Crack Addiction—Is There a Cure?
THERE is no question that crack addiction has reached staggering proportions, and the problem is escalating. Radio and television air the problem. Newspapers and magazines headline it. Hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers come face-to-face with its violence. Maternity wards are filled to capacity with infants damaged by the addiction. Hospital storage rooms are being used to “store” abandoned babies rather than store materials.
Detoxification and rehabilitation establishments are treating children not yet in their teens. Social service agencies are begging for resources to fight the epidemic. There are those who say they cannot overcome their addiction and others who do not wish to. For the latter, there await misery, frustration, violence, and possibly death. For the former, there is hope.
“Only a year ago,” reported The New York Times of August 24, 1989, “crack was widely regarded as a relatively new drug, still poorly understood but with special characteristics that produced an addiction almost impossible to cure.” Now, however, researchers are finding that crack addiction, under the right conditions, can be successfully treated, the paper said. “Crack addiction can be treated,” said Dr. Herbert Kleber, the deputy to William J. Bennett, director of U.S. drug policy. The key, he said, is that the addicts be given a place in family and social structures where they may never have been before. “Habilitation more than rehabilitation,” he stressed.
Researchers have found that the most effective program for curing the crack cocaine addict is three-staged—detoxification, extended personal counseling and training, and, most important, support in the right environment. Detoxification, or getting the addict off the drug, is not the major hurdle. Often, because of circumstances, a person can do this on his own. Being without funds to purchase the drug can be, and often is, a contributing factor. Incarceration in a penal institution where drugs are not available can be another, or a stay in a hospital would also necessitate abstention. The real problem, however, is to keep the addict from going back to the drug when it becomes available to him.
Although some addicts have successfully broken free from crack’s viselike grip while in specially arranged treatment programs, treatment specialists stressed that most addicts never make it through the first few weeks. For example, Dr. Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that two thirds of the addicts enrolled in his treatment program drop out in the first month. Other programs had even less success.
The Wrong Environment
“We may have to remove them from their communities,” said one noted treatment-center director. “You have got to get the addicts out of that drug environment. That environment is a morgue.” This, researchers have found, is the primary reason why the greater number of addicts who have detoxified return to the drug that enslaved them. The reason seems obvious. Are these not the surroundings that sent them to treatment centers in the first place? Was not crack available on every street corner, where peer pressure, often from their own family and best friends, motivated their first puff from the crack pipe? Who is there now to encourage their staying on a treatment program and becoming free from the drug’s tug-of-war for their very lives?
The more successful programs stressed wrong environment as a major factor in the addict’s continuing drug abuse. “The patient was taught strategies for staying away from the drug, including how to avoid cues that trigger the craving for it,” The New York Times reported. “The sight of a street where a person once bought crack, a discarded vial on the sidewalk, the dentist’s office or a pharmaceutical odor that has a resemblance to the chemical smell of crack,” are all things that can trigger desire for the drug, the paper said. Effective programs also stressed the importance of addicts’ “severing all ties to friends and relatives who still used drugs.” Instead, they were counseled to make new friends with people who do not use drugs. Wise counsel, indeed.
You Can Say No!
The book Self-Destructive Behavior in Children and Adolescents makes this observation: “The youthful are most often introduced or ‘turned on’ to the various drugs by a close friend . . . [His] intentions may be to share an exciting or pleasurable experience.” Peer pressure is not limited, however, to the young, as older addicts can testify; neither was this wise Scriptural counsel limited to the young, but it applies to persons of all ages, as the Bible writer says: “He that is walking with wise persons will become wise, but he that is having dealings with the stupid ones will fare badly.”—Proverbs 13:20.
If you are overwhelmed with problems that seem insurmountable, do not seek escape by drugs. This will only add to your problems. Talk things over with a parent or other responsible adult who would have your best interests at heart. Remember, too, the Bible’s counsel: “Do not be anxious over anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication along with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God; and the peace of God that excels all thought will guard your hearts and your mental powers.”—Philippians 4:6, 7.
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Ice, Beyond Crack
“The Japanese call it shabu, to Koreans it’s hiroppon. To American addicts just discovering its intense highs and hellish lows, the drug is simply ‘ice,’” Newsweek magazine says of this drug out of Asia. It is a type of methamphetamine, or speed, made in a laboratory from chemicals easy to obtain. The high from crack lasts minutes; the one from ice lasts for hours, up to 24. It often makes users violent. Its prolonged use causes psychological damage and fatal lung and kidney disorders. Newsweek says that “ice’s effects on newborns is alarming.” One researcher says: “If you thought cocaine dependency was bad, that’s in the minor leagues compared to this drug.” It is more difficult to kick than cocaine addiction, and hallucinations can be as powerful as ever after two years of treatment.