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Dealing with patients suffering from addiction

Death by drug overdose in celebrities trouble us. They have fame, influence, and money, and they can get whatever they want. However, they are trapped in the vicious cycle of addiction. The year 2016 started with the death of singer Natalie Cole, nine-times Grammy award winner, who lost her fight against substance abuse. Daughter of the Jazz legend Nat King Cole, Natalie died in Los Angeles at the age of 65. Los Angeles in California has gained a notorious reputation for being rife with a serious drug problem.

Many theorists have pointed out the need to intervene at a behavioral level for addicts. Dealing with an addict in the first stage, one needs to make changes in his psyche and behavior is dangerous. Once they have developed solid recovery tools, they can safely probe a patient’s psyche. For such patients, a phased approach is required.

For some, the patient needs to uncover therapy and acquire recovery skills simultaneously. Such patients require a treatment plan that understands underlying issues that stop the recovery.

Those patients with a major personality disorder who are dependent on drugs then therapy is of little use. It is important that psychotherapy is placed in a proper setting for it to take effect. People who have lifestyles and egos intact have shown improvement with the traditional psychotherapy. The failure to find pain, maladaptive, the way of thinking, feeling, and behaving leaves a person psychologically vulnerable to relapse and failure to achieve improvement.

Ego deficit creates an addict’s inability to experience, label, process, and manage his or her emotional life. They face an emotional flooding with inner emptiness with an outer rush of emotions which they try to drown with the help of drugs. Drugs that are used for their ability to either numb, excite, calm, energize, sedate, sexualize, narcotize, and induce both ecstatic and fantasy states.

They also have increased dependency on people around them; they manipulate the people so that they can be “taken care of.” They themselves do not have the nurturing capacity and hence look for supplies from the outer world. If they do not have a family, they include another person as their “object” or “subject.” They extremely narcissist and pass responsibility and blame on others. These bail them out of every sort of problem. By avoiding personal responsibility, they fail at taking care of themselves. They try and manipulate others to take care of them with childlike behavior.

It is the most important methodology to establish facts by taking complete biopsychosocial histories from patients and the direct behavior observation of the patient. The history is to be corroborated by the family and close friends, etc. Such history includes the following information: social history, medical history, educational history, sexual history, vocational history, family history, substance use history, and criminal history.

If you wish to give yourself or a loved one another chance then get in touch with Los Angeles drug rehab or California drug rehab centers for more information.

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