Georgia Rehab Blog

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

Given the choice to remain an addict or check into a typical Georgia drug rehab program, I’d choose to remain an addict. You see, the majority of Georgia rehab programs fail their patients. Upwards of nine in ten relapse soon after leaving. I don’t know how many chances I’d get at rehab before I’d give up, which is why I’d want to get it right the first time. With the typical Georgia drug rehab program, that’s impossible.

The relapse statistics indicate that most addicts try a number of rehab programs before they quit trying. A case in point are addicts being treated at my favorite Georgia drug treatment center. I was there the other day. While I waited to speak to their intake counselor, I chatted with the Receptionist. She graduated from the program a little while ago. I asked her how many patients had gone to another Georgia rehab program before coming there. Virtually all of them she said. Thirty five out of thirty seven participants had been to another rehab before coming to their program.

Such a poor statistic is a testament to the power of addiction, but even more so to the weakness of the typical Georgia rehab program. These programs fail because they treat addiction as a disease. With the typical program, an individual enters as an addict but he is yet hopeful that he can change. He leaves a rehab program, however, still an addict, but now assured that he suffers from an illness and can’t change.

If he gives into temptation and uses drugs once he’s left the program, he can be excused. He’s sick. With a chronic disease, relapse is inevitable. The problem is that once he gives in, he’s more likely to give in again and again. In time, he gives up. Why even fight it? There’s no stigma to failing if you can blame it on something or someone else.

Steve is a heroin addict living on a beach in South Florida. He tried like hell to beat his addiction. After four tries and four relapses he quit trying. They told him he’s sick. He can be excused for giving up. There’s nothing he can do about it. I don’t know how many other addicts are like Steve, but I suspect they number in the hundreds of thousands. This horde of hopeless, desperate men and women were let down by the drug rehab industry which has based their treatment on an unproven belief. Drug addiction is not an illness.

You want to get rehab right the first time. Relapse increases the cost of drug rehab which has to be repeated. And relapse also decreases an addict’s interest in going to rehab again. Failure kills motivation.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

Have you ever known a person who’s right about everything? Of course not. Even the smartest person in the world makes mistakes. Apparently, even Einstein. People asked him for his opinion all the time. About all sorts of things. And just like the rest of us, once you took him outside his element, outside his expertise, he made mistakes.

Yet ironically, even those who should know better are often convinced of their rightness. Thinking you’re right, however, does not make you right. And doing the same thing over and over again because you think you’re right, even though you’re not, is crazy.

The Georgia drug rehab industry which I’m involved in has little to show for itself. The relapse rate among addicts treated at even the most expensive programs is abominably high. The show goes on despite the poor showing, and I often wonder why. Is it the profit motive? Why change what’s working, at least what’s working on the bottom line, right? After all, the business of business is, in fact, making money.

Are the people who provide ineffective drug rehab evil? With some, I could make that argument. A psychiatrist who tells an addict that his addiction is an illness and prescribes powerful and dangerous medications to his “sick” patient is evil, particularly if you think of evil as a higher degree of wrongness. Telling an addict he’s sick degrades him and makes him feel hopeless. Besides, no proof exists that that addiction is an illness.

Or is the sorry state of Georgia rehab due to the operators who want to be right so badly that they defend their programs even though it’s clear they don’t work?

A friend of mine was an alcoholic; he’s been sober for a decade. Yet if you ask him, he’s still an alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. His 12 step program convinced him of that. Perhaps if this program produced an abundance of sober men and women, I might think more highly of their philosophy. But they don’t. Just 5 in 100 who take their program succeed with it and become sober for good. Yet despite their poor showing, they continue to practice what they preach. And fail at it.

Just because you think something’s right, doesn’t necessarily make it right. It’s the objective reality that matters. A drug and alcoholism rehab program should be judged by how well it works. It doesn’t matter if it’s staffed with the best doctors, or landscaped like the Ritz. It’s as right as it changes addicts into sober, ethical, productive individuals. Judge the rightness of a program by the relapse rate of its graduates. If it’s higher than 30%, go elsewhere.

“Just the facts Ma’am,” Jack Webb, the iconic police detective of a popular 1960’s crime drama, would remind his witness. “Just the facts Ma’am.” It’s good advice. Before you choose a Georgia rehab program, get the facts. You’ll make the right decision. I wish you well.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

The legalization of drugs in America will not solve the epidemic of drug abuse. The ranks of drug abusers, in fact, will swell as the stigma against drug use dies. There is burden enough on Georgia drug rehab. The legalization of drugs will only make a bad situation worse.

Intellectuals have long argued that since we’re losing the war on drugs we should decriminalize the use of drugs. I think it’s a dumb idea. On its face, the legalization of drugs does seem appealing. Legalize drugs and you save billions on drug enforcement; you remove the criminal element from the drug trade; and you raise huge amounts of revenue which can be used to educate youth about the dangers of drugs thereby reducing further drug abuse. And shouldn’t people in a free society be able to do what they want to do as long as they’re not hurting anybody, they argue.

Despite the seemingly compelling arguments and rationale outlined above, I believe addicts and society as a whole will not be well served by the legalization of drugs. Laws against the distribution of drugs keep the price of drugs and the risk of their use high. Who knows how many kids would be drug abusers today but for these barriers, barriers which would be dismantled should drugs be legalized. Drug use will claim its victims all the more when it is legalized.

A legalization of drugs is an admission that there’s nothing we can do about the problem. At least in the short run. Rather than give up the fight against drugs, I believe we should fight all the harder against this menace.

But we should take the fight to the people. Effective education and effective drug rehab will mitigate the problem. Educate youth early on about the dangers of drugs and your youth will be less likely to take drugs. Position the drug abuser as an outcast rather than as a cool kid and your youth will be less likely to take drugs. Replace the current breed of drug rehab programs with programs that work and you will further reduce drug use as the rate of recidivism declines.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance
Helping you find a Georgia rehab program that works

Unless you’re a product of the 60’s and share you stash with a teenage son or daughter, you probably won’t know if they’re doing drugs. But you need to know before it’s too late to do anything about it. And drug use and abuse among teens has become a critical and resistive problem. In the past year, more than one third of high school seniors used illicit drugs, a staggering number with widespread implications.

Drug use can lead to drug abuse which often leads to addiction, a nearly irreversible condition unless you find the right Georgia drug rehab program. Moreover, widespread drug use among teens creates a class of law breakers. The larger the class of teens who are willing to violate the law, the more who will be sucked into this underclass. The allure of fitting in is just too strong to resist. While not all drug users turn into drug abusers and law breakers, enough do. Which makes this a problem you need to know more about, before it becomes a problem you can’t do anything about.

In her article. Teenage Substance Abuse Today, Author, Amanda Gordon, lists several warning signs of possible drug abuse to look for:
“increased secretiveness
* shoplifting
* sudden personality changes
* increased temper or aggressiveness
* lack of interest in hobbies
* drop in grades
* change in friends
* reluctance to let parents talk to friends
* nervousness
* poor grooming
* loss of pride in personal appearance
* long sleeved shirts, baggy clothing
* weight loss
* borrowing money
* stealing money

Teenagers who are under the influence will show the following symptoms:
* Slurring of speech
* Poor coordination
* Memory problems
* Difficulty concentrating.”

If you need Georgia rehab for someone you love, please call an experience drug rehabilitation Rep at GeorgiaAlliance.org. We can help.

I wish you much success,

Fritz Alders,
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance.

Source

If a child can escape temptation and peer pressure both of which lead to drug and alcohol abuse, he should be able to lead a drug free life. Or so you would think. But it’s not so. Just because a teenager eludes the dealer at school does not necessarily mean he’ll elude drug abuse or addiction later in his life. Georgia drug rehab programs are full of adult onset druggies hooked on alcohol, cocaine even legally prescribed drugs.

Sometime after World War II, Americans began to hear of the miracles of modern medicine. I remember the constant beating of the drums for wonder drugs being produced by a few pharmaceutical giants. To be sure a number of miracle drugs were created. Antibiotics come to mind. But for every “wonder drug” created by Big Pharma, many more “I wonder why” drugs were produced. Bountiful profits were in fact the reason why so many drugs for so many conditions came through the pipeline.

Whatever benefit a drug may offer, it also offers a danger to its users. Side effects. Some side effects are innocuous. Many, however, are harmful, even dangerous. Anti-depressants come to mind. This class of drugs has caused thousands of suicides.

But as harmful as drugs can be to individuals, they can be even more harmful to society as a whole. America was once a culture dominated by self made individuals. Children were given chores and responsibilities from an early age. Adults didn’t complain about stress; they didn’t have depression, it was just a sad spell; and they didn’t have hyperactive kids, they were just energetic. Big pharma and doctors corrupted by big pharma’s marketing machine changed this mindset. They campaigned long and hard to convert every problem into a disease creating and marketing a pill to “solve” every problem. A culture that considers drugs as a solution is bound to have a problem with drugs.

And we do. Children in the United States are likelier to be prescribed mind-altering medications than European children. American society has never been as doped up as today’s society. What effect this will have on the future leaders of America one can only guess. I can only hope that enough clear minds will still be around in the future to find real solutions to our problems. But we better do something fast; there’s not enough Georgia rehab programs available to take care of the problem being created.

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

A simple way to size up a Georgia drug rehab program, to determine if it will help a drug abuser beat addiction is to consider how such a program treats its participants. The ones that work treat an addict as a person with a condition. He got himself into it; he can get himself out of it. The ones that don’t work, treat the same addict as if he’s sick or has a personality disorder.

Though no research exists to substantiate a disease model of addiction, psychiatric drug rehab programs treat their participants as if they are and will forever be ill. Participants are called patients in these programs. Their psychiatrists dispense drugs which leaves the ‘patient’ believing that he is sick and certain that he must take drugs to control his illness.

Addiction is not a disease. The high failure rate of such programs is telling enough. Making an addict believe that he’s sick and needs drugs to beat his addiction is a lie one that puts him squarely at the effect of his addiction. The vast majority of addicts who are diagnosed with an illness and treated with drugs and psychiatric mumbo jumbo lose the battle and return to their addiction.

The cycle of drug abuse begins with a condition that an individual cannot face. Perhaps it’s caused by the loss of a loved one or social stress or peer pressure or maybe there’s real physical pain. Whatever the reason, the individual takes drugs to escape his pain. The relief is temporary. It fades just as quickly as the drug wears off.

A drug abuser knows that drugs are not the answer. But he doesn’t know what else to do. Short term relief is better than none at all.

Imagine the message a Georgia rehab facility communicates to a patient when it prescribes drugs to treat addiction. If the person is not harmed by the toxic and often addictive effects of such powerful drugs, he will be crippled by the mindset such treatment fosters.

You can be sure that a program that treats its participants as patients will fail those who’ve been entrusted with their rehabilitation. Steer clear of such programs.

I wish you much success.

With kind regards,

Fritz Alders,
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance

With drug rehab, failure is not an option. It shouldn’t be anyway. You see, it’s hard enough to convince an addict to go to a Georgia rehab program to begin with. It’s harder still to convince him to go again and again and again when each preceding program has failed him.

The sad truth is that most rehab doesn’t work. The failure rate can run as high as 90%. Which means that only 1, two or maybe, if you’re lucky, three out of ten addicts who go to a traditional drug rehab program will beat their addiction.

I was thinking about this problem yesterday. It’s is a huge problem for us. We’re given just a few minutes to assess a caller’s problem and need and then convince them of the solution we’ve chosen. That can be hard to do. Our callers are addicts or their loved ones, broken, terrified, often desperate souls. As desperate as they are, as much as they need to get into a program right away, they’re often skeptical, even leery of our help. It’s no wonder; they’ve been let down before.

They’re also skeptical because they know how hard it is to beat addiction.They may not know the hard and cold statistics as well as we do. But they’ve heard the horror stories. Or lived them. The recovering addict who gets high the first night after he’s released from a program his parents spent $50,000 on. The “reformed” alcoholic who finishes his 12 step program and then a few weeks later can be seen finishing a twelve pack of beer with his buddies.

A couple of days ago, a young addict called us. Encouraging, I thought. “I don’t want to be one of those addicts who goes from rehab to rehab. I’d rather die, she admitted. The fear of failure can be a killer.

For the past ten years we’ve evaluated scores and scores of Georgia drug rehab programs looking for a program that works. We found it. it’s not the most expensive programs, but it’s not free either. With drug rehab, I’ve found that you can expect to get what you pay but not necessarily what you paid. I wish you much success.

With kind regards,

Fritz Alders,
Managing Partner,
Georgia Alliance

The highest cost you face with drug rehab in Georgia is the cost of choosing an ineffective drug rehab program or doing nothing about your problem. By way of example, let me tell you my story. No I wasn’t an addict, but I suffered nonetheless from a debilitating condition. Needlessly. You see, I could have done something about it, but chose not to because of the high price I felt I had to pay if I wanted to rid myself of the condition.

For much of my life, I suffered from excruciating headaches. Migraines. My God were they brutal. Migraines are one pain I don’t wish on anyone. My headaches followed the same cycle. First a premonition. Something was wrong; I didn’t feel right.

Soon thereafter I would be hit by a wave of nausea. Then my head would begin to throb and throb and throb. No matter what I did to brace myself for the tidal wave of pain and nausea I would inevitably feel, nothing could stem it. It was never enough.

My remedy was always the same. Retreat into my dark, frigid bedroom, pull the covers over my head and pray that I would fall into a coma. I usually didn’t. You’d be more likely to find me circling my driveway at 2 in the morning thoroughly disoriented, my head pumping like a bass line in a heavy metal concert than to be in bed.

By the next day and probably by the grace of God the migraine was gone. But not without leaving its mark. I would be wiped out the whole day. Unable to function. Unable to work.Two days of every month was lost to these migraines.

One day a woman told me that I could be beat these migraines for good. For a measly $15,000. I choked. She’s crazy, I thought and I told her so. I’d rather suffer a couple days a month than to shell out $15,000, which seemed to be a permanent pain.

Fortunately, she didn’t s agree. She persisted. “So if I could show you away that the program would pay for itself, in fact, show you a way that it would pay you to take it, would you take it, she asked?” She had me. After all, I was a businessman. In business, the name of the game is return on investment . If someone shows you an investment that pays handsome returns, you take it.
Another concept applies. The economic principle known as opportunity cost. Whenever you have to decide between two choices, you have an opportunity cost. Choose A and there’s some cost of not choosing B. Choose B and likewise, there’s a cost of not choosing A. The greater the cost of the choice you didn’t make, the higher the opportunity cost of the one you did make.

Here’s how this applied to my headaches where the choice was clear: pay $15,000 to get rid of my headaches or pay “nothing” and continue to face them. The trick to making a good decision was determining if I in fact was paying nothing. As she pointed out, I was paying quite a price to have these headaches. I missed two days of work each month.

Luckily, I was self employed; I would have lost my job outright had I not been. But self employed or not, I still had to account for the lost time. So I put a pen to paper and calculated what it cost me to lose a month of pay each year. At the time, it was $5,000. And that doesn’t take into account the cost to the Company of my not being at my work. When I wasn’t there, sales declined.

But for the sake of her argument, my consultant ignored this part of the opportunity cost. $5000 created enough effect upon me to notice. So with that recognition of the true cost of my lost time, it was rather easier for her to show me the return I would achieve by not ridding myself of these debilitating headaches.

If her program cost me $15,000 but it saved me $5000 a year in lost wages, then in just 3 years I’d have my entire investment back.. I took the deal; there was no other choice.

That was about 30 years ago. You know, I’ve never had a migraine since. Is it safe to say that I made $150k on her $15,000 this investment? Yes…and then some. For as my salary went up, so did the return on my investment. But beyond financial returns, you must consider, and I did, the return of a quality of life which seemed forever lost with the condition.

More than a few people have called our free Georgia drug rehab referral service looking for a free program. In many cases, I knew they could afford to pay for one. Sadly, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. So even though we could offer a few rehab possibilities, we couldn’t offer the best. Choose an ineffective drug rehab program, and the opportunity cost is too high to consider.

My best advice to you as you struggle to find a drug rehab program for you or a loved one is to consider the high price you’ll pay of not choosing a Georgia rehab program that works. As I did with my headaches, so should you with your headache. Look not at whether a drug rehab program costs, but what it will cost you if you or your loved one does not handle the addiction. Weigh the costs; weigh the benefits of each. In the long run, and even in the short run, I believe you’ll find that paying for drug rehab that works is much less expensive than the price of addiction.

This is not to say that the higher the price, the better the program. I have not found that to be the case. Many of the programs with $20,000 a month price tags have poor statistics to go along with their rich price tags. A few free, faith based programs work every bit as well as their pricier psychiatric drug rehab programs.

The best of all worlds happens to be a relatively inexpensive program. With housing you’re looking at maybe $20k for a four month program. Best of all it achieves a rehabilitation rate 3 to 5 times greater than its pricier cousins. Now that’s an opportunity.

I wish you much success,

Fritz Alders
Managing Partner, Georgia Alliance