drugs to take away the pain they feel. If so, there would be a lot less addiction in this world.

I think the world would be a better place if drugs did not exist. And that’s the considered opinion of one who works in the Georgia drug rehab industry.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Marijuana is the most widely abused drug in America. Though not considered as dangerous as heroin or cocaine, marijuana is nonetheless harmful causing both physical and psychological effects on its users. Yet come November some Californians will ignore this harm and vote to legalize marijuana use. This is a tragedy in the making, one which as an advocate of Georgia drug rehab, I cannot abide without putting in my two cents.

Proposition 19, “The Regulate, Tax and Control Cannabis Act of 2010” proposes to legalize the use of marijuana in California. Supporters argue that legalization will not encourage additional drug abuse. A significant percentage of the state’s population already uses marijuana, they point out. They believe instead that legalization will swell the state’s depleted coffers, taking profits away from criminal organizations and transferring them in turn to the cash strapped state.

I have no doubt of the positive economic impact of legalization. But I also have no doubt of grave social repercussions for Californians, particularly among teens. Alaska legalized marijuana use in 1975. Thirteen years later Alaskan teens were twice as likely to smoke marijuana as teens from other states.

As it stands now, one third of California high school students smoke marijuana. If passage of Proposition 19 causes a similar increase in marijuana abuse in California as it did in Alaska, as many as half of all high school students could wind up abusing marijuana. Students high on marijuana are less focused in school and less driven to succeed. Legalization of marijuana will also lead to increased criminality as drug addled users turn to crime when they can’t hold a job.

Marijuana is a gateway drug. Cocaine and heroin addicts will tell you that their habits first began with marijuana use. While not every marijuana user will become an addict, virtually every addict used marijuana before he went on to more powerfully addictive drugs.

Voting for proposition 19 ensures an increase in drug abuse, criminality and drug addiction. Whatever the state gains in tax revenue will come at the expense of the health and well being of its citizens. I would never vote for such a proposition in my state for fear of its negative impact on Georgia rehab.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Half assed or half hearted, I can’t say for sure. But I can state with certainty that most Georgia drug rehab programs offer at best half of what an individual needs to beat drug addiction. Most drug rehab programs in Georgia offer life skills programs. Some are useless, based as they often are on psychobabble nonsense; others are of at least some help.

While life skills are part of the answer to beating drug addiction, they are far from the complete answer. Getting the harmful drugs out of an addict’s body with a thorough, deep cleansing detox is crucial to a successful drug rehab as well.

These drug residues which lodge in the fatty tissues are responsible for drug cravings which plague addicts and which make beating addiction so difficult. Once removed through an intense combination of nutrition, exercise and sauna therapy, drug cravings cease. And with them, one of the main chains that binds an addict to his drug addiction.

One drug treatment center we often refer Clients to has developed a proprietary program to address these harmful drug residues. Using their state of the art approach, program participants are left with a clear head and a bright new perspective on life. This half of the drug rehab program is a key reason they can boast the highest success rate in the Georgia rehab industry.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

The battleground against addiction is in the mind, the fight between hope that things can change and a fixed idea that little can be done about addiction.

Though the fight rages on, it looks like we’re losing the war. A fixed idea that nothing can be done for addiction has settled in, our collective consciousness shaped by our failures to beat this awesome foe. But failure is not a foregone outcome. We can change our minds and win the war. Send in the elite fighters. Don’t wage the war from the perspective of trying not to lose; wage the war to win and we will win.

But to win, drug rehab itself must change. It must change its fixed idea that addiction is a chronic disease. This defeatist and unproven idea saps the vitality of those who are called to fight the battles, the addicts and their loved ones. As those who fight falter in their struggle, addiction saps the vitality of our very nation, and so grows ever more fixed the idea that nothing can be done about this scourge.

As a nation, we must ignore the defeatists. They have little to show for their ideas and the unworkable treatments which they’ve developed. On average eight in ten drug rehab participants relapse soon after release obviously ill equipped to handle life drug free. Told in the course of therapy that addiction is an incurable illness, is it any wonder that addicts so often succumb to the enemy.
Ironically, Georgia rehab programs blame the miserable relapse rate on addiction itself, which they claim is an illness that can be managed but never beaten. We must ignore this unproven theory which threatens to become a fixed idea.

It’s understandable against this backdrop that so many addicts and their loved ones give up the fight. But the fight is not lost unless nothing can be done about it. And that’s not the case. The truth is that effective Georgia drug rehab programs exist. One program we refer many Clients to can boast that three quarters of their participants remain drug free more than two years after graduating from their program. This program should be the model for all to follow and should replace a fixed idea that nothing can be done about addiction with the truth: we can win the war.

I wish you much success in your fight.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Half assed or half hearted, I can’t say for sure. But I can state with certainty that most Georgia drug rehab programs offer at best half of what an individual needs to beat drug addiction. Most drug rehab programs in Georgia offer life skills programs. Some are useless, based as they often are on psychobabble nonsense; others are of at least some help.

While life skills are part of the answer to beating drug addiction, they are far from the complete answer. Getting the harmful drugs out of an addict’s body with a thorough, deep cleansing detox is crucial to a successful drug rehab as well.

These drug residues which lodge in the fatty tissues are responsible for drug cravings which plague addicts and which make beating addiction so difficult. Once removed through an intense combination of nutrition, exercise and sauna therapy, drug cravings cease. And with them, one of the main chains that binds an addict to his drug addiction.

One drug treatment center we often refer Clients to has developed a proprietary program to address these harmful drug residues. Using their state of the art approach, program participants are left with a clear head and a bright new perspective on life. This half of the drug rehab program is a key reason they can boast the highest success rate in the Georgia rehab industry.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Finding a Georgia drug rehab program that works is next to impossible. This makes finding a good drug rehab referral helpline critical to a successful search for help with addiction. A good helpline will steer you away from the many ineffective programs out there and refer you to a program that works.

The vast majority of Georgia rehab programs is ineffective and has the poor statistics to prove it. Nearly nine in ten drug addicts relapse after being treated at a typical Georgia rehab program. Knowing that the helpline you’re working with has prequalified the best programs available is then quite important.

In theory, a referral helpline will help you make a more informed choice amongst rehab options that you can make on your own. The individuals who manage and staff a referral helpline purportedly sift through the apparent infinity of drug rehab programs and identify the effective ones among the myriad of ineffective programs. In reality, few helplines do the heavy lifting. Anyone with a 1 800 number and a website can start a drug rehab referral helpline. Which means that to find a drug rehab program that works you first must find a quality drug rehab referral helpline. In this article, I’ll discuss how to identify a helpline that you can trust.

As with most things, the key to solving this conundrum, finding the right drug rehab helpline, is to find the right people. Find a good helpline counselor and you’ll have found a good helpline, one whose referral you can trust.

In my experience a good helpline counselor will have most if not all of the following 8 characteristics. Identify these traits in your helpline counselor and you can be satisfied that you’ve found a good helpline.
1. Has experience in the drug rehab industry.
2. Has a thorough knowledge of commonly abused drugs.
3. Knows the types of rehab available and can easily explain the pros and cons of each.
4. Understands the youth scene and the pressures kids face.
5. Listens well.
6. Is compassionate.
7. Isn’t judgmental or critical.
8. Will make an unbiased decision and refer you to an effective program.

Finding Georgia rehab that works is tough. You need a qualified drug rehab referral helpline on your side. Without knowing what to look for, however, you won’t know if you’ve found one. Use the above 8 characteristics and your search should be easier. I wish you much success.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

If you’ve ever been on a diet and succumbed to a craving, you know the power of addiction. It’s difficult to remain true to your weight loss goal surrounded by so many temptations. The same holds true for any addiction, even the addiction to drugs. Addiction holds a person in it merciless grip as long as temptation abounds.

Yet even though they are beset by the same challenges, the same temptations, a few are able to beat their addictions. Perhaps they’re blessed with more willpower or more support from family and friends. More likely they’re blessed to have been treated by someone who understands addiction. Someone who knows what to do about it.

As there is with everything else, there’s a right way and a wrong way to handle addiction. Unfortunately, the majority follows the wrong way and is lost. I’ve seen this with Georgia drug rehab time and time again. Addiction appears hard to beat only because most drug rehab program don’t work. That may seem ironic, but it’s true.

Finding a Georgia rehab that works is easier than you might think. You just have to focus on their results. Ignore the fancy reception and the luxurious grounds and focus your attention on their patients. More importantly, focus on what happens to their patients after they’re released from a program. Do they continue to be sober citizens or do they become addicts once more.

No program can boast 100% success. Drug addiction is a gale force wind bearing down on anyone who seeks to carry an addict to safer shores. But the typical Georgia drug rehab program produces shameful results. Nearly nine in ten of their participants will relapse into addiction once again.

Remarkably, these failing treatment programs blame poor results on their patients justifying their failures on addiction itself which they consider and treat as an incurable disease. Addiction is not a disease; it’s a condition and one you can beat. We can help you find a program that works and end the misery of addiction for good. I wish you well.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance