Early this summer a friend sent his 30 year-old son to a facility in Colorado for chronic heroin abuse treatment. Within hours of his release from the month-long, $30,000 program, his son got loaded on alcohol and drugs, ended up in a hospital emergency room and then disappeared. He emerged some weeks later at the Gordon Clinic on the Mexican side of California’s Baja peninsula and was in the middle of a week-long recovery program when he contacted his father with uncharacteristic enthusiasm … [Read more...]
Captive – Single Mom’s Christian Message Overcomes Killer
By David Palmer On the face of it, Ashleigh Smith, a single mom and newly recovering meth addict with, at best, a fragile grip on sobriety was an unlikely role model, but on March 12, 2005, she proved herself worthy by helping to bring multiple killer, Brian Nichols, to justice. On that day, Nichols took Smith hostage in her own home, but in seven harrowing hours with help from Saddleback church Pastor Rick Warren’s best selling book, “The Purpose Driven Life” she persuaded him to let her … [Read more...]
Overcoming Addictions – The Power of our Hometowns and Local Neighborhoods
When World War II began in 1941, my father gave up his high paying public relations job on New York’s Madison Avenue, bought the local newspaper, the Summit Herald, in our home town of Summit, N.J. and went to work. He was forty, had a wife and kids, and was therefore exempt from military service, but he wanted to be closer to home in uncertain times and to contribute to the war effort. What he did was modest, certainly when compared to the heroic achievements of members of the armed … [Read more...]
For the alcoholic in your life, how about an intervention?
By David Palmer Interventions are a valuable tool in helping alcoholics and other drug addicts get well. And they come in various sizes and shapes. In my own case, a psychiatrist I was seeing in Denver about my acute anxiety realized after a couple of sessions that I was an alcoholic and directed me to my nearest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting forthwith. He knew that our talks would come to nothing if I did not deal with the alcohol issue first, and he “intervened”. I went to my first AA … [Read more...]
The State Of Substance Abuse And What It Is Doing To Our Nation
On New Years day, one of my grandchildren, in the company of a “guardian,” flew from Little Rock to Nashville and entered a treatment facility to deal with his addiction to Oxycontin and possibly alcohol. Prior to the trip, there had been a brief intervention with close family members, and then my nineteen-year-old grandson was gone. He is one of the fortunate ones. His dad, my son, could afford to send him away to a place that can treat his drug abuse and, equally if not more important, the … [Read more...]
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