The news shares about the everyday destruction drugs and addiction play on families and individuals across the United States. Maybe first-hand experience has brought the reality to one’s own doorstep. Every year more than $700 billion is spent in the United States on health care, crime and lost productivity due to addictions. Learn more about the epidemic and how to make a difference.
Getting Started
It can help to get educated on the basics of drug and alcohol addiction. It is a worthwhile investment to learn about the risks, side effects and long term impact of alcoholism and other addictions on families and neighborhoods. It also helps to understand the war on drugs and its impact across the United States.
Training
Some people may seek to find ways of being trained to help those with addiction. Many programs are available out there to help support individuals with addiction. It is gratifying to see improvement but depends on the individual. While a meaningful career, it it may be months before change can be seen in people with addiction. Counseling positions are growing at a rapid rate and it is a profession that is likely going to see an increase before it gets better. The legalization of marijuana along with prescription drug use has created a vacuum of trained professionals to cope with the seriousness of addiction.
Assessing the Cost
One of the ways that people struggle with the war on drugs is how best to support family, friends and loved ones caught in the crosshairs. One of the challenges is economic hardship which makes people feel drugs are the only way out. It is beneficial to support and lift up young people through mentorship and connection to after school and other programs that build confidence and resistance against using drugs. When jobs disappear it breeds hopelessness and fear about the future, which continues to bring the drug war to the forefront of people’s lives. More poverty and more pain increase to lead individuals away from positive, empowering situations with options. Lifting up young people or finding ways of economically supporting addiction recovery treatment for people who struggle to afford it can be one way of making a difference.
Even if not much can be done on an individual level about policies, it is always possible to shift the dynamics away from feeling isolated and unable to make a difference to what a person can do locally to make the greatest impact. This might mean starting a circle of people to take on government policies locally that keep drugs in circulation, attacking neighborhood crime from the front door step or finding unique, alternative ways to combat the ravages of addiction.
The Villa is committed to helping fight the war on drugs, one person at a time. Call us if you need help moving beyond addiction to recovery and making a better life for yourself and others.