In today’s world, you may not hear as much about heroin abuse and addiction as you did twenty years ago. At one time, heroin was one of the primary addiction problems in the US, but now there are many drugs people can choose from – all addictive and destructive.

Still, in the US at this time, there are about 359,000 people addicted to heroin. This number has increased dramatically since 2002 when the number was 214,000. Some people start their addictions with heroin itself and many others start abusing prescription drugs first and then migrate to heroin.

This was the situation with Brandon. He was a BMX rider in his teenage years – meaning he rode acrobatic bikes on a course similar to that used by skateboarders. He got hurt from time to time and when he was 16, he needed reconstructive surgery on one of his knees. He was on pain medication for months after this surgery, then kept hurting himself and kept being given opiates.

“I didn’t know anything about these things,” he said. “I just knew that when I took them, I felt better. When I was finally taken off them, I knew I felt bad but I wasn’t sure why. So I started buying pain pills on the street. I didn’t know I was in withdrawal, I just knew I felt sick. All my friends were into painkillers.”

His pain medication abuse was accompanied by alcohol abuse. It took awhile because Brandon tried to keep his substance abuse a secret, but finally his parents figured out that he was having a problem. So they sent Brandon to rehab. About his time there, he said, “I thought the other people in the rehab had a problem but I didn’t. All the time I was there, I intended to use drugs when I got out. And sure enough, as soon as I got out, I went back to opiate abuse.”

When he was a senior in high school, living in Richmond, Virginia, where there was plenty of heroin, he starting snorting heroin with his friends. “My friends told me that this is the same high as Oxycontin but it’s cheaper and more available.” The next thing his friends told him was that injecting it was the way to go. Within a month, he was injecting the drug. That was the start of his hard-core addiction.

Brandon was at constant risk of overdose death while injecting heroin, and the adulterants and contaminants put him at more risk, along with the unhealthy lifestyle of an addict. Every once in a while, he would go to a rehab that would put him on Suboxone, a drug that contains a synthetic opiate that prevents withdrawal pain from kicking in. For a long time, he didn’t really think about the fact that he was still putting drugs in his body.

Sometimes he would sell his Suboxone to get money for heroin and at other times, he would take Suboxone in the morning so he could go to work and then use whatever money he had in the evening to get more heroin. “The only reason I went to work was to get a paycheck at the end of the week that I could use to buy more drugs.”

By the time Brandon was 23, he had been abusing opiates for seven years. He knew he needed something different to help him finally get clean. “I didn’t want to believe I was always going to be crippled by my addiction like they told me at these other rehabs. I knew I was strong and could overcome this addiction if I set my mind to it.” He found the Narconon program and arrived at Narconon Arrowhead to make a break from addiction.

“Even after I got to Narconon Arrowhead, I didn’t really try to get clean right away. But then I heard other students talking about how the program helped them. I decided to give this program my best effort.” It wasn’t long before he began feeling good about himself – something he had not felt in a long time.

He began to let go of things that had happened to him when he was growing up, events that had made him resentful. “I was drinking when I was twelve or thirteen years old. Things were really rough at home after my parents got divorced. I realized I could keep dragging that along with me or I could just get on with my life.”

After four months, Brandon graduated from the rehab program at Narconon Arrowhead. He said it was the first one that helped him achieve real sobriety. “After all my experience at other rehabs, I don’t think anyone could find a better rehab program than the one at Narconon Arrowhead.”

For more information on Narconon Arrowhead’s drug rehab program contact us today at 800-468-6933.