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Before you can get really excited about knowing there’s a 12-step group for codependents, you have to know if you or someone in your family suffers from codependency. Are you a codependent?

Many of the people who need treatment for substance abuse struggle with the cravings that compel them to use, and they also face the well-intentioned assistance from family members who cover up and excuse everything they do.

Let’s say it more clearly: If you are a codependent family member, you may be prolonging your loved one’s substance abuse because you constantly find ways to minimize his use, you make excuses for his use, and you cover up his use.  He will never accept the need to stop using and work toward recovery as long as he has you to save the day.

Codependent people exhibit tendencies such as:

• Minimizing what they value, so that their loved one who uses drugs will not be angry at them or reject them.
• Low self-esteem, which makes them feel that if their drug-using loved one rejects them, then they have no worth.
• Oversensitivity, which means they overreact in situations that the drug user should handle on his own.
• Loyalty, so that they never draw boundaries for the drug user.
• Control, because helping the drug user boosts their feelings of importance. 

The tendency to take control of situations was purposefully noted last:  People who exert control generally are considered to be strong-willed people. The other qualities of the codependent may seem to be more often associated with weaker personalities.  The codependent—not a weak person—is  endlessly driven to control the person who is using, because it validates his own sense of worth. He is frustrated when his struggle to control the situation continually results in disaster because the drug user keeps using.

If you know someone who needs treatment for substance abuse, you need to conduct your own fearless moral inventory–Step 4 of Alcoholics Anonymous— and ask yourself if you are really helping the person you love. Maybe you need to step back and quit making excuses for them. If you have trouble with that, then Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA) can help.

CoDA holds meetings, just like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.  All over the country, including Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, there are CoDA meetings. CoDA also promotes a 12-step philosophy adapted from that of AA, with the first step discussing the need to admit that you are powerless over others, and that your life has become unmanageable because you have not accepted this.

If you are the loved one of someone who needs treatment for substance abuse, it’s vital to acknowledge that your own responsibility ends with letting that person achieve sobriety and work on recovery with a licensed, certified substance abuse counselor. Your job, while that goes on, is to participate in family counseling and learn ways to let go. You have to let go of the need to control this other person, to make excuses for him, to let him stand or fall on his own.

Maybe you’re not the codependent or the addict in the family—but you see it going on within the family. If that’s the case, you can turn to Co-Anon. This is an organization patterned after Al-Anon, intended to provide strength and support to the helpless onlookers—because substance abuse, after all, is a family problem.

For more information on CoDA, visit www.coda.org. You can learn more about Co-Anon at www.co-anon.org.

Substance abuse counselors have known for years based on their experience with their patients that there is a link between childhood traumas and drug or alcohol addiction. A recent collaboration between physicians from the University of Texas and Tennessee’s Meharry Medical College focused on the connection between childhood trauma and the development of depressive disorders or substance abuse.

The study involved teens—a small group, to be sure, tracking only 19 youngsters with known childhood traumas against a control group of 13 teens with no known traumas. Their progress was documented every six months for up to five years to assess the need for drug addiction treatment or psychotherapy for depression. 

Imaging studies of the brain were performed on each of the children at the outset of the study, with repeat examinations conducted as follow-up. While only one of the teens in the control group experienced substance abuse problems and one suffered from depression, four among the traumatized group required drug addiction treatment and five of them needed psychotherapy for depression.  Results showed diminished integrity of the brain’s white matter, the inner brain material, especially in the parts of the brain that help with making decisions about behavior and also in the control of emotions.

What Constitutes Childhood Trauma?

Most people think of trauma as something injurious, something that physically injures a person. It’s true that children or anybody suffering from physical violence experiences that very common definition of trauma.

However, there are additional traumas that affect us as we grow. A physician from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, speaking to several hundred mental health professionals, enlarged the definition of trauma to include not just physical but sexual and psychological abuse, verbal mistreatment, and deprivation related to poverty. Children who witness domestic violence or see their parents being arrested or suffer from their parents’ addiction issues are victims of childhood trauma.

The much-larger Ohio study went a bit further by calculating reports of abuse according to the number of traumas experienced. Those who experienced at least three of the traumas demonstrated a sevenfold increase in alcohol abuse. They were ten times more likely to experiment with intravenous drugs. Those extrapolated figures clearly document the evidence between childhood trauma and addiction.

Looking at Treatment Options

What hope is there for people who have experienced one of more of these childhood trauma? After all, you can’t erase the past.

Substance abuse treatment professionals will tell you, however, that they help their patients to identify the traumas and recognize that they had no control over or responsibility for the traumas they underwent. For some people—someone with an addicted or abusive parent, for example—abuse continues into adulthood, and at some point they have to learn to draw boundaries so that the abuse is separated from the positive aspects of their lives.

Many people have to learn that they can’t change a negative past, and they can’t change negative parents or other family members who caused them trauma. They can, however, change themselves.  They can learn how to say, “That’s what happened, and it wasn’t my fault.” They can learn to move forward from the darkness of those days into the light of recovery.

That’s just one aspect of recovery—addressing the issues of the past that take a person into addiction in the first place. If you know someone who suffered trauma during their childhood who needs alcohol or drug addiction treatment now, or if that person is you, it’s important to find a place that will help the addict work on all aspects of himself. A residential drug treatment center offers much more than abstinence therapy: There are opportunities to face the ghosts of the past, and therapeutic options that help a person open up to the positive benefits of treatment.  Contact an admission counselor at Vista Taos Renewal Center today for more information at 1.800.245.8267.

People hold incorrect ideas that the nefarious criminals who bring illegal drugs in from south of our border are stereotypical despicable Mexican drug runners. The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) cites statistics demonstrating that 75 percent of those busted for transporting illegal drugs into the country are actually Americans. Of all border drug arrests, approximately 80 percent of them involve at least one American.

Consider these solid citizens, who are responsible for keeping rehab treatment centers busy with their dastardly deeds:

• Todd Britton-Harr, a 36-year-old graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, arrested in 2010 complete with trailer full of 1,100 pounds of marijuana.
• Laura Lynn Farris, an innocuous 52-year-old female transporting her dogs to be washed at the vet’s office, along with a laundry basket—and 162 pounds of marijuana beneath the laundry.
• A 54-year-old unemployed mechanical engineer from Texas, who admitted to law enforcement officials, under guarantee of anonymity, that he had completed 17 successful transfers of marijuana from Mexico into Texas.

Police with the Border Patrol will be redeploying their suspicions toward Americans, especially if they have the look of a young and wholesome college student or a middle-aged career professional.  

Why are so many more Americans being caught these days? For starters, the Obama administration has doubled the size of the Border Patrol in the last two or three years. There are now approximately 21,000 agents hard at work these days to stop drug trafficking. Another reason is the difficult economy. With high unemployment numbers troubling the nation for the past five years, people who can’t find work say yes to drug-running—it seems like a fast and easy way to make a buck. Some people agree to run drugs because they are, themselves, users, and instead of seeking help in drug rehab treatment centers they get a cut of the drugs they smuggle into the country.

It seems like an easy job: Pick up a car in Mexico, drive it through the checkpoint, and deliver the car to someone on the American side of the border who will take over the drug distribution process.  One Arizona attorney who has defended many of these so-called mules states that often they agree to drive the car with very little information about the operation. Recruitment takes place at casinos where it seems like a simple way to recover gambling losses.

Some of the Americans bringing drugs into the country have permission to use medicinal marijuana. Ronald Colman, who retired from the Border Patrol in 2009, says it’s not uncommon to see someone “rolling up, smoke puffing out the window” and claiming “Dude, this is for medicinal use.” That doesn’t mean, police have discovered, that they aren’t carrying in a little something extra.

How will law enforcement officials put a stop to this? Increased vigilance and targeting even those who don’t look like they would be carrying will put a dent in these figures. About half of all arrests come from routine traffic checks.

Dogs are also effective in sniffing out drugs—the lady with the laundry and the guy with the trailer both were caught by dogs. Numbers of both canine and human agents will continue to be increased.

Dealing with anger during recovery is a real Catch-22. You feel angry about the need for recovery from substance abuse, and so you’re likely to use your substance of choice as a way to assuage that anger. On the other hand, you can’t really give clear thought to handling your anger unless your mind is clear.

As you embark on recovery, you need to realize that it’s natural to feel anger. Everybody gets angry: Whether or not a person is in recovery, he will have days when he feels simply overwhelmed by annoyance, irritation, and all the other synonyms you can think of for this frustrating, negative feeling. However, anger can be very destructive, but learning about it can abate its damage.

There are three components to your anger:

• First you experience cognition, the actual thought process of knowing that you are irate, whether or not you know the reason.
• Second, you will feel a physical reaction to your anger, such as an increased heart rate, gulping in air, or even breaking out in hives.
• The third aspect of anger brings out your negative behaviors, whether you slam a door, pound a table, or shout.

It’s easy to understand why you’re riding this rollercoaster of emotions as you work on your recovery. When you were using, you were doing something that felt good—even if it wasn’t healthy for you, physically or legally. Whenever you became angry, the feelings were muted or anesthetized by the drugs you were using.  If you had things in your life that provoked your anger, you could mask those emotions by using. Now that you’re not using, the things that get on your nerves throughout the course of a normal day are compounded by the cravings you feel from not using drugs.

Many people use anger as reason for relapse. Let’s correct that: Many people use anger as an excuse for relapse! It’s easy to see why. Besides the fact that you’re missing your drug of choice as well as the partying, you also feel resentment toward the people who urged you to go into rehab. Even if you recognize that this was something you needed to do to get your life back in order, you can’t help wondering why you had to be among the percentage of the population afflicted with a challenging addiction disorder.

Now that you are changing your life by participating in treatment in an alcohol or drug rehab center, you’ve also got to find new ways to manage negative emotions.  Your rehab counselor can help you with the issues that make you feel angry at yourself. You will also need help in understanding why you bear so much hostility toward certain people in your life. Whether or not those feelings are justified, you have to learn that you can’t change the past, and you probably can’t change other people. You have to move forward from the hurts of the past, and you can only change yourself.

What are the dangers of anger? If you don’t learn how to control negative emotions, you run the risk of increased health problems, including insomnia, fatigue, headaches, nausea, and even cardiac complications.  You may end up destroying relationships or losing your job. People who live with strong negative emotions are statistically more likely to commit a crime, and they are also more likely to be the victim of a crime.

As you develop a relationship with your counselor, the two of you can discuss the anger you feel.  Your counselor will help you learn ways to combat anger so that its impact on your recovery diminishes to a manageable aspect. You will always have days when you get angry—we all do—but you will learn how to deal with anger during recovery from substance abuse and as you move forward in your life.

You’ve already learned how your thoughts can cause you to relapse.  Counselors in drug rehabilitation centers teach you to recognize the thoughts that can endanger your recovery, and you’ll find some information about that on this website.

All addicts use excuses at one time or another as justification for relapse.  Once you’re aware of these common rationalizations, you can put your knowledge to work. You can prevent relapse by developing some positive coping skills to stay sober. Try some of them, try all of them—just try them!

Call Someone

When you’re working on recovery, one of the things you do is put together a support network. The idea is to assemble the names and phone numbers of several people, so that if you can’t reach one person you can reach someone else. Another reason for developing multiple contacts is because each person in your recovery network has some kind of specific knowledge about you as a person. Call a friend. Call a counselor. Call a sponsor from your 12-step group. Just call someone.

Exercise

If you’re already in recovery, then you know the way that substances affect the neurotransmitters in the brain. One thing you can do to defeat thoughts of using is to exercise. Exercise releases endorphins and can increase levels of dopamine. One of the reasons substance abuse becomes so compelling is because it likewise increases levels of dopamine. With exercise, you are catching that wonderful wave of euphoria but it’s being generated by something healthy like exercise instead of negative, dangerous activities.  Many doctors are seriously looking at exercise programs as ways to defeat addictive behaviors and enhance positive coping skills.

Meditation and Prayer

Meditation helps because it takes you to a place where you sit back and think about placing value on yourself. But there’s more to it than that: Most cravings are rooted in anxiety and stress, and learning positive coping skills through meditation provides you with a natural outlet. You will be less likely to give in to your urges if you can leverage an emotional calmness at such times. In addition, studies are showing that meditation can increase dopamine levels and reduce cortisol production. Meditation can be a way to stop thinking about bad things that have happened to you in the past. Meditation can help you remember what a worthwhile person you are. Counselors in top-notch drug rehabilitation centers spend time teaching meditation skills; time well spent.

Journaling

Keeping a journal about your thoughts can be a tremendous way to stay focused on your recovery goals. When you were using regularly, you gave no thought to the idea of writing down your feelings because you were focused on your next high. Now is a good time to start a journal, whether you write in it daily or weekly, to keep track of how you feel. If you don’t like to write, maybe you should invest in a sketch pad, or maybe music is your thing. The recovery process helps you to relearn your natural skills, and practicing them regularly will help you move past difficult thoughts.

12-Step Meetings

No matter what substance you’ve been using, there are no coping skills more positive than a 12-step meeting. It’s true that groups like AA and NA bear a little competitive edge toward one another. It’s also true that every addict is willing to help another addict, no matter what his substance of choice is. As part of your recovery process, you will assemble a list of 12-step meetings available in your area. Go to meetings often. Try out different groups; you’ll find that you like some better than others. When you are worrying about how to prevent relapse, take time out of your schedule to visit a 12-step.  Just take it one day at a time. Easy does it.

The Texas courts are working out a deal for Ryan Leaf, convicted of abusing pain medication in Texas when he was coaching the quarterbacks at West Texas A&M way back in 2008. It’s possible this former QB, identified by the NFL network as the biggest all-time NFL quarterback bust, will be permitted to serve his sentence concomitantly with the sentence he is now serving in his home state of Montana.

Leaf’s career took off like a rocket during his junior year at Washington State University—he quit his senior year to be signed by the San Diego Chargers. However, his cocky attitude garnered him little favor among his teammates. Winning his first two games in the NFL, he completed only one of fifteen passes in his third game and then was caught on film hollering at a camera operator after the game.  The next day, he screamed at a reporter. After his fourth game he was benched. The next season, he missed the start because of a shoulder injury. He was fined and suspended shortly afterward for hollering obscenities at his team’s general manager.

His third season saw him with a wrist injury, ironically sustained while throwing an interception, which plagued him for the next couple years and eventually required surgery. He played for Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Seattle—seeing little actual time on the field—and retired just before training camp got underway in 2002. He had only four career wins and fifteen losses.

Some speculate that his unrelenting, overall poor attitude resulted in a reluctance on the part of coaches to help him with physical therapy that could have helped him come back from his injuries.  Regardless of the truth in that, he ended up on pain medication therapy that graduated into addiction.

Leaf eventually returned to Washington State, earned his degree, and worked as a financial consultant in San Diego. However, he took a job coaching Texas A&M’s quarterbacks in 2006. In 2008, he resigned when a story broke that he asked a player to give him a pain pill.

In the spring of 2009, still in Texas, Leaf was arrested for burglary and for attempting to obtain a controlled substance fraudulently. He was doctor-hopping in the hopes of getting enough hydrocodone to satisfy his addiction, and there was evidence he had burgled an apartment, although this latter charge eventually was dropped. By the time the indictment was issued, he had conveniently checked himself into a rehab center in Canada.  When he returned to Washington, he was arrested, and he posted bond for his charges in Texas. In 2010, he received ten years’ probation for the felony charges.

Early in 2012 in Montana, he was arrested twice in a four-day span for burglary, theft, and drug charges. He plea-bargained this down to one felony for burglary and one count of criminal possession of a dangerous drug.  His prison sentence of nine years included nine months of lock-down residential substance abuse treatment, and if he complied with treatment, two years of his sentence would be suspended.

However, toward the end of his treatment period, he violated the rules of the facility and then in his typical blustery fashion threatened a staff person at the facility, which won him a ticket back to the state prison.  Leaf is a shining example of the immature personality with passive-aggressive (in Leaf’s case, mostly aggressive) behaviors that often accompany addiction issues. Maybe in addition to settling on a sentence for abusing pain killers in Texas, the court will finally order some treatment for his co-occurring emotional disorders.

A new study is making the rounds of professionals in recovery centers about how men behave when they reach the codependent stage of a relationship. It describes the family therapy that men should receive when their partners are in rehab treatment. Authors Dan Griffin and Rick Dauer have published “Rethinking Men and Codependency” in the online Addiction Professional journal, and they express some surprising viewpoints about male codependency and addiction.

Some Codependency Is Natural

The first posit is that codependency makes up a natural part of any relationship—that all relationships comprise independent, interdependent, and codependent interactions. However, based on the theory that men lack skills in relationship maintenance, their codependency often manifests in ugly and undesirable ways.

The authors assert that we all benefit from some level of codependency in our relationships. If codependency means that we take away a good feeling from the fact of the relationship, there is no harm in some level of codependency. The negativity of codependency comes when relationships are defined by one partner’s self-worth based upon the behavior of the other partner.

In terms of addiction, this means that the male codependent feels validated when he responds to save the addict from herself. Since addiction can be such an all-consuming force in the life of the addict—and the people around her—it’s not long before her partner gets sucked into an ever-widening spiral of codependency that obliterates the balancing forces of independence and interdependence.

The Male Behavioral Model

The next posit of the authors surrounds the behaviors that boys are taught as they grow into men: Don’t cry. Be tough. Never give way. Don’t ask for help.

Men generally do not work to sustain relationships in the same way as women.  They are not good at interpersonal skills like communication, conflict resolution, setting healthy boundaries, identifying personal needs, self-care, emotional expression, intimacy, or a willingness to ask for help.  

Codependence can generate feelings of being powerless, vulnerable, fearful, and insecure. But men express those feelings with arrogance or detachment. They are good at hollering and raging around the house. They are manipulative and controlling or even paternalistic.

When Codependency Takes Over

If you are the male half of a relationship in which your partner is using alcohol or drugs, your codependent behaviors will soon become the dominant part of your relationship. By their very nature, you are most likely to express your feelings by avoiding intimacy or cheating outside of your relationship. Your actions toward your addicted partner will involve verbal abuse and threats. You will watch her carefully and try to control everything she does. Your fear of abandonment—nobody wants a relationship to end simply because of addiction—could result in a lasting distrust in your own instincts and a cynicism toward others.

Family Counseling for the Male Codependent

The authors of this study say that a healthy relationship is one that can adapt to the needs of the partner. If your partner is in a recovery center, you should be willing to adjust your needs and schedule so that she can receive the treatment she requires. However, you are not responsible for her recovery—that’s up to her.

The professionals at the recovery center can work with you in family sessions to achieve a better level of interdependence in the relationship and less codependence.  You can develop improved skills for communicating with your loved one. You can learn fair ways to resolve conflicts and how to set boundaries for acceptable behaviors. You will need to recognize your own personal needs and allot some time for your own self growth. That’s your job: Participating in family counseling is up to you. When loved ones participate in the Family Program they gain understanding of how addiction has impacted their lives and can begin their own recovery in a sense while supporting their loved one while in treatment.  For more information on the Family Program at Vista Taos Renewal Center contact them at 1.800.245.8267.

From the NDepth Library of NewsOK, the online newspaper powered by The Oklahoman, comes the story of Reggie Whitten, a man forced to live through one of the most devastating events every parent dreads: It’s bad enough to have to bury your son, but it’s even worse when the cause of death is something senseless like substance abuse.  

The NDepth Library, incidentally, takes the fast-paced new stories we all glance through these days and slows us down for a closer look at tales that really matter. This story focuses on a man’s motivation to spread the word about Oklahoma rehabilitation centers and reasons for achieving sobriety.

Reggie Whitten had reached the pinnacle of his career as a lawyer in the fast lane. Although he grew up poor, he made it through college and law school and then got married and started a family. Even though he won a $130 million settlement at once point, he never lost track of the love he had for his son, Brandon, who succeeded at football in high school, inspired others to follow his example, and entered his twenties playing football at Southwestern Oklahoma State in Weatherford.

Then came Brandon’s long, slow slide into addiction. The wake-up call for Whitten occurred when Brandon drove himself and his girlfriend off the road, flipping their car upside down, the two nearly drowning in a creek. Brandon had been taking Valium and washing them down with alcohol—a common practice, Whitten says, among Brandon’s fellow athletes.

Brandon appeared to have the more serious injuries from this accident, but in a weird twist it was his girlfriend who died of a staph infection about six weeks afterward.  As Whitten puts it, Brandon was never the same after that.

Faced with guilt over the death of his girlfriend, Brandon sought help. His first Oklahoma rehabilitation center was a 30-day program, and it seemed like more than enough time to effectively engage in recovery. However, Brandon had his ups and downs over the course of the next three years. Sobriety is a difficult thing to maintain if you don’t work a recovery program.

In mid-February 2002, Whitten received a call from Brandon. He knew Brandon had been drinking, and in Brandon’s life where there was alcohol, there was Valium. Whitten set off to pick Brandon up in a nearby town, where Brandon said he would wait.

But Brandon didn’t wait. He hopped aboard a motorcycle and headed back home. That’s where Whitten found the emergency vehicles; Brandon had smashed the motorcycle into a brick mailbox a couple doors away from his home.  The only thing Whitten could do was cradle the back of his son’s crushed skull. Brandon, at the age of 25, was dead.

Whitten was numb for months after Brandon’s death. But when his daughter asked him to talk to a friend of hers, he found a voice, a way to speak out about rehabilitation and recovery. That was the beginning of F.A.T.E.: Fighting Addiction Through Education. Whitten speaks publicly these days about the way that drugs and alcohol changed his son from a leader into a follower, how addiction altered Brandon’s brain chemistry so that he couldn’t even fight for his own life.

F.A.T.E. is just one avenue to find an Oklahoma rehabilitation center, and Whitten has taken his message outside of the OK State as well, working in Nebraska and Utah. He works with addicted veterans and he’s even taken his message to Uganda, traveling with Pros for Africa. If you’re hoping to help a loved reach recovery, there’s a message worth sharing: Easy does it, one day at a time.

Residents of Colorado can expect a new kind of tourist spending money to fill up their state coffers: They are about to receive visits from all kinds of people who want to smoke dope. The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado puts a whole new spin on the words “Rocky Mountain High.”

In Colorado, the new law allows each resident of the state to cultivate six plants, only three of which can be mature. If this law goes unchallenged by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a husband and wife team recreationally using marijuana could own a total of 12 plants.

In addition to the growing plants, each person can possess up to an ounce of harvested marijuana and can give—as a gift—up to an ounce of marijuana to another person. Visitors to the state are also permitted to possess small quantities of marijuana for personal use.

That brings a new kind of carpetbagger to Colorado: Where some states have casinos and others offer internet betting cafes, organized and well financed businessmen are looking to cash in big time on tourists coming for recreational marijuana in Colorado. You can bet that the people who bankroll these recreational operations will keep a close rein on their interests.

Almost 55 percent of voters approved the measure in November. However, the highest concentrations of yes-votes came from tourist centers such as Aspen, Vail, and Telluride. Residents of urban areas such as Denver were less enthusiastic.

An excise tax of 15 percent will be charged on the wholesale cost of nonmedical marijuana, and establishments that want to process it or sell it must pay an application fee of up to $5,000. Facilities that are already approved for the manufacture or production of medical marijuana will not have to pay more than $500 for the license. The new amendment requires that the first $40 million raised shall be allocated to the Public School Capital Construction Assistance Fund.  There is also the promise of less money spent on prosecuting adults who possess small quantities of the drug.

The new law regulates the concentration of THC to be no more than 0.3 percent of the cannabis product. Individuals who grow it must do so behind locked doors and not in public view. Licenses, required for cultivation facilities as well as production plants, testing facilities, and retail establishments, will not be issued until October 2013.

That gives plenty of time for opponents of the amendment as well as federal officials to debate the merits of this new state law. About 20 million people smoke marijuana in a given year, and according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 9 percent of them will go on to become addicted. NIDA states that chronic users exhibit poor memory retention and substandard learning aptitudes that can last for many weeks.

Clinicians who treat addicts express additional concerns about their patients in substance abuse treatment who have used marijuana regularly over extended periods. Typically they suffer from panic attacks or anxiety attacks, and they lack motivation to do positive things with their lives. Now they will be told this drug is legal.

If you have concerns about a friend or family member who is already using marijuana—even as Coloradoans wait to see how the federal government will respond to this law—contact a substance abuse treatment center. Recreational marijuana in Colorado or in Washington, where it has also been approved, instigates serious repercussions that will need to be addressed.

Reaching your goal of recovery involves a lot more than just stopping the use of alcohol or drugs. It means learning once again just who you are and what you stand for in this world. There’s no better place to work toward that goal than in a rehab center in New Mexico, a place where recovery can happen.

New Mexico is known as the Land of Enchantment. It is a place filled with the lore of the native wise ones gone before us, a sanctuary for deep exploring rituals that teach us who we are. Embedded into the culture of this area among the people who know how to make a difference is a sense of Earth stewardship. The Earth matters. The animals are important to us. We are here to help one another as well as ourselves.

You cannot attain the next level of recovery if you do not believe in yourself. As you work toward a natural, holistic healing of your body and soul, you will begin to remember the things about yourself that were true a long time ago, things you haven’t thought about in ages: You were good at writing. You loved to draw. You knew how to set words down as poetry.

No matter what your skills were, the things that made you unique, you will rediscover them as you move closer and closer to your goal.  You never really lost those skills; you just buried them beneath the layers of addiction. As you move further away from addiction and dependency, you will slowly reawaken and remember the person you actually are deep inside. 

Recovery begins when you come to New Mexico and experience an infusion of hope. It flows into your body as you approach the city of Taos. There is truly no sight on Earth as stunning as driving up the Rio Grande Canyon, and, at the top, coming upon the gorge bridge. You experience a spiritual chiaroscuro of your somber past limned—enlightened—by the muted, majestic reds and browns of the earth and mountains before you. The blue skies embrace the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance.  

When you come to a rehabilitation center in New Mexico, you are not far from the Taos Pueblo, home of the Tiwa Native Americans for over a thousand years. They are a people steeped in spirituality, and they believe the single most important event in their history has been the recent restoration of Blue Lake to their lands. Their legends hold that the Tiwa people originally came from the lake itself.

Characteristic of the Tiwa is their feeling of community, the feeling that they are “all in one nest,” as they say. Each adult in the community has a responsibility to provide service for others from time to time, to ensure that no single person’s desires can ever eclipse the good of the community. 

The beauty of the land, the spirituality of the Tiwa, and the power of the mountains will imbue in you a sense of belonging to a therapeutic community as you enter into recovery. Treatment is holistic, and recovery becomes natural. You can meditate and you can lift your face into the sun. Adjunct therapies including equine therapy restore you emotionally and acupuncture, if you choose it, can make a physical difference. You can relearn who you once were in a rehabilitation center.  New Mexico is a place where you can begin to heal. For more information contact Vista Taos at 1.800.245.8267.