This is my address for everything concerning Medium, the writing site.

I am still alive. My real blogs are at...

You can catch up at: http://www.detoxrehab.org . This is my main blog and carries most my my rantings.

My other main blog is at: http://www.theroadout.org/myblog.html . That one is attached to my business' website and is relatively new but kept up daily.I'm still talking to kids is schools about drugs and seeing about 30,000 of them each year. I also help people reach treatment at various centers around the world.

In my spare time I write articles and other such. You can find me on ezine articles in the drug abuse section.


If you are watching this blog...see you in about a year!

May 10, 09

The school year is nearly over again and the lectures are slowing down. This is the first week without a full five-day schedule. 

I’m finding some new drugs that the kids are talking about in the high schools and it’ll be interesting to see what happens by the beginning of next year…whether they’ll have caught on or not.

A couple of the drugs I was worried about last year never made it into the schools. At least they didn’t arrive in the California high schools I visited this year, about 75 different schools in many different areas.

One that DID arrive and that I didn’t see coming is DMT. Dimethyltryptamine.  Of course it’s not new, these poisons seldom are. Bit it IS new on the schools campuses and more and more of the students ask about it’s affects.

Smoked heroin is becoming more popular, according the the kids, especially the kids who appear to be “in the know”. 

I guess the creeps pushing this stuff are not taking any vacations, we have to be ready to truly educate the kids before the drug pushers do.

Still at it.

It's been years since I've posted here and a lot has happened. I have spoken to another 75 thousand students, parents, administrators and professionals on the subjects of drug abuse, misuse and trafficking. I have personally helped scores of people to reach treatment for addiction and have counseled many others toward drug-free lives.

We have many more schools, corporations, Native American Tribes and community groups using our Narconon drug prevention services on a regular basis.

I can't say that the drug situation in Southern California is looking up. In fact the use of methamphetamine and ecstasy is staying alarmingly high in the high schools and now in the middle schools too. I can say, however, that teachers and principals are realizing more and more that prevention is the only real solution.

We can't stop the problem with enforcement. As long as someone as long as there is some fool standing there with fifty dollars in his hand saying, "Give me drugs!", there will be drug pushers and dealers ready to supply the drugs.

More laws will never handle it. We already have so many laws that we practically get a ticket getting out of bed in the morning.

No, the only answer it better, more effective and comprehensive drug education.

Welcome back

Whew!!

Long time running and a long time gone!

Haven't posted for six months, but I'm back from the salt mines.

Non-stop lectures and schools and help with rehab. It's been tiring and rewarding at the same time, but the schools and youth groups is where I like to work the most.

The kids are wide open targets for the drug companies and other pushers and even the meth makers and junk dealers are working on getting new customers in the schools and playgrounds.

I've heard it said that the pushers don't want children as "customers" because they're dangerous to work with. Also that there are enough hard core addicts to keep them busy.
But remember, heroin pushers and crystal meth dealers are in a strange position,

they're killing their customers!

This is not on any list of good business practices. It is actually bad for the future of any enterprise to murder your patrons.

So it becomes necessary for these guys to constantly recruit new customers. They have to replace the ones who get busted, are too sick to continue, the ones who get clean or even die.

And new users/buyers definitely have to meet certain qualifications:

1. New users need to be willing to keep a secret so they don't rat out their dealers,
2. To be viable, there must be some source of money.
3. There must be a willingness to get and stay high.
4. It is also necessary that the buyers are too stupid, or at least too ignorant, to make a good choice when it comes to what they put into their bodies, where they hang out and who they associate with.
   

When you can put all those items together in one youngster, Bingo! we have a winner.

In my next post, we'll take a look at some of the things the pushers and dealers are doing to attract the kids.

Broke my heart

I spoke to a girl today who was trying to get into a rehab for her addiction to prescription medications.

She had started with a prescription to Oxycontin for the pain of a back injury. That was nine years ago. She began to use more of it and the pain seemed to "just hang on". In a few years she was making doctors all over Southern California to keep up the intake.

At one point she was switched to methadone. Luckily she left that one before her addiction totally took of on methadone. She was back to the Oxy.

A couple of years ago her doctor put her on Norco to handle the problems with Oxy. Fat chance that'll work! Norco is also Hydrocodone!

When she called she had been mainlining Oxycontin for a few months and was desperately trying to maintain enough to keep working.

With no money, no insurance and no relatives who could help her enter treatment, her options are extremely limited. I am working with her to get her accepted into a free or low-cost program, but you get what you pay for.

Her personal fortitude and determination to improve are going to have to make up for the lack of wherewithal. I will continue to try to find a way to get her into a Narconon center; she needs a full rehab like Narconon to get through what she has coming.

I've started in this business in 1976, (see the first post in this blog), and the amount of suffering I've seen should make me hardened and able to shrug off this type of tragedy. But I guess it never gets easy. Her tears on the phone were too personal for me to keep any kind of professional distance. And on top of all that, I remember how I was when I entered treatment at the Narconon Center in St. Louis.

Hers was only one of twelve similar calls we got today, but it stuck in my mind and now it's out here.

Christmas Evening, 2006

Merry Christmas 2006.

At one point in my history, this is something that I was sure I would not witness. My chances of survival to the end of 2006 looked pretty bleak in 1974.

That Christmas I spent so stoned I don't remember the entire holiday season. I had a buzz going for a week that included biphetamine, (black beauties- remember them?) That was the foundation of the high. It kept me from passing out completely and missing the 'fun'.

On top of that were valium, weed and beer. I was feeling no pain and hurting badly, at the same time. This was such a bad period for me that I seldom allow myself to think about it, even after thirty two years.

Just a few weeks before I had experienced the mother of all bad trips on mescaline. I was spinning, introverted and in total confusion about what had happened. I could think of nothing else but the doubts I had regarding my own sanity and fears that this was what I had to look forward to for the rest of my life.

That downward spiral lasted for the next full year. I read everything I could get my hands on regarding these feelings and how to pull out of it. I tried meditation, (boring and didn't help). I visited a psychiatrist, (more drugs, thank you very much). I was grabbing at straws and getting no relief.

I never once attributed the problems I was having to the drugs I was taking!!

I entered a Narconon Program in St. Louis Missouri in 1976 and stopped using drugs and finally began to pull out of the mess I had sunken into.

It was not even a painful process. After a couple of days I saw the light and most importantly, I realized that I was going to beat the depression and addiction.

Although the recovery was not complete, (I don't know if I will ever be able to say that the negatives of that period are totally gone), I was functioning and extroverted again.

When I began to work there, and used my experiences to help others, I was helped in return by their insights and gains.

I could study again and train myself on the procedures and technology of the Narconon Program.

My future was returned to me. It wasn't the Narconon Program that gave it back. It wasn't the staff, the founder of the program, W. Benitez or the developer of the tech of Narconon, L. Ron Hubbard who put me back in control of my own life.

I reclaimed my future by truly being there and taking responsibility for my own feelings and actions. I no longer dove out of the driver seat by hiding in a fog of drugs.

I was able to be stand up and said,

"I did that. This is my doing. My life is what it is because of my
actions and mine alone."

And that gave me the power to choose where I was headed. I was responsible and I would never give away my power of choice again.

Now, two days away from my 31st anniversary of being drug-free, I can see clearly that our power of choice never leaves us. I know that I can help others to make that discovery because I have helped many to do so.

I wish anyone reading this a happy and drug-free 2007 and I hope that your year is your own rather than spent in a stupor of drugs.