When someone is addicted to alcohol, everyone around the alcoholic suffers. Wives, children, parents, co-workers, employers, even neighbors and friends suffer right along with the addicted person. Not only that, the entire community suffers. Other drivers are endangered, even pedestrians are at risk and law enforcement personnel are forced to pick up the broken pieces of alcohol-damaged lives, day after day.
There are some people who claim that you can’t help an alcoholic until they hit bottom. That they have to want to recover and ask for help before you can get them to walk through the doors of an alcohol rehab.
Tragically, some people die before they hit that rock bottom. Other people go through rehab, even multiple times, but failed to find the right rehabilitation center for them and so finally succumb to the problem.
In just the last several months, there has been a number of high-profile alcohol related deaths such as with Amy Winehouse, while earlier this year Gerry Rafferty died after a decade or more fighting alcoholism. One of the latest celebrities to fall is Jani Lane, lead singer of the 80s rock group Warrant, who died August 11, 2011 as a result of his alcoholism.
And while he is still alive, the mayor of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Bob Ryan, is currently under censure by some people in his community after he was involved in a drunken brawl at a bar. He publicly admitted his alcoholism and stated that he was getting treatment.
In 2010, former US Representative Charlie Wilson died of cardiac arrest; three years earlier he had received a heart transplant after decades of alcohol consumption damaged his heart. Dozens more people could be added to the list from sports, entertainment or political circles.
But these are just the high profile problems. For every celebrity who falls, there are thousands of ordinary people who struggle with the same kinds of problems, without the headlines or paparazzi. The World Health Organization states that 2.5 million deaths a year are caused by alcohol consumption.
Bobby Wiggins, spokesperson for Narconon International, explained that it is not necessary for a family to wait until an alcoholic is arrested or suffers a catastrophic loss before getting them into alcohol rehab. “Admittedly, it can be hard to get through to an alcoholic that they need help just due to the nature of alcoholism,” Mr. Wiggins stated. “Families should know that an alcoholic does not have to ‘hit bottom’ before get help. One of the benefits of working with a highly experienced drug and alcohol rehabilitation program like Narconon® is that they have access to interventionists. When a person can’t control their drinking, the right time for them to get help is right now, before there can be an arrest, an accident or a death.” Narconon is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the elimination of drug abuse and alcoholism through rehabilitation services and drug education.
Mr. Wiggins explained that many people come to Narconon centers around the world with the help of an interventionist. Many of their centers maintain working relationships with interventionists who are able to reach out and save the lives of addicts who desperately want to stop using drugs. Together the center and the interventionists are able to offer the degree of help an intensely dangerous condition like alcohol requires.
For more information on the Narconon program, contact 800-775-8750 or visit www.narconon.org.