You know what the biggest problem is with New Year’s Resolutions?  Follow through.  The ideas are nice, but people hardly stand behind what they promise to do.  What’s holding you back from following through on your thoughts on going to drug rehab?  Let’s look at some compelling reasons to consider a fresh start with drug rehab right now. 

Why Wait To Go To Drug Rehab

Why Wait?  Really, what are you waiting for?   The approval of your mom?  A time when they won’t miss you at work?  Saving up all your money to pay for it outright?  The right weather?  The planets to line up?  For almost any reason you could think of, you need to just go to drug rehab more than you need to consider waiting. 

Drug addiction is life threatening, costly, miserable, dangerous, and often fraught with legal problems.  Short of imminent physical health problems requiring hospitalization, there isn’t much that ranks ahead of going to drug rehab when you have a dangerous addiction. 

Start a New Habit of Drug Addiction Relapse Prevention

In January you start a new calendar, use a new year when you write the date, say “this year’ instead of “next year”, sometimes change insurance, start a new tax year, etc.  Why not start some positive habits to replace your addiction?  Drug rehab will help you drop your old thinking, drug use habits, and poor self care habits.  You can also start yoga, learn about healthy eating, learn how to handle stress, and understand yourself better.  It’s a natural time of change and renewal.  Embrace the new calendar page and put your drug rehab start date on it. 

You Wait On Drug Rehab You Might Lose Your Life

Probably the best reason to start drug rehabnow is that you don’t know when you might lose your life because of your drug use.  You might overdose one too many times.  You may unknowingly aggravate or trigger health problems that don’t show obvious symptoms.  Driving while intoxicated can kill you or others.  Drug warfare can literally put you in the crosshairs of someone’s gunfire.  Every day you linger in the world of untreated drug addiction, you put your life at a great risk.

Your Family Gets Hurt Every Day You Stay Addicted

Even if you are a single person, someone cares deeply about you.  You mean something to your best friend.  Your daughter looks up to you.  Your husband, boyfriend, or partner loves you and your relationship.  Your brother counts on you for laughter and family connection.  They hurt right along with you for every day you stay addicted and untreated.  They are waiting, hoping, praying for your wellness so you can be yourself again.  They are powerless but persistent in their wish for you to go to drug rehab and get well.

Don’t Wait Another Minute To Start Drug Rehab

If you’ve read this post and still have reasons why you don’t think you can go to drug rehab right now, call the Orchid Recovery for Women.  They can answer any remaining questions you have and assure you about the quality of care at drug rehab.  Don’t wait another minute to get drug treatment - your life truly depends on it.

Drug addiction is a complex problem.  It is a condition that deeply affects the individual’s mind and body.  Addiction also has wide sweeping affects on that person’s social connection and functioning.  Unfortunately, many addicts don’t realize the social impact of their addiction until much of their functioning has greatly deteriorated.

Stigma From Addiction Interferes With Extension of Help

It’s easy to see how a mail carrier with a broken arm would have problems performing their job properly.  They may also have trouble cooking dinner and doing many normal daily tasks.  However, very few people would shake their head in disappointment or feel like this person was ruining their life from this injury. 

A person with an addiction has an unfortunate stigma along with their very legitimate problems.  The addict with problems with work and home gets little sympathy or offers for help.  The social problems that result from an addiction are often more dangerous, stemming from a poor judgement and extreme behaviors.

Addiction Causes Problems At Work and School

Absenteeism is a huge problem with addiction.  When someone’s hung over or still feeling high, going to work or school is often the last thing on their mind.  And if they do attempt to go, they often get strange looks and might get tested for drugs.  If that happens, an adult could lose their job and a student could face big trouble at school. 

Aside from showing up drunk or high, a drug addiction clearly interferes with good brain functioning.  A student can’t focus or problem solve well enough to get good grades when they are frequently high or dealing with withdrawal.  An employee might be performing dangerous or highly responsible jobs with serious impairment to their judgment. 

Financial problems From Addiction

Financial problems associated with addiction can come from many directions.  Drugs and alcohol cost money, which could easily put a strain on a family or personal budget.  If a person is caught stealing to support their habit, they can look forward to fines and hefty legal fees.

Of course, when someone loses their job because of their addiction, they may have some real difficulty securing another job.  Unless they go directly to drug treatment after getting fired, they are likely to have the same difficulties in the next job they get. 

Problems With Family and Friends From Addiction

Relationships thrive on personal attention and kind behavior.  A drug or alcohol addict typically devotes a lot of time and attention to their drug seeking and using behaviors.  This leaves little time to cultivate and keep up positive relationships.  When one person in a relationship drifts off, the other person often feels abandoned or like they did something wrong. 

Unfortunately, this is often why marital conflict and divorces are fairly common among drug and alcohol addicts.  Sometimes drug rehab can help, but other times it is too late.  Too much trust has been lost, and the spouse or partner has been hurt too many times.  Children are often on the raw end of the deal as well.  The absence (emotional and/or physical) of an addicted parent can have devastating effects for a lifetime.

Drug Rehab Can Turn Around Social Problems

A drug addict’s social functioning may get so bad that the only choice is drug rehab, if not jail.  If a person gets to drug rehab before they begin getting into legal trouble, they can save themselves a great deal of time, money, and suffering.  They can learn healthy living habits and ways to live without the influence of drugs and alcohol.  They can replace social problems with social health.

Sarah, a fictitious 9 year old girl, gets her wish of having her mom home at Christmas from drug rehab 

Christmas Wish of Mommy Coming Home From Drug Rehab

My best Christmas wish ever came true!  Mommy was gone at the drug rehabplace for a super long time, and I really missed her.  Then I wished for her to come home for Christmas and she did.  I told Daddy if I couldn’t have any other present this was what I wanted. 

Mommy said we have to do some things differently this Christmas.  We usually go to my aunt’s house on Christmas day for a big supper and opening presents.  Then the adults play card games and all the kids watch movies and play with our new Christmas toys downstairs.  But mommy said we can’t do that this year.  It’s just too many people at one time right now. 

Christmas Will Be Different This Year After Drug Rehab

Also, I know the adults always have wine and other drinks that are really stinky when they’re playing cards.  And the kids get the fizzy grape juice that looks like wine but it isn’t.  Mommy said she can’t do that anymore either, which I guess is something the people at her drug rehab place must have told her.  I don’t really know why, but I don’t care because I’m just glad Mommy’s better.

She said we’ll just have our own Christmas at home with just us this time.  I like that, and I guess I’ll just see the other people in my family some other time.  But I don’t know when that’s going to be because we just have one Christmas.  It’s going to be really weird this year.  I’m kind of wishing we could go, but I think we have to do what the drug rehab people say to keep Mommy staying better. 

Healthy Eating During Drug Rehab And At Home

Also, Mommy wrote to us before she came home about the food she’s been having.  It sounds like a lot of healthy stuff like carrots and fruit and chicken, but not fried chicken.  She said we’re going to have that kind of food now too because it makes her body better or something.  I don’t really know why that helps her with not taking that medicine, but she said this is what she did when she was at the drug rehab place. 

I guess she’s going to be doing a lot of stuff that’s different from before, plus she won’t be sleeping all the time and not doing stuff with me.  She said we’re going to be spending more time doing stuff like a family with Daddy too.  But she also has these meetings every week.  Mommy said she talks about how she’s feeling or if she’s been taking that medicine.   

Family Helps Mom In Recovery After Drug Treatment

We all need to be a family team to help her, I think.  I just don’t want her to take that medicine anymore.  We threw it out as soon as she left, and I hope her doctor doesn’t give it to her anymore either.  I was really really sad before and I don’t ever want to feel sad like that again.  I try to forget, but I don’t always forget very well.  Mommy said she wants me to talk to her if I feel that way. 

But mostly I’m just so happy Mommy’s back home.  I don’t want this Christmas wish to ever end.

The risk of infectious diseases goes hand-in-hand with drug and alcohol addiction.  A person with a drug addiction may not realize it, but they are at a greater risk for chronic illness and death from infectious disease.  If you have any drug addiction history, you need to find out more about your risk from infectious disease.

Drug Addiction Leads to Weakened Immune System

When you have a drug addiction, your immune system becomes run down.  It is constantly reacting to damage caused by excess toxins in the body.  Plus, the body uses up energy and resources flushing these toxins out at a steady rate.  With that much over-activity, it’s not hard to see how an immune system can become seriously depleted. 

Germs can certainly enter the body more easily when the immune system is knocked down like that.  Then, the common cold becomes all too common month after month.  Or, you may come down with a more challenging condition like influenza or pneumonia.  Treating those takes time, and they can become life-threatening. 

Diseases like those usually do the most harm to people with the most vulnerable immune systems.  This always includes babies, the elderly, and anyone with chronic health problems such as those that often develop along side a drug addiction. 

Risky Behaviors and Drug Addiction Increase Chance of Illness

Many drug addicts participate in risky behaviors as part of their lifestyle.  Drug addicts are particularly vulnerable to diseases that can be passed by sharing needles.  The HIV virus is commonly transmitted this way as well as Hepatitis C.   

Unsafe sex can put someone at risk for gonorrhea, genital herpes, chlamydia, and other sexually transmitted diseases.  In many cases, alcoholics and drug users are much less discriminate about having sex.  They likely don’t use a condom and may not ask their partners too many questions about diseases. 

If you have abused drugs that use a needle even just ONCE, and even if it was a long time ago, you are at risk for developing an infectious disease.  Hepatitis and the HIV virus can take years if not decades to emerge.  Some sexually transmitted diseases have delayed symptoms, and syphillis can lie dormant in the body for up to twenty years. 

Drug Rehab Can Help Reduce Risk of Infectious Disease

The most effective way an alcohol or drug addict can reduce the risk of infectious disease is to stop using drugs altogether.  This will almost certainly mean that drug rehab or drug treatment of some kind will be necessary.  This can be particularly difficult for users that inject drugs with needles.  These include meth, heroin, and cocaine, and they are typically very difficult to stop using without professional drug detox and drug rehab.

Heather Locklear is one of the most well known steadily working TV actresses of the last thirty years.  She has been married to two rock stars and has dated several TV actors.  It would appear that she has an enviable life.  However, she has recently had struggles with both mental health and drug use recently, resulting in a trip to a rehab facility. 

Heather has managed to maintain a fair amount of privacy about her mental health and drug use issues.  There are several articles with the basic facts, but few official statements, no obvious public breakdowns, or random run-ins with the press like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have had. 

Heather Locklear Enters Rehab For Mental Health Reasons

Heather Locklear

This summer, she admitted herself to a rehab center for depression and anxiety.  She also had a DUI arrest this fall and was officially charged with driving under the influence of prescription drugs.  Reportedly, she had been prescribed some drugs to deal with her mental health issues.  According to the final report, there were no illegal drugs in her system.

Heather’s been unusually successful in keeping her situation under the radar.  It’s hard to get much more than this from magazines and the internet.  However, this relative privacy is likely to help reduce her stress as she deals with everything yet to come.  Since she has official legal charges, 2009 could be just as bumpy as 2008 has been. 

Life Stress Leads To A Painful 2008 With Drugs and Rehab

When you consider all that’s happened in the last few years, it would not be surprising that any woman in her shoes (celebrity or not) might have some problems.  She divorced her husband of twelve years (Ritchie Sambora) after finding provocative pictures in his possession.  Later, her good friend Denise Richards began dating him, causing the end of a friendship and further strain between Heather and her ex-husband (they have a daughter together).

Earlier this year, Sambora was arrested for DUI.  Heather also learned that their young daughter was in the car with him.   Reports state that friends noticed she just wasn’t as bright and cheery as usual, normal things took more effort, things upset Heather more easily.  In June of 2008, she checked herself into a rehab center for depression and anxiety. 

In September of 2008, she was arrested and eventually charged with a DUI.  Interestingly, one of the reasons she put herself into rehab in the early summer was to get a full medical evaluation and get on proper medication.  This was before she was arrested for DUI with prescription drugs.  So it makes me wonder - did she really get the right drugs for her if they made her impaired to drive?  Or had she been taking too many, making her impaired to drive? 

If Drug Treatment Is Needed Heather Seems Open To Rehab

Although this would just be a guess, Heather does seem to be at least vulnerable to develop a drug abuse problem or even a drug addiction.  Her recent mental health problems have laid a fairly strong pathway if the wrong things start happening.  A good sign for her future is her previous voluntary admission to a rehab center. 

If Heather should at any point need drug rehab, it seems likely she would give it a try.  It’s possible the facility she went to for her depression and anxiety was also a drug rehab center, but sources don’t state anything specific. 

2009 Brings Uncertainty With DUI Charges

Heather certainly seems to be the kind of woman who wants to make things better.  I sure hope that any kind of drug treatment or mental health treatment she goes through in 2009 helps her become stronger and healthier.