By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Addiction is a mental illness.

As difficult as it is to withdraw from some drugs you would think that the primary thrust of addiction treatment would be detoxification facilities. When it comes to curing addiction, Detox programs are an almost universal failure. The majority of people who undergo detox, somewhere near 90% relapse in the first year after detox treatment.

We have been taught to think of addiction as a terrible physical craving, a drug sickness of the body when the user tries to stop. The physical part is the smallest part of addiction.

After 72 hours of detox, the standard treatment in many places, the addict should be past the cravings. Most drugs pass out of the body in hours, days at the most. How then do we explain the high rate of relapse among addicted people?

Some of the hardest to kick drugs have little or no physical withdrawal symptoms. We should expect that the highest rates of relapse would occur in the first few days after cessation. Despite the widely held opinion that addiction is a physical dependence on drugs, recovering people continue to relapse mouths, years, even decades after treatment. The inescapable conclusion?

Addiction is in the mind not the body!

Many efforts to treat addiction fail because they look in the wrong place, in the body. We see programs that include lots of diet and exercise, health farms, and sanitariums they used to be called. They had only limited success.

One way to describe addiction is that the addict’s brain has “gone over to the other team.” The alcoholic develops an alcoholic mind. Efforts to treat that condition with detoxification or drug replacement do not result in the “head change” that is needed to recover.

The psychological cravings persist for a long time after the physical urges have dissipated.

The core problem of addiction is the mind’s determination to obsess over getting a substance, any substance, to change the way we feel.

Once the mind convinces the addict to try a little, just a little, of their drug of choice, the body produces the cravings that continue the use.

Long-term recovery requires stopping those thoughts that an addict can ever safely use even a little of a drug and replacing those using thoughts with positive thoughts.

Recovery from addiction is a long-term process of changing your thinking to change your life.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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